This is what my tee shirt looks like after an hour or two of painting!

I am a messy painter. I get in such a hurry when I'm painting that I don't want to take the time to find a rag to wipe my brush on. Both my hands are usually filled with loaded brushes so I can switch quickly back and forth and I don't have extra fingers for a paint rag! I've even been known to stick a brush in my mouth and behind my ear! I'm a little crazed when I paint.

I've gotten into the bad habit of wiping my brush on my shirts and pants. Fortunately these are older clothes that I no longer plan to wear in public due to a coffee stain or such. But it is still a bad habit because I have been known to walk into my studio to do something and then found myself looking at my current work in progress, grabbing a brush "just to fix this little spot here" and ended up working in my good clothes - which then end up with paint on them!

I actually like what happens to some of these shirts. This one from last week's painting session I really ended up liking - it has a wonderful flavor of abstract insanity! I'm going to wear it to my art show tomorrow just for the fun of it! I'm not called The NORMAL CHALLENGED ARTIST for nothing!

3 More Original Wall Sculptures - RAINBOW DRAGONFLIES

Since I sold the first Rainbow Dragonfly I did last weekend I decided to do a few more - I had two people who wanted the 20" x 20" piece and could have made another sale if I'd had more!

This one is a 10" x 30" Rainbow Dragonfly and will hang in any direction. It floats off the wall about 1-1/2"(via some struts on the back which also allow for the hanging wire to be threaded all around).

This piece is priced at $425.00, plus any sales tax/shipping that might be required. You can purchase it by contacting me by phone (602) 570-8505 or e-mail: popartdiva@yahoo.com. If you call, please leave a message and I will call you back a.s.a.p.

I also did two more 20" x 20" Rainbow Dragonflies which are below. I wanted to do a 20"x40" but just couldn't get the sculpture dry in time to finish the painting. Two 20x20's can be combined as a diptych as a substitute for a 20x40. I do a lot of pieces that can be combined into diptychs an triptychs for a large area. It's easier than carrying around huge pieces! The organic edge makes grouped pieces look like one large piece broken into sections - very cool and unusual wall treatments!

Both of these pieces are also priced at $425.00, plus any sales tax/shipping that might be required. They can also hang in any direction - square or diagonally! You can purchase them by contacting me by phone (602) 570-8505 or e-mail: popartdiva@yahoo.com. If you call, please leave a message and I will call you back a.s.a.p.

BTW - I take Visa, MC, checks, cashier's checks, money orders and cash! If you buy more than one piece you get a 10% discount! Now, see? You can get original art for less than a chi chi meal at a snooty bistro!!!!

RAINBOW DRAGONFLIES - A New Original Acrylic Painted Sculpture Fusion

My newest painted sculpture fusion is a 20" x 20" Contemporary acrylic painting on one of my original wall sculptures. This piece is priced at $425 plus shipping/tax if required - BTW, I take VISA, MC, Checks, Cash, Travelers Checks and Money Orders - hint, hint. My e-mail is over to the right . . . .

I have a close friend, Audrey, who has been bugging me to put my dragonfly petroglyphs on one of my contemporary fusions so I finally caved! And I like it! I'll have to do more.

You win, Audrey! You were right. There I said it in black and white!

I also finished a bunch of graphics for my newest blog The The BRAT in the HAT which is the blog where I get to release my pet peeves into cyberspace. I did a really cool animated masthead and a really fun video poem for that blog and it was a kick. I love doing graphics on the computer!

I also did a really nice pop art of a vintage 1940s telephone when I was inspired by a post I was writing about getting too many phone calls and if you click here you can see that new piece of digital art.

Pop Art of Mickey Mantle

This is a new digital image that I did for a post about Mickey Mantle and the Yankees.

I like to do pop art images as Tributes and Dedications to those people who meant a lot to me or influenced my life. Theses images are not for sale but they serve as samples of my pop art and portrait illustration styles. It's easier to show the quality of your work when people can see a famous face they recognize.

Unlike many of the sites that sell pop art portraits I don't run a photo through a couple of filters and drop a square of color over it. I spend a lot of time matching the background and the theme of the piece to the subject matter.

Since Mickey Mantle, aka "The Mick" was my very favorite baseball player of all time this was a fun one for me - especially since, as an adult, I got to meet Mickey - the thrill of a lifetime for me.

Though he has gone from this world, Mickey has never left the hearts of those of us who bleed Yankee Blue. Mick, hope you're hitting them out of the clouds in that big ballpark in the sky!

Post images Copyright 2008 by PopArtDiva.com. All rights reserved. No permission is given to copy, distribute or reproduce without written permission from PopArtDiva.com.

SIR PAUL - A Pop Art Tribute to the "Cute Beatle"

This is my latest digital art, it's a Pop Art Tribute to Paul McCartney I did it the other day for a post on my Pop Culture Blog.

I'm really happy with the end result. I tried a couple of new ways to color the face and I love how the background turned out. I took the original pop art faces, enlarged it to fit the background, layered white over it and then erased around the faces with a spongy eraser tool, then lowered the opacity of the background layer.

I used the same eraser brush settings as a painting brush and popped a little white border around the 4 pop art images of McCartney. Turned out pretty cool.

Paul was always my favorite Beatle and this is not the first portrait I've done of him. The very first time I painted Paul McCartney I was thirteen years old and I did my very first oil painting using Paul as my subject. I still have that canvas board to this day. It wasn't bad for a kid! It's in storage or I'd post it here for fun.

If you're interested in getting your own pop art portrait like this one I did of Paul, feel free to contact me by e-mail at popartdiva@yahoo.com for a quote.


The grand old painter died last night
His paintings on the wall
Before he went he bade us well
And said goodnight to us all
-lyrics from Picasso's Last Words by Wings

Pop Art Pet Portrait - The Duke!

I just finished this Pop Art Pet Portrait Commission for a client and it turned out really nice. The client is so happy she's ordered t-shirts, cards and stationary as well as the 10x24 Canvas Giclee. Should I tell her I can get her coffee cups too?

Unlike some of those pop art portrait sites that take your photo and simply do a high contrast posterized image in black and white and then drop a few cubes of background colors behind them, I take a good amount of time to get the right contrast as well as the details that are individual to each subject. Here I added some extra whiskers for movement, dropped in some dog tags that would float outside the box, included some of "Duke's" own toys and his favorite sports teams, as well as his namesake in the section backgrounds and a couple of cookies - embossed with his name!

Additionally, there were quite a few really great photos of him that I decided to use in the background as the design element and I toned the over all colors to blend in with the home decor.

The final art is a 10" x 24" Giclee on a 2" Gallery Wrap Canvas and I provided the pastel rainbow background large enough so the colors wrap around the entire canvas, sides included, the final cost for the original art and the 10x24 giclee was $425.00, shipping included. Not bad for an original work of art of your favorite pet.

If you're interested in getting your own pop art portrait - be it of your little fuzzy family member or one not quite as hairy - feel free to contact me by e-mail at popartdiva@yahoo.com for a quote.