Tag: xmas

Holiday Card 2010

Holiday Card 2010 (mleiv.com)
Medium: PhotoShop/SketchBookPro Size: 4.25X5.5"
This is my winter holiday festivities card. I don't have the time (or creativity!) to make one up every year, but having exhausted all my snarky/nerdy/non-denominational purchasable sources this year, I was in a corner. Thank goodness I had Futurama as inspiration. I've been wanting to paint some Santa-bots for ages, so this was kinda testing the waters there. But 2011 will have Santa-bots. Somewhere. With a large arsenal of holiday cheer missiles. :)

I mailed one out to everyone whose address I know (the difference between 50 cards and 250 cards was $10 this year, so I have a big box of cards sitting here, ha). The rest of you, enjoy the online fun. You can read the inside:
Holiday Card 2010 (Inside)

Nieces

3 Nieces (mleiv.com)
Medium: Pencil/Photoshop Size: 7.5X22.5"
This was a christmas present for my 3 nieces - each of them in my cartoon style. The first of my cartoony portraits you can independently verify. The eldest is twelve now and a little old for fairy tales, IMO, but she loves dragons, so she got to be spunky Jane from the tv series Jane and the Dragon.

More Ornament Paintings

More Ornament Paintings (mleiv.com)
Medium: Acrylic Size: 11"
Some more ornament paintings from my holiday vacation. I prefer the gold one I posted previously, but I think the red one here is okay.

Xmas Card 2007

Xmas Card 2007 (mleiv.com)
Medium: Photoshop Size: 8X5"
YO HO HO.

Best Xmas *Ever*!

xmas 2007
The Pile-O-Gifts
xmas 2007
The Snow!

Ornament Painting

Ornament Painting (mleiv.com)
Medium: acrylic Size: 11"
This is my latest acrylic texture painting. I made it using a soft gel base streaked with a comb, then repeatedly glazed with green and gold. The ornament was made with my usual modelling paste medium, colored and topped with metallic and a "powdering" of iridescent to give it a little extra sparkle. As usual, it doesn't come through well in the photo, but here is a detail shot to bring out some of the glitter:
ornament detail

My Letter to Santa (Mac)

mleiv - wistful
Dear Santa...
I am not a big Apple fangirl. But in the past year my life has gone from 90% PC to 100% Apple (mostly because of work). And although it hasn't been a particularly painful conversion, there are some things that I really, really wish Santa would shove down Steve Jobs' throat in order to make my life a little less frustrating.

1) A docking station for laptops. Jesus F. Christ, Apple, how long is it going to take you to figure this one out? I have to plug in 6 different cords every day when I get to work and it really pisses me off. Especially because the damn monitor connector takes 10 minutes to align and attach.

2) A patch to Leopard that will let me navigate up out of network folders when I directly connect to a subfolder. In Tiger, all I had to do was open the little three line pulldown and select the parent folder, but now it only lists the subfolder and the computer name. Maybe I'm just stupid (very possible), but I can't for the life of me find any other way to go *up*.

3) A MacBook tablet. I used a Wacom art tablet in the 90s when I worked for IBM and became a pen addict. I've been using a tiny 4X6 pad instead of a mouse for about 7 years now. But to get immediate visual feedback (so I could, you know, actually draw), I would have to sink around $2000 into one of Wacom's tablet monitors, which I would then have to plug into my laptop (sort of defeating the concept of portability). The only portable tablet computers out there are PCs and are 12 inches wide, *and* cost almost $2000. And since all my graphics programs are Mac that is just not going to work for me. I am seriously considering trying to hook this Wiimote mod into my Mac as a temporary solution. The Apple iPhone has proved that Apple has the technology, and the rumors of a tablet have been floating for over TWO YEARS. Why, oh why, can't I have my MacBook tablet? *sniff*

Is that too much to ask for? I don't want to be greedy, Santa, but may I remind you that my childhood xmases were a bit meager (I mean, 18 years of socks was bad enough, but couldn't you at least have wrapped them? or put on a bow?). And you know I never get birthday presents because everyone is too distracted by the holidays. So if you could just give Steve Jobs a friendly little visit, Futurama-style, and let him know what I'm looking for in 2008, I would really appreciate it.

Xmas Cats 2006 #2

Xmas Cats 2006 #2 (mleiv.com)
Medium: Oil Size: 16X20"

This is another take on my failed 2006 christmas card. I started this one *before* the other painting, but because it was in oil, it took considerably longer. I like it a lot more, however.

Cat Holiday Card 2005

Cat Holiday Card 2005 (mleiv.com)
Medium: Pencil/Photoshop Size: 5X8"

The inside read: "Looks like it's just the pear tree this year."

Bast Wishes Holiday Card 2004

Bast Wishes Holiday Card 2004 (mleiv.com)
Medium: Acrylic Size: 11X14"

I made this to be my 2004 holiday card but chickened out at the last minute and made the tree one instead. I like it a lot, but I was afraid that No. 1) the silver would not turn out, and No. 2) the Christians on my list would freak out and report me to the authorities as some Satan-worshipping pagan godless freak. What can I say? Old age must be softening me up...

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