mud animal by kathryn spence

this is my favorite art piece ever. it is by kathryn spence and lives at the stephen wirtz gallery. it's a stuffed animal wrapped in bathrobes and dipped in mud. when i first moved to san francisco, this was probably the first piece i saw here in a gallery that really spoke to me. and every time i go to 49 geary, it's always there. chippy!

tom tierney

i keep thinking about the things in my childhood that influenced me. one of the biggest influences was an illustrator named tom tierney. at the time, i had no idea who he was, but i adored his work.

like most girls my age, i was really into jem and the holograms. golden books put out a couple different titles around 1986 and the series was illustrated by tom tierney. i remember getting these and noticing right away that the drawings were different from the cartoon, and different from the pictures on the boxes that the toys came in (i just found out that illustrator's name is sharon knettell, gonna have to look her up). i had no idea who tom tierney was, all i knew was that i liked the jem from the book best.
the pictures in these books really stuck with me and helped shape my personal aesthetic. i remember that i used to stare at these and study them for hours. check out piazza's (green hair) hands and nails. so glamourous, so fierce, so... bitchy.

this headphone illustration had by far the most influence on me. i've totally ripped those headphones off at least once for a drawing.

i just recently discovered that mr. tierney also illustrated another one of my favorite books when i was a kid, barbie and the rockers: the fan.

i actually was not a fan of barbie and the rockers; loyal to jem and the holograms all the way. but someone got this book for me, unaware of the huge differences between barbie and jem.

and once again, i couldn't resist mr. tierney's style.

according to his bio, mr. tierney has been doing fashion illustration since he was in high school in the 1940's. which makes so much sense looking at these pictures, they are so catalog and are full of weird poses you wouldn't find people striking in real life. this is probably why i love looking and working from catalog pictures.

currently mr. tierney is living in texas and has become famous for his paper dolls.

had to post this picture since i just noticed that stormer's color scheme is identical to the drawing i posted on 9/28. but i haven't seen this image in years!

you have to color it how it looks!

i think my second goal in life after i decided against architecture was fashion designer. i hung out with this group of girls in elementary school and we decided that we were going to publish a book with our fashion designs. oh my god, we spent hours on it, all working together to accomplish this masterpiece that was going to revolutionize the fashion world! hee hee :)
we each had different assignments in this process. if i'm not mistaken, i think debbie and i drew the models and clothing outlines. i had known debbie since kindergarden and she was my best friend all through elementary. she was much more talented at drawing than i was and i always struggled trying to be as good as her. we reconnected on facebook recently and i found out she is a medical illustrator. damn, now i'll never be able to catch up, that takes hella technical skills i bet! anyway, there was also gwen, laura and karen and they worked on adding color to the designs. i got mad once because someone was coloring in the hair, and they were coloring sideways instead of up and down. i was like "you're hair doesn't grow sideways, it grows up and down! you have to color it how it looks!" so serious! i think rebecca was good at coming up with clothes designs probably because she was the best dresser. hillary was the organizer and was the keeper of the final pages, even after she moved...
i'd give anything to see those fucking pages right now. they were stupid rad. i'm pretty sure unicorns are involved in at least one layout.

a fancy set of pens

I had a dream about my dad recently, which lately seems to signal that change is on the way.

my dad was definitely a creative person. in fact, i think he gives a whole new definition to the word creative; he was outside the box. or maybe he was too busy keeping himself occupied with filling the box to actually be in the box. whatever, that sounds dumb if you don't know him (and really dumb if you do) but trying to describe who he was in a few sentence just isn't possible. hell, my dad was way too interesting and entertaining to make doing that easy!

when i was a kid i asked my dad what his compass set was for. he also had this awesome set of fancy pens that i was fascinated with. he told me that architects and engineers used a compass and pens to make buildings. when my dad was young he wanted to be an engineer, but that never happened because of a car accident he was in before i was born. as a result of the accident, he eventually had a series of seizures that made it impossible for him the remember anything that happened after the late 70s. i thought it was sad that he never got to realize his dream. i wanted to do it for him and decided i wanted to be an architect when i grew up. also, fancy pens never fail to grab my attention! that was my goal in elementary school for a couple years until i heard that being an architect involved a lot of math; unfortunately i had decided that i hated math (boo!)

but i still love the idea that all it takes is some fancy pens to make a building.

been adding fluorescent gouache into works lately and am really excited about the results. the hair is a mixture of phthalo turquoise and a metallic electric blue watercolor plus somethings else here and there...

used coppper metallic watercolor and pencil for outline.

seems like it needs a border in fluorescent green and copper, but might do another version and start again. we'll see, starting to get ideas what to use something like this for...

i heart oakland

this is an overpass near my house that goes over 34th street between telegraph and mlk. there's something about this that i really enjoy looking at.

hello kotara!

well... hello. my name is nicole kotara and i like to make stuff. i live in oakland, california but am originally from san antonio, texas. i know what picante sauce should taste like. been drawing for as long as i can remember. starting a blog to begin to get myself and my work out, which i have to admit is very tough for me (i am a very shy person).