definatalie.com » designed by natalie

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Natalie — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:51:39 +0000

It’s been a bit of a bumpy start to the year so I’ve been trying to take care of myself as best I can, but the upshot has been having more time to create. Actually my frenzied swings between furious output and overwhelming fatigue and depression have caused concern for my psychiatrist, no kidding, which means I might have my diagnosis changed. Which is another bump on the dodgy bitumen of 2012.

Without delving too deeply into all that super raw stuff, here are some drawings I’ve produced. The first two are commissioned digital illustrations of Lillian and Jaimielee (the Fancy Bonanza winner); the rest are further explorations of ugly/ vain/ amazing/ perfectly cromulent embodiment.

Illustration of Lillian, who is fat and pale skinned, wearing a sheer black blouse with a red polka dot pencil skirt and red shoes. She stands on a checkerboard walkway in space!

Illustration of Jaimielee, a fat babe of colour with orange hair, helping her fluffy white dog Muscles stand up in the middle of a suburban street. Jaimielee wears a blue chevron striped top with a grey cardigan and blue jeans; Muscles wears a cute grumpy puppy face.

Illustration of myself (with longer blue hair) wearing a disdainful look upon my face and a singlet that says "Don't invalidate my ugly."

Illustration of a fat babe with brown skin and candy pink hair standing astride a yellow bike with a basket full of flowers, books, food and a white puppy.

Illustration of a babe with white skin, zits and huge honey coloured hair looking in a hand mirror. A speech bubble above says, “Look at yourself!” and text on the mirror says, “Stop looking at yourself.”

Ugly femme pride

Natalie — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:31:49 +0000

Like many people, I’ve spent a long time fretting over being ugly. Beauty, or being pale and smooth skinned, able bodied, straight haired, thin, with symmetrical features amongst many others of varying arbitrariness, seems to be rewarded with good times, pay rises, attention, excused speeding tickets, prolific representation in the mass media, romantic partners and popularity. So every time I’ve been rejected or passed over I’ve simply put it down to being ugly. I used to get incredibly upset when I perceived my blemished skin and fat belly to be holding me back from success, popularity, romance and otherwise.

As I got more into fat activism I started to realise that the problem wasn’t me, it was this construct of beauty, and while it was nice to know it might not all be my fault… it still didn’t feel good to embody ugliness and to be treated poorly because of that. Not everyone has thought me ugly, but those that haven’t (and do not) surprise me!

As a blogger posting photos of their outfits it feels like ugliness still holds me back – because when I look at the most popular bloggers, they all embody and uphold traditional beauty standards and practices. I do not. The other day I was thinking about this, and trying not to blame myself for not being a beautiful and successful blogger, and I realised that maybe embracing ugliness was an answer. I will never have smooth skin. I doubt I’ll ever shave regularly again. I have visible tattoos, piercings, stretch marks, and scars. I am fat. I am not particularly graceful. I laugh loudly. I don’t cross my legs. Yet I still identify as femme, because it’s important to me to embrace a femmeness that challenges my culture’s screwed up notions of femininity and beauty.

Illustration of a fat person in a pink polka dot bra and undies with stretchmarks and hairy legs sitting above a banner that says "Ugly femme pride".

I don’t have to be beautiful, and I don’t owe it to anyone either. It took me two years to fully understand this after first reading Lesley Kinzel’s Uninvested in Being Beautiful. I was so struck by this epiphany today that I decided to draw it. UGLY FEMME PRIDE!

This illustration is available on t shirts, stickers, mugs, posters, bags, etc on Red Bubble, Spreadshirt and Cafe Press. (Cafe Press has plus sized t shirts!)

#fancybonanza, what a kerfuffle.

Natalie — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:53:47 +0000

I was hoping to draw the Fancy Bonanza prize today so I went to look through the hashtag on Twitter and discovered… I couldn’t see tweets older than 6 days old! Argh! I thought I had 30 days of the hashtag archive to play with! This meant that I couldn’t draw the prize in good faith because two days of entries had been wiped from Twitter’s history and a bunch of people would miss out on the giveaway even though they’d entered. BAD TWITTER.

After having a minor panic attack, Nick’s helped me think through the solution. We’ll be re-running the giveaway and this time we are tracking the hashtag entries in a number of RSS readers (yay backups!) The #fancybonanza redux will now close December 14th at 12pm AEST (+10GMT), and I’m going to be giving away TWO more necklaces (blue and green) to two runners up.

It really blows that everyone has to re-enter the draw and I’m so sorry we weren’t aware of this Twitter limitation before we ran it. I’m so bummed out because I wanted to ensure that the winner would receive their necklace and brooch by Christmas!

Let’s do this again!

The grand prize!

• an ivory No Diet Talk brooch,
• purple hologram fat necklace and
• a custom digital portrait of you.

One of two runners up prizes

• a blue or green fat necklace.

How?
Follow: @fancyladyind on Twitter
Tweet: I REALLY want to win the #fancybonanza!
(Just once is all it takes!)

15% off Fat necklaces
Use FAT15 on checkout

Giveaway closes Dec 14 at 12pm AEST (+10GMT)
15% off Fat necklaces until Dec 31

If you have a private account, @fancyladyind will request to follow you. If we can’t follow you, we won’t be able to view and include your entry in the draw :(

Did you hear about the #fancybonanza?

Natalie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:05:24 +0000

A graphic with an illustration of afrotitty and photos of an ivory No Diet Talk brooch and purple hologram Fat necklace. Text follows:

Win fancy stuff

#fancybonanza!

Win
• an ivory No Diet Talk brooch,
• purple hologram fat necklace and
• a custom digital portrait of you.

How?
Follow: @fancyladyind on Twitter
Tweet: I want to win the #fancybonanza!
(Just once is all it takes!)

15% off Fat necklaces
Use FAT15 on checkout

Giveaway closes Dec 8
15% off Fat necklaces until Dec 31

No Diet Talk brooches are available to buy right now!

Natalie — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:37:35 +0000

A photo of two No Diet Talk brooches in black and ivory pinned to my green singlet.

First you could declare your site a No Diet Talk zone, and now you can set boundaries around your body with a No Diet Talk brooch! Horah! I’ve probably timed this super well with the party season coming up, but it was just a happy and fortuitous accident.

A photo of corn flour that has been sifted over the No Diet Talk brooch and left behind a lovely powdery stencil.

You can wear the brooch on your person or you can sift powder over the acrylic to create political baked goods and hot beverages too! Try it with icing sugar, coloured coconut or cocoa and create a fabulous diet talk free zone over the next month, a serene bubble away from the party goers who like to shame themselves and others for eating delicious holiday food.

No Diet Talk brooches are available to buy right now on

fancyladyindustries.com

No diet talk; a badge for your blog.

Natalie — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:03:32 +0000

So, it should be no surprise that I completely object to participating or being submitted to any kind of diet or weight loss talk. The way I see it, 99.9999999% of the world around me is a space where diet talk is not only normal but an insidious disease festering inside the relationships between women folk that masquerades as bonding.

In an effort to make it even more clear that I do not want this kind of self esteem eroding, multimillion dollar marketing scam bullshit infecting my life and this blog I’ve been working on a graphic for websites and blogs to use to proudly declare NO DIET TALK! This is a way for those of us who are made uncomfortable and triggered in conversations that centre around diet and weight loss to feel a bit safer, and I’m hoping that the graphic is spread far and wide.

Right click and save to your computer friends, then upload to your website!
These are all transparent png files for optimal stencilesque radness and to fit in with a wide variety of site designs. The white graphic has a black background added in with CSS, it will look great on most dark backgrounds.

I’m releasing this graphic in a few different colour variations under a Creative Commons Non Commercial No Derivatives license which means you can share the image and post it where ever you want on the internet, but you can’t modify or use it for commercial means.

I’m going to be making up brooches with this design too, so stay tuned!

Here’s some further reading on diet talk and why it sucks:
The anti diet-talk mantra by Sonya at Lip Mag
FAT: The Dirty Word by Mary at A Merry Life
Trimming the fat from “fat talk” on The-F-Word
Dear Dieters; A Letter to People at Work by Marianne at The Rotund

PRESALE time! Order a fat necklace this week.

Natalie — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 04:30:25 +0000

A photo of two fat necklaces, one made out of purple hologram and the other of gold mirror acrylic, on black chain against a crocheted background.

YES THAT IS RIGHT! You can pre-order a fat necklace this week. I know I’m a month behind on this but I just haven’t been able to organise everything properly but now is the time to unleash the fat necklaces again in red, black, pink and white as well as purple hologram and gold mirror.

A photo a fat necklace made out of gold mirror acrylic on black chain against a crocheted background.

A photo of a fat necklace made out of purple hologram acrylic on black chain against a crocheted background.

The pre-sale will finish next Friday March 25 2011 and then I will be ordering from my suppliers, producing necklaces and mailing as soon as I can. This time around I’m packaging the necklaces in boxes to protect them during shipping so the postage is a little bit higher but I hope that means that every necklace reaches its new home safely!

Order a fat necklace now!

December, the last desktop.

Natalie — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:24:02 +0000

I don’t really do Christmas and it’s hard to know what kind of colours will best suit all around the globe for these desktops, but I settled on a lovely turquoise, coral and canvas colour scheme for December’s desktop because it’s one of my favourites. It reminds me of the beach… hot sand, cool water and sunburn!

This design is actually going to be my last in the monthly desktops. Over the last two years I have drawn 24, can you believe it? It’s been a fantastic exercise in finding my aesthetic, without it I really don’t think I’d have found a way to integrate my drawing style with my graphic design style. In the future I will probably design desktops when I have down time, and they’ll be the kind of thing you can use any time of the year! I may even revisit some of my favourite desktops from the past two years and make them appropriate all year round.

So go download a resolution!
1920×1200
1920×1080
1680×1050
1600×1200
1280×1024
Wallpaper for iPhone (320×480)
Wallpaper for other phones (240×320)

I spend around 12-24 hours on each desktop, inking and drawing each element before scanning everything and pulling it all together in Photoshop for each desktop resolution. If you’d like to throw in a couple of bucks to contribute to the time spent drawing each desktop as well as my general hosting costs for definatalie.com and my flickr account, your donation will be much appreciated. <3

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
You may not upload this desktop to other websites, nor may you use it for any other purpose than to wallpaper your desktop. This also means it’s uncool to alter it and reupload it somewhere as your own work.

Low brow, low committment.

Natalie — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:23:59 +0000

Every time I drive over the Story Bridge I feel warm and fuzzy.

There’s been no time to finish drawings for me :(

Except when I get new inks and I spend a bunch of time playing with them!

The card I made for my sister’s birthday… I’ve been infected with the hipster isosceles and nebula frenzy.

I have trust issues.

I sent off this many necklaces. I hope they all reached their destinations safely! I have a bunch of necklaces to put up in my store, but I’m waiting on chain. Nickel free chain has been proving very difficult to buy in bulk :(

Some random paving.

Sometimes I fiddle with photos in iPhone apps… this reminds me of really cliched Australian landscape paintings. Except with a dirty great bunch of skyscrapers in the distance.

I bought some paper clay to make Nick’s halloween costume and decided to see if I could make a little Venus figurine while I was at it. I’m not quite sure what to do with her… but do you like her horizontal stripes?

This is my work for the On The Wall show at the Sydney Finders Keepers. More info here.

I love my new gold ink, even if it doesn’t work terribly well with a dip pen.
(Video description: gold ink glittering and sort of moving around in the cap of the ink bottle.)

It’s November and I’m on time!

Natalie — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 23:31:46 +0000

November is here and I’m already planning for my 30th birthday (in December)! We should be having hot and humid sunny days but recently all we’ve had is storms so the mood for this month’s desktop is a bit thundery. I’m also continuing my fishnet obsession. It’s all I want to draw!

Get your resolution right here:
1920×1200
1920×1080
1680×1050
1600×1200
1280×1024
Wallpaper for iPhone (320×480)
Wallpaper for other phones (240×320)