el paso rides

Just a lil un-subtle promo for the website I recently created, eprides.com. Feel free to visit. Nudge, nudge.

(vr)ooh(m)-la-la

It's been such a long time since I posed for pictures that I forgot how much fun modeling can be... *makes Zoolander Faces*... this afternoon, I had an totally impromptu photo shoot w my man... I got to play pinup on the bike and vamp it up and we had such a killer time. We'd been out on a bike run and had a few drinks in us, and we started talking about shooting photos again which led to us deciding to spur-of-the-moment ride out to the desert to shoot some pics like we've been talking about doing for forever now (well ok 2 months) So we left the bar, swung by my place, I stuffed a few dresses in the backpack, we rode out to the desert on the fringes of town and found a random remote dirt road to turn on. It was windy as Hell out there, and the wind kept whipping my hair into my face and making my right eye water like a leaky faucet, but despite the challenges, we pressed on with our spontaneous desert photo shoot (what troopers! :P)


The result was a great ride on a beautiful day and some photos (shot by him) that I really, really love.

Here are a few of them, hope you enjoy :)

(special thanks to my Red Light for taking such wonderful shots of me, he did such stellar job that I felt like a pinup babe all day long... *muah* baby!)

in real life

I sort of didn't realize that I'd been missed here until I got a few 'hey where the f**k are you' comments & emails, my bad. I dunno why I've been so absent... ok, well I do, but I kinda hate writing about it...

Having blogged for the better part of a decade now (8+ years in various formats!), it seems weird for me to be shying away from it after all this time. But I got burned so bad after being so publicly open about my life for so long- it was all good & well when things were going good... but when I had problems it turned nasty fast. There's such a fine line to blogging when it comes to privacy- if you keep it too anonymous, who wants to read it? I know that my favorite bloggers are the ones who allow peeks and glimpses into their personal lives, whatever their chosen blog topics may be. That's the flava. But putting personal details out there is risky at best and downright dangerous at worst. I mean, no, my actual birth name is not Heather Shade (but it's official enough at this point to count *wink*); that came about after my early years online, when publishing my photography & writing under my real name led to some really scary situations- I had total random strangers track me down! And I am not talking interesting mysterious type strangers I'm talking these kind:


Gifs at Giftube.com

So for practical reasons, I try to keep myself a bit anonymous, nowadays, you kinda have to. But I am also a pretty open person and I like sharing my tales with you guys, and for the most part, it's 98% LOVE in return from my readers. Problem is that the other 2% is a bitch...

People can be totally evil online. Trust me on this!

In fact that should be the caveat that comes with any type of public posting... people can be dicks. All that anonymity allows the worst to come right out, and people do and say things they'd never in a million years do in real life. And lately I've been having thoughts about what I am posting, even though I think I keep it pretty confidential now. It's easy to post about art and photography and tattoos and stuff but when I have deeper stuff going on it's another story... I am a bit paranoid now, I think.

And lately I have some more personal stuff going on, which is not at all unusual (it's life) but I haven't wanted to post about any of it. I've just sort of been in my own little world I guess. I've gotten pretty used to going out by myself... I've developed this weird stubborn independent streak, and even while I sometimes do hate heading out alone I always feel this strange, unfamiliar pride in it because damn it I am not just sitting around at home I am doing stuff. There's always shit to do, whether I'm solo or not. And I'm actually getting used to it... I just hope I don't get too independent, you know, to the point where I become all loner-ed out heheh. It's weird right now for me to post about it, though, even though I'm not sure exactly why?

So basically, I am just trying to find that balance between life out there, and life inside this glowing little box here. I'm all off-balance and stuff because so much in my life is changing so fast right now... it's like walking... no, running... running down one of those people-mover thingys that they have at airports, moving faster than the world is moving around you... very disorienting. I'm in process of moving (really slowly and a lot of work!) and trying to juggle a bunch of stuff besides. I've just gotten lost in the rat race. Writing is a good thing for me though, so I shouldn't neglect it and I'll try not to.

And now, a random shot of the pretty-much-healed zombie babe, for those of you who asked for a zoomed-out shot to show the size of it...

my day in pictures

I finally made it to Sinister Pleasures so my girl Francella could finish my coverup tattoo, we did the final 3 hours on it and without any air-conditioning the entire time (it was broken) cause we're hardcore bitches like that. Heh.





The before and after... and Francella did this coverup FREEHAND. She is incredible!!! My goal is to eventually have a devil-girl on the other side that resembles my little sister (as the zombie pinup girl is meant to resemble me!)




After the tat sesh I went to Francella's to hang awhile and I held a snake! I. Held. A. Snake. Might not sound weird unless you know how scared I was of doing that (I adore snakes, but got bitten once and have been a bit nervous to hold one ever since) This was the coolest, most laid-back snake I have ever seen. Thanks, snake!




Then I drove home in a pouring monsoon of rain. Everything looked so beautiful, the sky was so bright, and even the dirty asphalt was sparkling like jewels. I heart rain.



The End.

art attack

As promised, I have added a new artwork page to HeatherShade.com. Enjoy.

hey there cupcake

Behold, my latest portrait...



(click the pic to see the high res full-size version, trust me it looks much better)

This is a portrait of my super-stylish Australian friend Super Kawaii Mama (check out her seriously great blog if you haven't already) She always takes the most adorably glam pictures, she's got that pin-up vibe down pat, and this one was inspired by one of my favorite shots of her (see the inspiration here)

I loved drawing that tiara, the cupcake, and the hair... it totally fulfilled the line-lovin' art tweaker in me. I am digging the black-white-pink combo, too, since it complements the combo of playful, cupcaking innocence and edgy pin-up sexiness that I love so much about this photo. I really enjoyed drawing this.

It pains me to admit that I still have not added my artwork to HeatherShade.com, doh. As of right now, the only place I have my art up is in one of my Myspace albums. I am working on updating that though. I'll post links when it happens ;)

As always, I am available for custom portraits & artwork.
Get in touch if you want anything, yo.