Cody Goodin - The artistic and spiritual journey of Cody Goodin

The newest member of Codyland has arrived. Her name is China Girl and she hails from Oz. She plans on teaching classes in tea appreciation and traveling the countryside. Perhaps she will run into Jasper and Ruff on her adventures. At the moment she is giving me some good advice. Miss China likes my selection of music playing at the moment. It is very meditative and calming. Just what I need in the absence of a good cup of tea. I find her to be quite charming and very bright for such a young person. She told me her friend the wizard said she was wiser than her years. I am sure of that. This little one is quite photogenic and we will probably see more of her in the weeks ahead. I have been dragging my feet these first few days of vacation. Best laid plans of mice and men as they say. But, my sweetie had a wonderful birthday to kick off his 50th year. We ate, laughed spent some money at the slots and even got a bit of art gazing in to boot. Yesterday I helped a coworker photogra...

One of the newest arrivals to Codyland is Beeatrix Honeypot. She is the Codyland spokes person for the plight of the honey bees. Her mission is to tour all of the local farms and educate on the hazards of over using insecticides and herbicides which have been known to cause bee colony collapse. One of her favorite foods is watermelon. She is showing off one of the miniature ones in the kitchen. Beeatrix is anxiously awaiting the cutting open of this delicious little melon so she can have herself a late day snack to cool herself from the summer heat. Beeatrix is a monster add on kit for the monster high dolls. She will probably get a new hairdo as she doesn't really like what the hairdresser did this time around. Stuff and lots of it has been moved to the Essex studio. So work can commence on the photo sets. It is really hot in the studio this time of the year. Even the little ac unit I have is barely able to keep it tolerable. Of course this would hit right in time for my...

I have been working on a bed for my character, Jasper to put in his bedroom set. I wanted it to have a space or astro theme. Here is the bed completed with just the sheets and pillow. Here I have placed his blanket on the bed. The bed is made out of foam core 3/16" and painted with several layers of acrylic paints. I then stamped the images of stars, comets and a ringed planet on the different sides. The final step was antiquing it all with a burnt umber glaze. The mattress was made with a sheet of foam core as the base, 1 inch foam as the core and covered with a layer of muslin. I also  pillow quilted the mattress to give a more realistic touch. A little silly I guess since you can't really see that in the final picture. But, I know it's there. The sheets were a cotton that I then attached by sewing to the foam board backing. The blanket is a piece of polar fleece I had left over from a long ago project. This bed turned out pretty good for what I had in mind. I ...

While life has been throwing a few curve balls, broken molar, my way and a busy work schedule. I thought I would share a few moments that just took my breath away lately. I was walking home from dinner out one night and I looked up to see the sky. Oh what a sky it was in all it's colorful splendor. Lucky for me I have a really good camera on my cell phone. So I snapped off a few pics to remember the glory of the earth that night. Here is another view as I was getting to my neighborhood. I have been exploring photography in so many ways this past year and have to say that I just love it. It helps me to capture so much that I can't in other creative mediums. Luckily I am able to take another class from a really good teacher who helps me to see potential in my images and gives good but gentle critique. I learn a lot from those sessions. I am busy as always with my doll collecting to build up my resources for characters in the photo series I am working on. Here are t...