Sketchbook Project Breakthrough

I signed up months ago to participate in the 2012 Sketchbook Project, my sketchbook arrived in the mail, and I never opened the package.  It got shuffled around, never exactly lost, but certainly not in a particularly prominent spot.  My problem?  The theme I chose was stumping me.  I thought I was being smart - "In 10 minutes..." sounded perfect for me!  Especially when my first thought was, I'll fill the book with sketches done in 10 minutes, that should be nice and easy since that's about all the time I ever get to myself in one day.

Mmm hmmm... and it sat.  Just doing a sketch in 10 minutes wasn't exciting me.  Plus, I wanted the book filled with a bit more polished pages than 10 minute sketches.  I also needed a bit more direction:  a 10 minute sketch, ok, but of what?  I saw some pages from someone else's book of these great watery scenes.  So of course I started to wish I had chosen her theme (I forget what it was).  Suddenly, every other theme choice seemed like a better choice than the one I had made.  It seems my life is constantly a matter of "the grass is greener on the other side."  Okay, yes, that's because I always make it that way.  So I pushed myself to think outside the box, thanks to the note on the website and the rules that came with the book: "The themes are supposed to be a starting point, not a restriction, so remember to keep an open mind and consider the theme to be a guide."

Then I remembered a project we did in college, early on, in a typography class.  I love(d) typography (no, not topography - as in "the art or practice of graphic delineation in detail usually on maps or charts of natural and man-made features of a place or region especially in a way to show their relative positions and elevations" as per Webster's dictionary - though I do love a good map) TYPE-ography!   The assignment was to make a graphic (yay graphic art!) representation of a word, overlapping the letters on each other, and then painting in the shapes created by the overlapping letters with shades and tints of the same color (or hue, to those of you keeping score on my artistic lingo).  I loved working on that project, every aspect of it, from picking the font, to arranging the letters, to learning how to mix and use gouache properly.

So I realized, why not create a book of different ways to represent "10" and "minutes" in the same fashion as that assignment from long ago?  And my idea was born!  Granted I have yet to start working on it, but now that I know what I'm doing I'm very excited to get started.  AND I have my whole girls' weekend away next week to work on it!  (Well, that and a few other 3D projects.)  So please stay tuned for previews of my sketchbook work coming in the next few days and weeks!  The whole thing is due, postmarked, by the end of January so I do have some time to finish it.

Buddy and Tiny

My boys are obsessed with Dinosaur Train.  The show, the toys, the books, we even had to buy the little guy a duplicate of this so they would stop fighting over the one we have.  We ended up getting one from Target that is a special underwater version with their favorite shark (cretoxyrhina) character instead, and that caused more fighting initially because Babyman wanted "the blue one" instead of his "green one."

I figured what better for Halloween than for Babyman to dress as Buddy and Tiny to dress as Tiny, natch.  Small hitch:  I really don't want to pay $30 for each of their costumes... though I've done it before.  Sooooooooo I thought, well maybe I can make them.  Should be easy enough, right?  Nevemind the fact that my boys would never go for having these heavy-looking hoods on for any length of time.

So you can imagine how excited I was to find this!  My only concern is going to be translating the patterns to full size since I don't have a lot of experience with that kind of thing.  And the pattern is only for Buddy, not Tiny.  But I think it will be easy enough to translate the pattern to Tiny, changing the color and adding wings.  I have a bit more than a month to get it done, I think I can do it!

Confession

I have a confession to make:  I am obsessed with Twilight.  No, I'm not a 13 year old girl, and no, I'm not out buying everything with Edward's face all over it.  But I can't stop reading the books.  Especially Breaking Dawn.  I spend almost every night in Babyman's room reading while I wait for him to fall asleep, either a real book or one on my iPad.  And even if I have a new book that I'm reading, as soon as I'm done with it I go back to Twilight, again usually Breaking Dawn. 

I also have to watch the movies whenever they are on cable... as bad as they are.  Sick, isn't it?

I'd like to say that now that I've confessed I feel better, but nope.  Just as guilty as ever. 

A Case of the Mondays

Ugh, having one of those days around here... can't get moving this morning.  Oh, wait, it's the afternoon?  When did that happen?  Um, ok, yes, I see, about an hour and 38 minutes ago. 

Rainbow Happiness

photo from Babble.com

We've been loving rainbows around here lately, especially a little wooden xylophone the boys enjoy banging on.  So when I saw this article on Babble on Facebook this morning, I just had to share!  I'm loving the garden above, the painted stairs, the pie plate and especially the xylophone table!

Simplifying Simplify

I've been doing a lot of thinking these days... well, most days, really.  My mind is constantly racing.  But Hurricane Irene this weekend has put a lot in perspective.  We were very lucky, no flooding, no trees blown over, no damage whatsoever.  I spent quite a bit of time moving things in the basement, deciding what was important and what I didn't really mind if it got wet and ruined.  So then it leads me to think, why do I have things that I wouldn't care if they were ruined?  They're just taking up space, right?  I'm trying to get my mind to accept that there are things we (I) possess that really aren't that important, but I always fight giving them up.  So basically a lot of stuff is heading toward Goodwill in the very near future.

The other point of this is that I tend to spread out and in my attempt to simplify as much as I can.  I had multiple blogs for different topics.  I have since taken most of those blogs down and will start working on importing them into this blog so that everything is together. 

I'd like to get back to blogging regularly and I think my biggest reason for the lapse in my blogging was the separating topics.  It got to be too confusing, rather than making it easier like I thought it would.  So everything from venting about the boys (big and little) to baking adventures to job search to etsy shop updates will all be here.  It's going to take a bit to consolidate everything, so please be patient on that.  I promise, eventually there will be a LOT to read from the past few years.  And there will be even more in the future!

IF: Shadow

Another Illustration Friday post! This week is "shadow" and my immediate thought whenever I hear the word shadow is of my former shadow, Dragon. She's my tiny little black cat and she used to follow me wherever I went. Nowadays, she's much happier to wait until nighttime to be with me, when there are no little hands trying to grab her tail or little heads trying to use her as a pillow. Instead, she sleeps upstairs during the day, maybe appearing once or twice to eat or use the litter box.

So here's my little shadow, sleeping on the arm chair in our bedroom last night. This is my first attempt at sketching, scanning in the sketch, redrawing with illustrator and painting with photoshop. I kept it all very simple, but I really like the effect.