Recycle, Reuse

My darling husband cleans and reuses food jars for other purposes. He took a old jar of sun-dried tomatoes and cleaned it up for our Q-tips. The boxes they come in are awkward and ugly. 

My assignment was to create a cool label for the lid to cover the old food design. We can't decide which one we like better. Can you?

 I shamelessly stole these shapes and designs from milk labels I googled. Typography and graphic design is NOT my strong suit. I did learn what I liked though. Its a good exercise. I think I may try it again.

#inktober

It's the Little Things...

I'd been feeling down because I've lost some steam on my goals to exercise and eat more healthy. Then today, getting ready for church, I put on a little blush and mascara. Voila! I felt pretty. It was the boost I needed to tackle this next week and keep trying. 

#Inktober

Whaaat???? A Current Post???

Are you shocked and awed? I know. Me too. I've actually filled two of these sketchbooks with our daily doings. I'm still inking book 2. This is from book 3. I'm trying to keep up with the latest as I go back and ink the penciled in entries of June and July..... Oh crap. I just had the realization. I marked this day as July 3rd. It's actually today: August 3. Shoot. Ah well. I had fun drawing it. My friend Amanda was a good sport and posed for reference for me to draw this well. I have a hard time remembering what people wear when I get home. And she is so stylish! 

Also. Please notice the purple cauliflower I bought at the market. I can't wait to eat it!   

Mom Stuff

These are a bit late.... as you can see on the dates. We've gone through a lot and I'm finally getting to a place where I can catch up a bit. I've kept up pretty well with the journal, not so much on the posting. I'm finding that if I don't make at least a note of an event, it gets lost in the cobwebs of my mommy brain. 

So, until I get caught up, I'll be posting a couple at a time. Heck it might just end up being this way all the time if it works best for our schedule. Mike (the hubs) is endlessly supportive. He is, as I type this, playing with baby Vienna so I can do this. He is the best! 

What do you think of the backgrounds? More interesting than my grey scanner, no? I thought I could try to match the backgrounds to the contents of the journal a bit. Nothing too fancy, but it could be fun. 

Mom

Moms are the best. Seriously. Having my sister and mom come was immensely helpful. FYI mom has the short hair, Twin is the curly short one.

The White Stag

At least... that's the working title. This has been an interesting journey. I'm working on a comic that is 50 pages long....actually its currently at a standstill because I freaked out. I've got it all thumb-nailed out but egads! character design??? Me???  So I started my "How to make a Perfect Pie" Comic only 25 pages long, still struggling with consistant characters... Then came this: "The White Stag" Only 12 Panels. Now that I've gotten this far, I'm feeling more confident about the other, bigger projects. 

Thumbnails, character design, layout,  and even some facial expressions!(though... they are covered up....)

Close up of one of the panels. This is done on a 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch paper. This allowed me to work out some of the kinks, and see how to do it better before I went big. 

Layout Question: Should I have the layout 1,2,3,4 across the top, or should I have it more like a book as you can see in the Critique's layout below. It goes 1,2 then down to the next row 3,4 as if it were on two separate pages... Similar to the traditional comic book layout. Thoughts?

These are things I know I already need to fix, which is why I did it small in the first place. Having to redo this much work and detail at a 7in size would have been a pain. Even so, this took me a couple of days of concentrated work. 

Ps. Thank you Ray for the idea, and thank you Hollie for be excited for me and cheering me on!

I love ink, don't you?

I've been enjoying  this Zentangle thing! I originally planned to do one a day..... yeah, that lasted about 3 days. hahahahha! Despite my sporadic doodling, I've racked up quite the little pile of drawings.

Because I Can......

My sister Sam is on a religious mission in New Jersey for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I try to write her letters about twice a month as well as e-mail weekly. In her letters, I try to include little comics or drawings. I didn't have any good ideas for comics, so this kinda popped out. 

I haven't done this painting method in a while (acrylic washes) so it was fun to prove to myself I could still do it. I'll admit these little mushrooms aren't gallery worthy, but I enjoyed doing it just the same. 

So I love writing and getting mail. Would anyone want to be pen/illustration pals with me?

Zentangle....Whaaaaattt???

My former teacher, Victoria Simpson, mentioned on Facebook that she'd become a certified teacher of "Zentangle." Since she doesn't post often, I decided to give it a click. Suddenly 45 minutes passed. I really like the idea of a purposeful doodle. Doodles that can be art-worthy. There are some rules, which I sleuthed....at least some of them. 

1. Start with NICE 3 1/2 inch by 3 1/2 inch paper.

2. Draw four dots in the corners and loosely connect them (you can do this in pencil)

3. Draw a string aka a random line in the square.

4. Start drawing in INK! no back-sies or erasers. 

I've never felt very confindent creating abstracted patterns, but this has been fun and I'm learning too. This is a low pressure way for me to practice design and art principles like value or balance. You could use these little squares to relax or warm up before tackling an art project. Here is a link to their web page: http://www.zentangle.com/

Monsters are so FUN!!!

There is something about hanging out with my twin sister that gets my creative juices flowing. I think that having her area of expertise be in another field(interior design) is extremely helpful. We both know the basic principles of design and art, but are different enough that a lot of the competition of our childhood is gone. This was created, after a day of my twin, Sam, helped me design several quilts and make them (aka she designed and I took notes). So... Thanks SAM!

ps. I like monsters.