Dog

So...you might ask yourself...what kind of card does one make when one's ex-husband is getting married. It's a tough one. They're both dog people, and here was a dog drawing I'd started along time ago for some Illustration Friday topic--I don't even remember what--that I barely got started on. So I spent an hour or so with colored tissue paper and liquid gel medium. This scan does NOT have the colors right AT ALL. I don't know what the deal with my scanner and colored things is. But this is it. I folded it down the middle, cut two pieces of black paper for the inside, and wrote what I hope was an appropriate message.

Rainy Day Projects

Okay, so I'm a little embarrassed to have posted three things in one day, but what else is there to do on a rainy day. I haven't done anything with colored pencils in a million years...okay, maybe not a million. I have a lot of them, but I hardly ever use them. It was a nice change of pace.

Illustration Friday: Craving

All she craves is to be in contact with the currents of the universe.

That's what I crave too.

It seems that a lot of my favorite books from childhood on take that as a kind of basic premise. Think about A Wrinkle in Time--Meg and Charles Wallace are fighting the nothing that blots out the joy that all of the universe, from the stars down to the mitochondria feel in the dance they make together.

As far as the picture goes, it's one I started a couple months ago for a different Illustration Friday topic, but never finished. It was watercolor and water-soluble painting crayons. I couldn't find the original reference for the woman, so I had to wing it. Today I drew over the original with ink. It was just a little bit too wide for the scanner, so it's cut off on either side.

I think that I will print out a copy of this to put on a card for yet another friend who's turning 50. She's is one ALWAYS to celebrate the currents of the universe.

Doctor Martin

My wonderful sister-in-law is graduating from medical school next week. I'm so incredibly proud of her. She's worked so hard. She then immediately starts her residency in family practice. She's going to be an incredible doctor.

(This is a card I made for her graduation. It doesn't really look like her, but then I've never really done portraits. It's got a bunch of problems that I'm not going to fix, but it's a card, and better than Hallmark for the occasion.) Okay, so I did "fix" a few things, but my son said at dinner last night, you better not show that to her....it's kind of insulting, don't you think? It makes her look like a man, and...." I STILL say it's just a card, and any homemade card is better than a store-bought one, so yes, I AM going to give it to her. I wrote a letter to her on the back.

Sitting Owl

Well....this is the companion piece to last week's flying owl. This was harder because it was more static, and I'm not sure that I really like it. I've never done drawings of any sort of animals before (except dogs because I have a dog, and horses when I was a kid and had horses) and it was kindof hard to figure out what to do about all those feathers that I definitely don't have the patience to look at one by one. I suppose this means I'll need to do some more so I can learn how to do this. Like nothing risked, nothing gained sort of thing, and if I'm going to do it, then I'd really better do it all the way.

Happy Dancers

Another birthday, so another picture for a card. I guess I'm only making these for the "big" birthdays, which it seems like bunches of people I know this year are having. Like the other birthday card/dancer picture, I'll use this on the next season's contradance flier.

Illustration Friday: Theater

Theater is a wonderful thing, but the BEST drama happens in the natural world, with no special sets or costumes or scripts. All it takes in a certain amount of quiet and awareness.

Do I dare say that Illustration Friday has changed my life? It's true. I started posting pictures every week in January, and have made more pictures and more progress than the last twenty years of my life put together. I can't believe the things that I can do now that I didn't used to be able to...and it's all from actually making stuff regularly (and looking at everyone else's great stuff).

This is for a friend's birthday in a couple weeks. Though I've sent him this website address, I don't think he ever looks at it, so I don't think I'm spoiling the surprise. (I hope it doesn't). I'm not entirely sure I'm done with this, but done enough for the moment, and done enough to post....

Illustration Friday:Subtract

If I could only subtract all the messiness, then I'd be much happier with my pictures! New problem with the mask (beyond the smearing when I try to rub it off)--if you put it on too thick, it pulls the surface of the paper up with it when you try to take it off. Grrrrr. And then the blobs of ink splattering all over the place. I really need to do something about that too.

But this is a picture I made for my sweetie's birthday yesterday. I hope he likes it.

Birthday card

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was making birthday cards for everyone's 40th birthday, and now a whole bunch of people are turning 50. They're not the same people (the ones who turned 40 are now 45), but still.....

So here's a picture for a card I made for a friend who turned 50 on Thursday. She's a contradancer. But besides wanting to make a card for her, I wanted "practice" with dancers, since I make the buttons and fliers for our local dance.

I don't at all like how this turned out, but I didn't have time to start over....

SHE was thrilled, though....

Illustration Friday: Celebrate

,ca
Every time a fiddler plays, it's a celebration.