Kitties, Cats & Dryer repair

Today I am drawing cats, kitties, palm trees, chairs, coffee tables, verandas, shutters, lamps, books and paintings.

Once I draw all that I put it together in Photoshop and Indesign to make it into a book. 

Yesterday I took apart the clothes dryer in the basement and fixed it. This required hours of online research and a trip to the local appliance parts store. Whew!

Hard to say which activity gave me a greater sense of accomplishment. Life goes on...

Snowy sketch...

The city is finally digging out after 3 days of being snowbound.

On my walk I saw a mom out shoveling snow with her baby strapped to her back. I've never seen that done before. She looked to be from another land. 

I captured it in a sketch when I got back home.

It is so nice to see the temperature up above 24 degrees and no more snow coming down!

Work in Progress...

Working on characters for a new mini-bookette. 

The main characters will be a cat and a kitten. Since they're both supposed to be black there will be many silhouettes. 

Creating a halftone but keeping it black is a challenge.

Stay tuned for many kitty pix.

p.s. The great Seattle Snowstorm of 2012 is a bit of a dud. 

So far it's up to 3/4" and counting.

Always have a Plan B

One rule of freelancing is always have a Plan B.

I remember when I was first starting out free-lancing, I used to go the Donnelly Library to learn about paste-up so maybe I'd be able to work as a designer if I couldn't make it as an illustrator.

Lucky for me the phone started ringing before I had to take on any paste-up jobs.

Now I do licensed character and educational work instead of paste-up.  I suppose you could say I'm a 'drawing addict'.  I escape through drawing... so I'm actually quite indifferent in a way to what I draw.  

Last weekend I sketched out two detailed drawings that it turned out I wasn't even supposed to do.  But it didn't bother me in the slightest.  I had fun drawing them.  And I'm sure I'll reuse those drawings in something else some day.

Now we artists can apply that same Plan B technique to creating ebooks and apps.

Sometimes life is all Plan B I guess.  One problem I'm having is I'm too old to do anything else really... and too spoiled.  

So let's hope the planet still needs more images made to order. 

Digital, watercolor, acrylic, vector... I make any sort.  

I might even make Macaroni sculpture if need be.

Sunrise in the studio

A glorious sunrise in the studio this morning.

I'm all for new beginnings. I live for the morning.

I'd have it be morning all day if I could.

Pictures for Poems

 

I guess there's nothing better than making pictures for poems.  So I was delighted to be asked to illustrate a poem by Spike Milligan... 'A Baby Sardine'.

This second image is the direct photoshop file. It came out well on paper, I think. One of my first children's books was illustrating a book of poems by Eve Merriam... 'A Word or Two With You'.  I'll have to blog about that some day.