A new beginning...

I very much liked the inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander.

It was so simple and real and effective at describing the small things in ordinary lives that make for big changes...

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

My approach to making artwork...

I think my approach to making art is best described by the terms:
chaotic: (despite my trying to make things orderly)
accidental: (lucky accidents seem to move things forwards for me... right in the middle of chaos)
stubborn: (believing in myself despite all the other opinions offered)
absurd (sometimes it seems absurd to persist)
astonishment: (when things actually work as planned)
dreamer: (when I continue to suppose I can create new ideas... I just can't stop really)
confusion: (a frequent state that goes along with freelancing for me)

I wish I could feel like I was a suave professional... moving forward in a smooth untroubled state of savoir-faire... but so often it seems to be just the opposite.

Usually it seems too complicated to avoid the ruffled feathers and doubt.
But I guess it's exciting in the final outcome...

Peculiar Obsessions

I finally FedExed the latest book off to the publisher. (Note I didn't say 'last'... just latest, there is a difference!)

I only had to re-write the label 3 times. I only had to tear up the box once and use a new box to rewrite the address on the box with magic marker.

I always have this obsessive worry about getting the address done correctly. This time I only had to rewrite the address form 3 times before I could live with it. I always worry that the 9 might look too much like a zero or a 1. Or I worry that the 5 looks too much like an S. This is a peculiar problem of mine. But I've heard lots of stories about artists losing their books in FedEx.

I lost a book in FedEx once. It was gone missing for 2 weeks and I actually started over again on it (after two weeks of agonizing and desperate calls to the FedEx call center in Tennessee). But luckily it was found, mistakenly delivered to an address in Colorado... and the recipient was away on vacation for 2 weeks until it was discovered.

I was so overjoyed that I went out and bought a new TV ... (I needed a new TV anyhow, so it was a big celebration). The thought of redoing an entire book was not a happy thought.

Studio-sclerosis-junk

Messy studio? I wrote the book on that subject.

In fact now, I notice, I've added a new layer of studio-sclerosis-junk that rings around the edge of the room. But the really weird thing is I kind of like it like that.

I keep opened books lying on the floor of styles I like (such as the current Ernest & Celestine book by Gabrielle Vincent). There's something about leaving them there opened that works better than keeping them on a shelf. It feels like I'm experiencing them more deeply. Occasionally I'll flip to a new page.

I'll begin to clean when things get lost. When I spend more time looking for something than I do working, then it's time to get manic and clean.

A Winter's Tale

To say it has been snowy would be a once in a decade understatement.

It has been an historical bout of snow, a legendary siege of snow.

Each new morning seemed to break the record from the day before. I have never seen so much snow in Seattle before.

The snow piled up and up, like a scene out of the novel 'Winter's Tale' by Mark Helprin... one of my favorite books.

What a Christmas! A time to remember...
It was fun to capture it all in pixels with my trusty Panasonic FZ18.

Cabin-fever for freelancers?

The world is surrendered to winter.

It would seem illogical that a freelancer should suffer from cabin-fever. We live and work at home, after all. We're not used to going out every day.

But I find that cabin-fever happens. It's not that we actually go anyplace really, since we work at home. It's just the freedom to do so is made more difficult.

I think it's because this blanket of snowfall has covered over everything. Skylights are muffled shut, the grass is buried, sounds are muffled. Almost no one even goes out.

Or something...

Snowed in for the holidays...

This global warming is really something. All it's lacking is the 'warming' part, as our town sets a new record in low temperatures. It's snowing all across the nation I understand. And it's not even winter yet!

Here's my new studio chair. My drafting chair broke. It needs to be welded, so I had to improvise. But in the meantime I have painting that needs to be done! This solution looks a little perilous... but actually it's just fine, as long as I move very carefully.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

A few cold weather facts:

* Wearing long johns underneath corduroys takes some getting used to. I keep feeling like I'm in a Shakespeare play or something.

* Reindeer have fur on their noses! Imagine that! I saw a reindeer at the xmas tree farm. They are magical looking animals.

* Masking tape attached to Polartec is almost impossible to remove.

Long-Johns & Corduroys

wearing:
1 pair long-johns,
1 pair corduroy pants,
1 long sleeved turtleneck,
1 heavy wool shirt,
1 polartec sweater...
1 pair heavy wool socks
1 pair ancient slippers

but it's still too cold!

listening: 1944 radio dramas online... just right, but usually the plots are so predictable.

eating: Oatmeal, raisins, cinnamon sugar & bananas... avec coffee

drinking: Ovaltine

feeding: My hummingbirds lots of sugar... I'm their life support system.

painting: Page 15 of the new book... nothing like a deadline that is exactly due during xmas & new years.

noticed: the full moon... but it was too blinkity cold to mind if it was any bigger than usual or not!

In a moment of weakness I spent 10 minutes rummaging through the cupboards looking for a bag of chocolate chips, to satisfy my cravings for chocolate. I failed.
This is entirely due to the freezing weather, that makes me want to revert to my grizzly bear essence and basically just eat and sleep.

No doubt hibernation is all Nature really expects of me. But un-naturally, the responsibilities of professionalism demand that I wake in the dark of night and drag out to meet deadlines.

Brrrrrrr!

Brrrrrrr!

Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. That's all very nice, except for the cold, I think.

I suppose there's no real counterpart to the cold in thinking about the summer heat. But today it seems like a paradise lost . I find myself watching movies set in Australia, PBS shows about the pyramids... anything hot, sunny, sandy and dry.

Well at least the Holiday cards are printed and mailed. 

We saw two eagles by the lake today. I captured both of them in one photo.  What luck!

I don't know how the hummingbirds manage to survive this cold. But they do. I worry a lot about them, and take their feeders in late at night and get up at 5 am to put them back out. 

Meanwhile, the relentless Xmas deadline ticks away... tick, tock, tick, tock. I think it's hard to have a holiday deadline coincide with a picture-book deadline. Yuck. Thank GOSH for internet shopping!

Mysterious Skies

The skies seemed heavy with portent... as the light faded, the colors changed...

Strange clouds appeared above the mountains. What might it all mean? Are there UFOs hiding in those clouds?

Dreams & mice & the middle of the night...

It was the middle of the night.

I was in the middle of a very odd dream.

I dreamed I was on the rooftop somewhere in Italy. It was an ancient building made of stone with ornate ironwork and a cobbled sort of roof. I was successfully climbing down from the great height of the roof and had just managed to barely make it to the street by climbing down a lattice of ironwork... and finally stepping onto the hat of some character below.

Then suddenly (in real life) I hear a scurrying somewhere in the house. It must have been a mouse. It had to be a mouse. Maybe it was a roof rat! Gulp.

My brain changed gear... making the painful transition from the weird dream to the scurrying noise. My mind began clicking over all the possibilities. A whole new set of problems presented itself. Such is life... filled with problems. The transition from one mind to another is always a shock.

Eventually I fell back asleep. Dreaming is preferable to being half awake in the middle of the night and thinking about a mouse.

I do have the family mouse-catcher. But one can't count on my cat to catch any mouse.

Being deaf, she couldn't hear it. Being elderly, she's too bored to think about it. A mouse would have to run directly over her nose to get her attention.

An inexpensive trip to NYC

What's my favorite part of Thanksgiving?

The Macy's parade, of course! I realize it sounds tacky... and most people wouldn't spend 2 minutes watching it. But I find it's fascinating in every way.

For some unknown reason I find this annual TV event to be mesmerizing. It's largely nostalgia, no doubt, for my years in Manhattan. I used to live just down the street from the where the parade begins, up by the Museum of Natural History. So every year when I watch the parade, it's like a trip back. Only luckily, it's a trip back where I don't have to stand in a freezing wind for hours on end (like in real life).

I suppose the New Yorker in me luvs every snapshot of a real-time broadcast live from Manhattan. I relish each location shot... thinking back: "I know just where that street corner is... I used to walk past that building... I see they've torn that building down and put up a new one". It brings it all back in a way that just thinking about the past doesn't.

And it's inexpensive... which is crucial when you're on an illustrator's budget. It's my freebie 2 hour trip back to my old home town... the highlight of my illustrator's life past. So I can't help myself if I indulge a little now and then.

I also think the parade itself is fascinating somehow. The TV version is worlds better than real life, in that you get broadway hit tunes, the Rockettes, dancing, parades and live pictures from half a dozen locations. In real life you're just stuck in one spot for 3 freezing hours. The sight of all those amazing Manhattan buildings as the backdrop to the amazing balloons is a sight I rarely tire of. Odd, I know.

New York, New York... there's nothing quite like it, especially in the warm reminiscence of a new Thanksgiving morning with the gravy, cranberry & stuffing yet to come.