Illustration Friday: GROUNDED

One morning she found an unusually large turnip... When she pulled it up she was surprised to find that it left a hole
through which she could look down upon the green earth.

For this week's topic, I decided to dig into my old work a bit.  These two pieces were created back in college to illustrate the folk tale "The Girl Who Climbed to the Sky."  The story tells of a girl named Sapana who is kidnapped by a porcupine man, forced to marry him, and kept captive in his kingdom in the sky--so she's grounded but actually far above the ground itself. With a little digging, a little ingenuity and the help of a few bird friends, Sapana makes it back home safely. 

She hung there for a long time, swinging back and forth above the trees..."Come and help me," she called to Buzzard. The bird glided under her feet several times, and Sapana told him all that had happened to her.

Books Read in 2011

Well, hello world!  I haven't done much in the way of artmaking lately.  Hopefully that'll change when the calendar switches.  But in the meantime, let's talk books.

2011 saw the failure of my hard drive and the loss of my many-years-ongoing "The Books I've Read in My Whole Life, Ever, All Time" spreadsheet (it wasn't really called that, but you get the idea.)  This was absolutely devastating, but a new account on goodreads and some powerful memory searching have allowed me to begin recreating that list.  As far as I can remember, here are the books I read in 2011.  I've bolded my favorites:

Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson
Forge, Laurie Halse Anderson

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall

March, Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Bud, Not Buddy, Christopher Paul Curtis

Game Six, Mark Frost           

The Red Umbrella, Christina Gonzalez

My One Hundred Adventures, Polly Horvath

Northward to the Moon, Polly Horvath

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit, E.L. Konigsburg
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, E.L. Konigsburg

Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

The Cardturner, Louis Sachar

Moon Over Manifest, Claire Vanderpool

The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner

Countdown, Deborah Wiles

One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia

And I'm currently reading Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and about a third of the way through Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.  Here's to good art, good books, good living, and good times in 2012*!

*That's twenty-twelve, not two-thousand-twelve.  I strongly believe it's past time for the pronunciation shift.  Are you with me?

"My middle name, Tree, comes from your basic tree, a thing of such beauty to my mother that she made it part of my name."

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

[Portraits of People Who Aren't Real #3] 

p.s. This week's illustration Friday topic is "imperfect."  I'd feel comfortable linking pretty much any illustration for that topic, as perfection is pretty much impossible to achieve--particularly when the illustrator is as rusty and off her game as I am!

New (Nu) Pastels

I bought a Groupon a few months ago for Plaza Artist Materials.  It was due to expire last weekend, so on Friday I trekked to Foggy Bottom to pick out some new materials-- namely, NuPastels, in nu colors. 

It's not my usual process for finished illustration work, but I still have tons of fun mindlessly sketching with these flat, square sticks of color.  Here, four of my new/nu pastels get a workout. 

"Ethan Feld was the least gifted ballplayer that Clam Island had ever seen."

Summerland by Michael Chabon

[Portraits of People Who Aren't Real #2]