Illustration Friday: ALPHABET

My first response to this prompt was to draw a quick sketch of King Azaz the Unabridged of Dictionopolis (from The Phantom Tollbooth), but then I remembered another book I'd read recently, Ella Minnow Pea, in which this famous sentence features prominently.

This was good practice drawing animals, which I desperately needed since I am not by any stretch of the imagination an animal person (unlike, it seems, every single person in the children's book community.) I hope they're convincing!

Illustration Friday: VISITORS

Just getting in under the wire here this week! I'm hoping to use this as my next promotional mailing, around Thanksgiving, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for visiting (tee hee!)

Not my regular Tuesday suit...

1. Note, if you will, the new header designs, both here and at my portfolio site. I'm quite proud of them, actually, but feel free to tell me if you're not.

2. I've also been busy this week and last finishing up two illustration projects. One: a piece for St. Anthony Messenger magazine's October issue. Check it out if it crosses your path! And two: for a holiday art contest for a local card company. I'll post both pieces once I have good scans of them.

3. This week's Illustration Friday entry may become my next postcard mailing-- and because it may become my next postcard mailing, it may not be finished in time to be my Illustration Friday entry. Quite the paradox, eh? If nothing else, I'll post the sketch or color study. And I'll be very interested in feedback on this one!

4. Got my new Children's Writers and Illustrators' Market yesterday! It's beautiful and informative, as usual. And there's a fantastic piece about self-promotion for illustrators. Worth a look.

4. I want to reiterate that I'm eager to give out ten and a half points to whomever can identify the source of my blog title. I'm sure there are literally dozens of you out there reading this and pondering it, so I'm going to up the ante... the winner will not only be awarded ten and a half points (don't make me cave and give eleven!) but he or she will be invited to "drink from the keg of glory." [That's a hint. In case you didn't recognize it by the quotation marks. Also the title of this post comes from the same source. C'mon, somebody out there's got to have the same taste in television as me!]

And that is all. Until next time...

Illustration Friday: CAPTAIN

This week's Illustration Friday prompt immediately conjured in my mind a famous baseball player named Barry. No, no, not that scandal-ridden newly-crowned home run king...

Barry Larkin was a mainstay of my Reds fandom for as long as I can remember. This Cincinnati native started playing for the Reds when I was 3 and retired as I began my last year of college (a devastating wake-up-and-become-an-adult-because-things-are-changing-fast moment).

[In a similar moment, I discovered today that not only has Reading Rainbow gone off the air, but it ran from the year I was born to the year I graduated from college. Talk about formative!]

Not only was Larkin a brilliant defensive shortstop (3 Gold Gloves) and one of the best-hitting (9 Silver Sluggers) shortstops of his day --a day before the likes of Jeter, A-Rod, and Tejada-- but in 1997 he was named captain of the oldest professional franchise in baseball. We miss you, Barry!

And now for something completely 3-dimensional

I'm going to swerve away from my sketchbook and drawing table for this post to share some other enterprising moments in the life of me.



My last Illustration Friday entry left a few of you wanting cookies, according to the comments I received. Not-particularly-surprisingly, it did the same for me! So I finally caved yesterday and tried out a new recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle-- these delightfully soft and scrumptious zucchini chocolate chip cookies.



And whoever pegged creative types as messy and disorganized didn't understand my personal creative psyche, because few things get me as excited as organizing things. I finally made some sense out of my piles upon piles of pastel pencil boxes today, as you can see. So in addition to a lovely "Still Life with Art Supplies" scene at my side while I work, I also now have an efficient system for coloring. Victory is mine!

Illustration Friday: EMERGENCY

This illustration dates back to my Illustration II days at the University of Dayton. Our assignment: an editorial illustration. I remembered a recent article in the New York Times that a friend had forwarded along: apparently, the town of Brasstown, North Carolina, the self-proclaimed "Possum Capital of the World," drops an opossum each year at the stroke of midnight on January first (in lieu of Times Square's decidedly overdone and overhyped ball-drop.) This was my editorialized interpretation of the event.

Though it may be a celebrated tradition for the people of Brasstown, for the captured-but-later-released-unharmed possum it must feel like the ultimate emergency-- complete with a running clock, a dangerous drop, and lots of noise and explosions.

from the Mainstrasse Farmers' Market

What I bought at the World's Longest Yard Sale*:


The tomato became pizza, the zucchini became bread and a pizza topping, and the bottom chunk of the eggplant became pizza topping. I have a strong feeling that baba ghannoush may be in the remaining eggplant's future. Mmm... locally grown produce is wonderful. If you want to find Farmers' Markets in your area, visit Local Harvest. I also highly recommend the new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (and family) for an engaging and challeging take on eating locally.


*okay, so I also bought a vegetable steamer (for 25 cents somewhere south of Covington) and the same book of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes that I grew up with (for $2 in Union, KY).

Illustration Friday: MISSING

I don't think the Mystery of the Missing Cookie will take too long to solve, do you?

[Update: this is the scanned version I promised earlier.]

I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree

Lots of posts today because there's a scanner sitting next to me. This one I drew a while ago during a pause on my walk home. I draw trees a lot, but hadn't drawn from life in a while. Quite refreshing to actually look closely at something and translate it into my illustration style!

Another Dundie Doodle...

Jim Halpert gets his own post because he's read the Newbery-medal-winning children's classic From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler*.

:)

*according to the season 2 episode "Take Your Daughter to Work Day." I told you I've been productive!

Dundie Doodles

I've been very productive in my month and a half of unemployment: I've almost caught up with the past 3 seasons of The Office (US version-- UK version is next!). I was watching an episode of season 3 online a few weeks ago and it was taking aaaaaages to load. So every time I had to stop and let the video load, I whipped out my sketchbook and drew some of our favorite Dunder Mifflin-ites:

Illustration Friday: MOON

This was my first inspiration when I began sketching for this week's theme of "moon." Then I decided to contribute something less sophomoric....


I've never quite understood how the moon controls the tides... but this is what my imagination came up with.


p.s. This is my first official Illustration Friday post, though I've used this wonderful site as sketchbook inspiration before without posting. Hopefully I can post more often once I get a scanner of my own (which I can do once I get a job...oh dear...)