Sketch Time

Since I became a mom I have noticed that I can sketch a child's figure much faster and better than I used to be able to. By this I mean I can usually get the pose I want down in the first few tries as opposed to sketching, erasing, sketching again. Being able to do it quickly results in a sketch that is much more "alive." Not only can I get a body pose the way I want it, I can usually do hands, feet and expressions just as quickly - these used to be some of the harder parts for me. I don't know, is this just from a few more years of practice or because I'm constantly seeing little hands and feet and mouths and eyes all around me all the time? I don't know.... I like to think maybe a little of both. Here's a couple of unused sketches from a project that I just started, these feature some good hand movements I think:




In other news I'm just about finished with my promo illustration for my 10th year of freelancing. I'll be posting it shortly, but here's a teaser sketch:

Adventures with Small Fry

The Friday before Easter, Small Fry and I trucked down to mommy's hair dresser to tame his locks. The following are just a sampling of the near total photographic coverage of the event:

The Before picture:


Miss Patty cuts away, check out his mousse mohawk


The After picture. What a handsome little boy! This is right before Miss Patty handed him a blue lollipop.... mommy knew that white shirt was a bad idea.


Since this is supposed to be a blog about the adventures of an artist it is only fitting that I share some images of Small fry being an artist, of course he just the most brilliantly creative genius to sit in a high chair. Think I'm wrong? Watch the video and see how patiently he handles the art director's mundane requests to "put it on the paper."

Face Space

A couple of months ago 60 Minutes did a show about how wonderful creation known as Facebook.com. We saw this embryonic billionaire CEO describing how great his creation is and how much (as yet ungenerated) money he will generate with it. Jim Dear and I sat and laughed at the TV, saying"its just a souped up version of e-mail!" and "who has time to do that stuff."

who indeed.

Sure enough, as if on cue, 24 hours after that show aired I started getting e-mail invitations: "So and So has added you as a friend on facebook, click here to confirm that you are in fact friends with So and So." Well this so and so was a friend from church... i couldn't very well NOT respond.... wouldn't that be tantamount to saying you're not my friend? So I clicked ok, created an account, and, with much reluctance, joined the throngs flocking to facebook.com.

My Wednesday lifesaver, Becky, (a.k.a. Small Fry's babysitter) has been telling me for some time that I need to join MySpace. Becky is this cute, 23 year old newlywed with plenty more time on her hands than the Fabulous Illustrator. She persisted in convincing me: It was so hip she said, you can show off pics of Small Fry she said, everyone's doing it she said. I said isn't that the very same website full of 12 year olds pretending to be legal? She rolled her eyes and said "some of them actually are legal, besides you can set your profile to private." My response (as it is for sooo many things) was i don't have time for that stuff. And i persisted in not having time until the Facebook invites started rolling in, because sure enough, right behind them, came the Myspace invites. Now my best friend from highschool, Jules, was telling me "you have to get on there and see who's gotten OLD!" So finally I did it, i joined myspace too.

It was all down hill from there....

A couple of hours, and a few clicks later, there were my profiles, gleefully touting all my accomplishments: marriage, parenthood, 10 years of being gainfully self-employed as an artist. I left jaunty comments on my friends walls like "Hey! whats up!" and "yeah its cold here too!" A couple of days after joining, while Small Fry was at mother's day out, I managed to waste an entire morning looking up people I barely even knew the first time I met them. And it wasn't long before I also convinced Jim Dear to join both Myspace and Facebook. My argument was that all MY friend's husband's had profiles, what if i got hit on by some 14 year old! As for my profiles, so far they are pretty low brow. I haven't added any pictures yet and I don't have a pimped out background. By Becky's standards it falls into the loser category. That's ok, one of these days I'll get around to adding more stuff to it, for now its just kind of nice to be able to smugly type in my password when Myspace says "only members may view this page, please confirm that you are, in fact, friends with us."

Epilogue:
Just for posterity, and for one time only, I'm going to list all the aforementioned Facebook and Myspace profiles here. Read 'em and say what a fabulous illustrator I am:
My Facebook
My MySpace

Jim Dear's Facebook
Jim Dear's MySpace

Becky's MySpace
Jule's MySpace