Thursday, November 20, 2008

Sample Day

UPS made a massive drop off at our house today. Among the packages were my new scanner (yay!), the party favors for Small Fry's upcoming birthday and a whole stack of samples of published work. Its always kind of coolly strange to get these in the mail. By the time I get samples, the job has been done and paid for many months previous. The period of time in which I worked on it has already faded in memory because I'm on to some other new project or deadline that's taking all my attention (these days its the looming deadline of Baby Sprout's birth). Still when I get samples I always enjoy seeing how the real REAL finished product turned out. Today I got samples of the lift-the-flap book that was such a focus of my summer. It came as a kit, the reader or teacher can cut out and attach the tabs for the flaps. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that or just leave it in one big sheet. It was a lot bigger than I somehow thought it would be which is weird to say because I knew it was roughly 8.5 x 11 but seeing it printed that size, it seems much bigger than when I was working on it. I am pleased with the finished product and really happy the art director made sure I got some samples. Anyway here's a picture of it laying on my messy drawing table:


On another note, I'm happy to say we are rejoining the land of the technology-abled. I took our broken digital camera to a local shop, Photographic Systems Unlimited, and miracle of miracles the guy just popped the case back together! And he didn't even charge me. I was so happy, I'd gone in prepared for having to fork over a serious amount of cash to get out virtually brand new camera fixed after it collided with the kitchen floor. So now I can more easily get pics online. And not the least of reasons to celebrate, as I mentioned before, my scanner has been replaced and seems to be working fine so give me a minute and I will get pics of Small Fry's Halloween scanned in (didn't make it to the camera shop til after halloween).

Friday, November 14, 2008

Illustration Friday - Pretend


Who doesn't remember doing this as a kid? Especially if you had an older brother. And really especially pretending that you wouldn't get your head knocked in when you ran into the car/tree/mailbox/house that was waiting at the bottom of the hill. The only difference between this illo and my own childhood experience is these guys are wearing helmets (mandated by Harcourt thank you very much.)

In other news, I actually had a great sketch done for last week's Illustration Friday topic - Wise, but discovered that my scanner has died! Momentary vent: is it possible to get a scanner to last longer than 3 or 4 years???!! I"m looking at buying my FOURTH scanner in 14 years. Good heavens, I have a printer that I've had since 1995 and it still works great.