Illustration Friday- Soaked

This week's Illustration Friday topic is great for this new illustration:

Things Right on Top of Our Nose

In this week's installment I have to post about one of the cutest, itty bitty, tiny things you can imagine. At first I wasn't even sure they were there.... I peered closer in the bathtub thinking it was just dirt. So I scrubbed harder but, no, they did not disappear.

I'm talking, of course, about Small Fry's freckles.

It seems that all this outdoor time with baseball has caused a smattering of brown dust to bloom across his nose. Small Fry is not as overcome about this as I am. His response was "will they eat me?"


Freckles aren't the only things coming out now that the days are longer and warmer. Round here we are experiencing the beginning of the 13 year cicadas. For the next four weeks these critters will be underfoot and smeared on windshields. They've waited 13 years underground to finally emerge, leave their husks behind, fall madly in love, consummate said love, and then die (presumably they were not planning on the windshield part.) This is Small Fry's first cicada invasion and he's smitten. So far we have collected half a dozen husks, bringing them home carefully in the car by hooking their little husk pod legs into the car's upholstery. Yesterday the Fry picked up a live one for the first time. Actually it picked him. In a flurry of wings and eyes it buzzed up and landed on his hand. It gazed at Fry for moment with its weird, red, lazy eye stare - then it was gone.

"Ewww, cool," said Fry, "will it eat me?"


Fortunately it turns out cicadas are just as harmless as freckles.

Illustration Friday-Beginner, and Derby Day on Sketchbook Sunday

This weekend was Derby Day, as I'm a horse lover it stands to reason that I follow the Kentucky Derby. Its the most exciting two minutes in sports after all. But because its only two minutes, I love how for two hours prior to the running of the race NBC fills the screen with all the heartwarming and gripping stories behind each contender. Accordingly there is also a herd of video shots showing foals cavorting alongside their mamas, while the voice-over intones about the destiny of one of these little guys: 3 years, and a mile and quarter later a blanket of roses and greatness is waiting for them. So here's my Illustration Friday for Beginner:


Also on the horse lovin' theme I decided to add another Lessons I Learned from My Horse:

Lesson # 2
Always know where home is


A horse will return to the barn in half the time it took to ride away from it. If they "lose" their rider along the way, they'll go home anyway. Horses know what to value in life: food, safe stall, and friends. If a raging thunderstorm or careless owner separates them from home, they don't get distracted by circumstance, but work to find their way back. They know what's important, we should be so good at figuring this out ourselves

What do you get when you don't get what you want?

A learning experience....

I'll begin my weekly post with a sketch for Illustration Friday's theme - Lesson. Last week we were desperately out of food in our house. Old Mother Hubbard's dog was long keeled over. So I did the unthinkable - I grocery shopped with two children. Allow me to set the scene: Fry and Sprout had been to Sweet Cece's Yogurt joint earlier in the day and the sugar buzz was just ratcheting into high gear. Then there was the Holy Grail of shopping carts in the waiting area, the red Shop Buggy. After they clambered in with Sprout riding shotgun, I (stupidly) agreed to let them remain unbuckled. We set off to purchase wholesome and nutritious food.

Fast forward forty-five minutes.

We are now exiting the store. Instead of following my carefully prepared list I have purchased spaghetti sauce, but no spaghetti; a gallon of milk, some pretzel crackers, and a box of Kroger breakfast bars. We also have in tow, not one, but two helium filled balloons that a store employee foisted upon me as we rounded Aisle 9 in a well meaning attempt to distract my little darlings from starting a chain reaction of falling soup cans with their outstretched arms.

Said balloons are attached to two giant suckers.

Just what we need, more sugar.

For a while afterward Baby Sprout was content to garner Mommy's attention by slathering her unwrapped sucker along the floor beneath the Shop Buggy. Fry popped his lollipop directly in his mouth and proceeded to garner Sprouts attention by encouraging her to pop her balloon - and when she didn't fall for it, trying to pop it himself.

Thus we become one of those families in the Nippers Corner Kroger.

The moral of the story? It is better to drive through McDonald's for the third time this week than attempt to keep your wits, your coupons, and your calorie counts in order while accompanying two children to the grocery store.

Lesson learned.


However it was not all cheap dusty suckers this week for the Fabulous Illustrator
I did have some sweets, particularly these sketches for a licensing project. Each cupcake will be for a different greeting card - birthday, new baby, wedding etc, Here's some of the sketches. These will be done with flatter color and some repeating patterns behind them. Again a bit of a departure from my usual style but I'm really digging this not having to worry about light source thing.

The first few sketches:

The final sketch for the wedding cupcake:


And finally I'm pleased to show the first finished illo in my "portfolio facelift" series. This is for The Princess and the Pea

Congratulations. . . it's a flower

Right off the bat I'll just say I've decided to stop titling every sketchbook sunday post with "Sketchbook Sunday"..... since Sunday (or Monday night) is usually when I post at all..... um..... I'll just think of a witty headline and leave the Sketchbook Sunday part in the tags.

There, thats pretty good for spring cleaning.

Since it is spring around here, that means one thing in the Fabulous Illustrator's house: yard work. Last year we moved to a house that had a smaller yard than our "starter house," and this yard had absolutely no landscaping of any kind. While I thought this would be easier, alas I was mistaken. For the last 12 months I've looked out at our barren yard in frustration so now the planting has begun in earnest. Right after moving in a year ago, Jim Dear gave me a white peony for our anniversary. I had had a peony at our old house that I'd coddled along... it bloomed once and then disappeared for 3 years. Nevertheless, the year we put the house on the market, out it came with two buds - but we sold the house before I ever got to see it bloom again. So when I planted this new peony, I fully expected to enjoy it for a few months and then not see it again, except as a few tiny stalks, for several years.

The peony had other plans.

Much to my surprise it sprang forth from the ground practically overnight and is now sporting two large fat buds. A princess with child could not be watched and clucked over as much as I've fussed over these two round blooms in waiting. Last year it was in full bloom on our anniversary in May so I'm expecting to be a peony parent any day now.


NO, a chocolate green cupcake, Mommeeeee!Baby Sprout is a lot of things but dainty and retiring she is not. As I mentioned in this earlier post, she is a big fan of cupcakes, even when she has to imagine them. Last week, while I was cooking dinner, Sprout was "making" cupcakes and bringing them to me to taste. First she made a blue cupcake, then she made a pink cupcake, then she made a green cupcake. When I suggested she make a chocolate cupcake, Sprout was less than ecstatic about my taste preference.

"NOO, no chocolate!" she bellowed

"But chocolate is good, Sprout."

"NO CHOCOLATE, JUST GREEN!!"

"ok," I replied quickly, "just green."

"NO MOMMY, NOT JUST GREEN...... A CHOCOLATE GREEN CUPCAKE!!!! EAT IT MOMMEEE!!!"

Believe me, I ate it and I kept my mouth shut about having a pink strawberry cupcake.

America's Favorite Past-time on Sketchbook Sunday

Parents of future little leaguers beware: baseball is the All Encompassing Past-time. Little did we know 6 weeks ago when Small Fry started that our schedules would begin to revolve around a dusty patch of ground off Hogan Road in Creive Hall. Now we have practice two nights a week, games two nights a week plus tacked on scrimmages in the back yard to help the Fry connect bat with ball and ball with glove. It seems to be working, at Saturday's game the Fry got a hit and actually got on base. Fry was up at bat and I was distracted with Baby Sprout in the dugout when a solid "konk" sounded across the field.


I looked up in time to see the Fry drop the bat - stunned - and stare at the coach.

The ball coasted to a stop in the dust two inches from the pitcher's toe.

Then everyone in the dugout including Baby Sprout started yelling "Run! Run!"

Small Fry made it to first base and later the coach gave him the game ball for getting his first hit in the season.

We actually won that game, though we parents tell ourselves that winning doesn't matter as long as the boys have fun and learn how to play. The boys certainly don't seem to care: at tonight's game the scoreboard wasn't working so our guys didn't even know who won until the game was over. The news that we'd pulled off another win was second rate compared to the sight of Star Wars gummies and chocolate chip cookies for after-game snack. With snacks and bats and hats and whiney baby sisters we packed up the van and headed home.

On the way, Fry asked "when do we play again?"

"Practice is Wednesday," I answered.

Soon enough.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My HorseFor several years now I've tossed around the idea in my head of writing a book called Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My Horse. Mostly I get these ideas in the bathtub at night when every idea, even the lame ones, seem good and completely accomplishable. Notwithstanding the fact that this series would be interesting only to me and therefore completely unpublishable, I decided it would be fun to illustrate them as part of Sketchbook Sunday. To begin, a little background about the Fabulous Illustrator for the uninitiated: For the first 14 years of my life, all I wanted was a horse. I was the typical horse-crazy girl: collecting pictures of magnificent prancing steeds and lists of the names I would give them like "Mary's Jubilee Star" and "Princess Silver Blaze."

Yeah.

All up until I finally convinced my parents to let me buy an 18 month old Welsh filly named Lady Lee. She was scraggly brownish gray with a white stripe down her face and I promptly rechristened her Kala. From the start I had to train her to do everything. She wasn't even that crazy about coming up to me - until I repeatedly showed up with food. That was the beginning of my education about how to use common sense. I am a firm believer that horses are the perfect animal from which to learn about humans. They have both the best and worst traits of human personality: courage, loyalty, and a sense of humor as well as stubbornness, meanness and greed (just try to hide a carrot from one.) If you can get a 1200 pound animal capable of putting you in the hospital without much effort, to, not only do what you ask, but actually like you in the process, then you are also a good ways along the path towards getting along with their human counterparts.

So to the first lesson I learned from my horse:
Rule number one, Don't Panic.

When Kala saw something strange like stick that might be a snake, she didn't mess around. Like lightening streaking the wrong way, straight up off the ground came her front feet. Since in the beginning, after having spent my money on said horse and what was left on her upkeep, I had no funds for a saddle, I was often riding bareback. In this split second of vertical incline I was left clinging to her mane and sides with two choices: panic and be left hanging in mid-air when her feet returned to earth and she bolted, or figure out how to stay calm, calm her down, and show her - there, there - it's just a stick.

Happily, I learned this lesson quickly.

The notion of Don't Panic has stayed with me over the years. Two weeks ago, bad storms roared through middle Tennessee bringing tornados with them. In the middle of the afternoon with wind banging on the house and the weather people telling us to get to our "safe place" I went under the stairs with a cordless phone and a laptop.

It was a damn sight more scarey than being dumped off a horse.

But, on cue, years of horse-borne common sense kicked in and Don't Panic prevailed. While I might have been pretty scared I thought clearly enough to keep a phone conversation going with Jim Dear the whole time I was crouched under blankets with a flashlight, hitting reload on Weather.com.

Don't panic means carefully steer around the deer that just jumped in front of your car, or listen to what your spouse says before you start the fight, or calmly ask your child to put the spider down. Don't panic was the first of many, but possibly the best, lesson Kala taught me on a hot spring day more than 20 years ago.

Sketchbook Sunday - dispatches from Sin City

This week the Fabulous Illustrator visited las Vegas for the first time. It was a business trip and yes, I did sleep and no, I did not incure any mob gambling debts. I'd heard it described as a "Disneyland for adults" and I'd have to agree, not only for the anything goes mentality but also for the sheer volume of manufactured reality. I walked through miles of hotel and casino with false sunrises, airbrushed clouds, and engineered rivers. The last night was the best night I had to draw and I wandered through two casinos pausing to sketch and watch. For a place that is basically not a city, there was quite a bit of restless energy. Everywhere, people had somewhere else to be; either a show to get to, dinner, a better section of slots, and most of them were on their cell phones.


I was trying to capture the true ostentatiousness of the place with sketch of a child and her father in a hallway of boutiques.


While the adults had other places to be, the few children I saw were dwarfed by the size of the architecture and didn't seem to understand why they couldn't stop and look at everything. This little girl is actually a composite of all the kids I watched trying to climb in one of the fountains in Caesar's Palace. The giant stone figures, pouring a waterfall over her head, cast disapproving looks at the children below but this didn't stop every parent I saw from pausing by the fountain to take a picture and then holler when the subject attempted to climb the sides.


I drew this poster sketch on the plane ride home. Maybe I'll do it in the same style as the 1930's WPA posters I mentioned in this post.


Finally back home over the weekend, I got to relax again and do a little planting. Also on the plane ride, I'd read an article about the continuing demise of the printed word in favor of iPads and whatnot. I couldn't help but think that if I were teaching the Sprout and Fry how to do a garden, I'd much rather drag a $15.99 book out into the dirt than a $500 iPad.