Photoshopping Drawings and other High Wire Acts
This is a rendering for larger project to be made in fabric. I’m pretty happy with the composition — it’s an interesting spin on a portrait of a single character as the center of interest with my typical busyness in the background. It’s also the first time I’ve combined natural drawing media and computer drawings in a Photoshop collage. The high-wire walker was done...
Read More540 Stone Monks
Here’s some pages from my Japan sketchbook. At the Kitain Temple in Kawagoe, there is a small plot of land with rows and rows of Buddhist monks, carved from stone between 1782 and 1825. A note on the guide sheet said no two are alike. It’s not just that the statues are all different – it’s that each one has such distinctive personality, each one was doing something...
Read MoreWinter Olympics 2010
Recently back from Japan and still suffering jetlag… So it’s nice to just veg out in the evening and watch the winter olympics in Vancouver. Here are some couch potato ink brush drawings of Olymipic ice dancing using my travel watercolor set and my new-found joy – Japanese waterbrushes. Waterbrushes are plastic pens that you fill with water. Instead of a pen tip, they have...
Read More7 Illustrated Tips for Surviving a 12 Hour Plane Flight
1. Draw your food. It probably looks better than it tastes anyway, and confuses the flight attendants who keep wanting to take the half-eaten food to get it out of your way. It’s also good practice to start with something like food before you start trying to draw people in public. I’m a little out of practice of drawing in public, and had forgotten how people like to watch and see how it the...
Read MoreSitting in the back
When I go to videotape an event, I usually sit on the back row or in an aisle seat so I can easily get up and down as needed. The other day at the Creamery Arts Center, I sat in the back, only to be delighted to have the opportunity to draw some wonderful hairstyles while I was waiting for an event to start. Hair is hard to draw, so I’m working on...
Read MoreThree Kokeshi
There’s not really much more to read here…. I just upgraded Wordpress on the blog and was trying out this new theme. I like the hand-drawn look, but will have to play around with how it works. More on my new travel watercolor set...
Read MoreThe Day After
Actually the photo came after the drawing, because I felt I hadn’t fully captured the...
Read MoreMerry White Christmas!
I’ve been drawing stuff in the sky this week and looking at photos of space, astronauts, and the Hubble…. animations of fireworks…. Today we woke to a gift from the sky – snow! This the first White Christmas I can remember in a long time. Mochi and I went on a very early morning walk. It was a bit surreal, and we didn’t see a soul out except for some squirrels, so I...
Read MoreCandyLand
Finally got the poster design done for the Japanese Fall Festival, coming up September 11-13. I haven’t done one of these posters/T-shirt design for the Sister Cities association in about seven years. Here was the last one I did in kind of a wood-block style, a couple of years before I started making cartoon quilts. Russ and I helped start the festival series, 14 years ago, and for...
Read MoreA little morning exercise
Encouraged by the flurry of comments about favorite cheese curl poses (thanks you guys, I don’t even have to ask — you all just jump right in and tell me what you think!) I started refining some of them. Between sketching and a real plan to work in fabric from, there are lots of little steps. Rayna said she liked this one. But Russ said snacks should go closer to the mouth, and...
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