IF: Entangled

Poor mouse is in the dark until he can get the lights ready.

IF: Music

This chipper little mouse marches to her own tune.

IF: Unbalanced

Thanks to my friend Lisa (of Sugar Mama's Cakes and Bakes) for the inspiration on this one. :0)

IF: Skinny

Who says Vaudeville is dead? I say it's high time for a come back! I like this guy's moxie. Hope to develop this sketch further.

IF: Fast

IF: Flying

This seemed like a perfect Illustration Friday topic to jump back in with, seeing as our illustration group is called the Art FLiEs (Art For Little Eyes). We're about to send out our first group promo mailer with all of our flies. Buzz buzz!

Time to wake up

The blog, that is.

Creative Insomnia

I can make myself sit down and come up with a story or image. I have been trained to do it and can, but those ideas usually feel forced and the projects fizzle out. The best ideas...the ones that live and breath on their own...seem to just come to me, and usually at inopportune times.

I have learned to always have a notebook and pen with me when out and about, especially when on any sort of road trek or a musical performance of any kind. It could be one line, a character name, or a picture in my head. Last night presented me with the most common way my ideas make their visitations...just as I'm trying to fall asleep. My body was weary and I knew that my alarm would be going off in a mere 7 hours. But as soon as I closed my eyes, an image popped into my mind. A scrawny girl with a pageboy haircut and a girly dress lugging a cat carrier hauling something very mysterious. I got up and got a drink. An opening line popped into my head, and I could see a first page. Oh crap. I headed to the shelf and grabbed the clipboard and frantically scribbled and jotted.
Phew...creativity reigned and contained on paper. I'd work on hatching the idea in the morning.

Yeah right. As I lay awake for several more hours, more and more images and lines danced in my head. I'd do the math and realize, "if I go to sleep now, I can still get 4 1/2 hours", but then a facial expression of the pageboy haircut girl would draw itself out clearly behind my eyes.
Eventually I did drift off, but every bird chirp or snore that roused me, that girl would jump up and down and whistle "woohoo over here!". She just wouldn't leave me alone.

When the alarm did go off, I should have been to sleepy to move, but instead I dashed off to the shower and throughout my shampoo, I tried to think of a good name for the girl. I finally decided she doesn't need one...at least for now. I tip-toed downstairs so as not to wake kids yet, and curled up on the couch with a drawing board in hand. All the lines from my insomnia fest came tumbling out. I felt such a wave of relief to have freed them!

Half the time, an insomnia creativty burst that seems brilliant at 3am turns out to smell worse than boiled cabbage in the daylight. Maybe more than half the time. And then I'm grumpy --wasted time, lousy idea, and I'm cranky when I don't get enough sleep. But today, I find myself eager to get my obligations out of the way so I can get back to sketching and hashing things out.

You just can't pass up the opportunity when you feel energized.

I'll end with my new favorite quote --gathered from an interview with Tomie DePaola. "The creative process is a monster, and you have to feed it or it will eat you." And how.

IF: Hierarchy

The Empress Tarot

IF: Subtract

This week's Illustration Friday word is "Subtract". For a long time, Friday has been weigh-in day, and it's all about those numbers going down. Subtraction, pure and simple. This is an image I did for a greeting card. And it's also a reason I'll never own a talking scale. They're creepy, and who wants a voice announcing their weight first thing in the morning?

Illustration Friday: Intricate

I started with something completely different. Something completely, well, intricate. But I decided on this one where the intricacies were implied.

Virtual gallery opening (must supply your own wine and cheese for full effect)

Finally, the new site is live. I still have a few sections to add to, but the majority is up now and ready for me to get some promo stuff printed up and get pimping for work. :0)

www.apricusdesigns.com

It was a big learning experience, but I decided that rather than piecing it together haphazardly, it was a good time to tackle the 800+ page Dreamweaver manual and learn what I was actually doing. I did learn a lot, but also learned that I didn't learn a lot. Ha! What I mean is that I found there are certain things that one should be able to do that either are not answered in the manual, or are answered in the manual in such a way that one would need to find a rosetta stone of sorts to translate. Much help was found by googling, but even still, there are things that leave me scratching my head. The pursuit continues! Stay tuned...

Under construction

I finally settled on a design for the website redesign. Instead of too serious and grown up or too whimsical and child-like, I met somewhere in the middle and went with a simple layout. Now just to execute it! :0) Stay tuned...

The hardest part was deciding what image to use on the front page, but after putting the finishing touches on my fly girl for the FLiEs site and mailer, I realized I had fallen in love with this quirky girl (A self portrait? Not sure. You decide.) and she will be the perfect thing to match the feel I want for the new site. She's got enough detail to show my style, but enough whimsy to show that I want to make kids laugh. I hope.

from linework to finished piece

After completing a third of the Flea and the Louse image in Photoshop, I decided it was too flat feeling, and I wanted to go back to colored pencil. I printed the image onto white drawing paper...despite the fact that I much prefer working on colored paper to show more of the paper's tooth.

Pretty happy with how it turned out, and it has raised my braveness level for working on white. Heaven help me if this book ever gets bought, though, because I'll have no clue what colors I used to make everything and will have to do it all over anyway. I like the zoom in on the poor bugs in distress and may use that portion on promo mailers before long. Laurent Linn said (in something I read recently) that promo cards should show action, and make you want to know what's going on. Sweet animals or children just posing get tossed in the bin straight away. Hopefully these fellows will show enough angst to intrigue.

Hey --vote!

Whoa...two posts in one day? The world is thrown to chaos.
Only two days left to vote in my oh-so-thought-provoking poll on the right hand side of the screen there. ;0) Just saying.

I've been subtly nudged

A reminder, that is, that I haven't posted anything in a couple of weeks. I chalk that up to being too busy creating brilliant masterpieces to spend time typing here.
Buying it? Nah...didn't think you would.
I have been quite busy, though, filling sheet after sheet of scrap paper with website design and layout ideas. Now if I could just decide which direction to go with it. The more sleek and professional layout, or the one that feels inviting and like you stepped into a children's book? Or how about the other dozen or so that I'm seriously considering? My friend Gretchen said a wise thing the other day..."Go with the third choice. It's always number 3." Hmmm...if only I had numbered them.

I've also been trying to finish up started but not completed illustrations so that as I build the website, well...there's actually some new work to put up there (and I can finally move some of the current examples into retirement).
One such piece exists as linework, and has remained this way for about 3 years now. I dare say it's time to colorize that sucker and submit it! But once again, the quandaries arise. Do it digitally or traditionally? Colored pencil or paint?

Here is the linework piece...a page from the Flea and the Louse, an old Brother's Grimm tale. So far I've got digital and colored pencil versions going. We'll see what comes.

scribbling like a mad woman

It's all well and good to talk about being productive in the new year, but another thing entirely to actually BE productive. As usual, I have my hands in many pots at once, but I've taken the time time actually sit down and brainstorm and sketch out plans for not only my revised website, but also for a book (in between letting coats of trim paint dry and dancing with a 3 year old to the Wiggles).

I don't have glorious new paintings to share, but figured I could give a glimpse into how my brain works. Give me a pen and some scrap paper (yes, those are left-over parent volunteer sheets from last year's science action) and leave me alone to let it all flood out.


Sketches for the new main page, the Critter Bag page, and the entry to the Miep's Corner section of the site. I've redesigned the main page over a dozen times. Commitment is hard! I love the first mock up I made, but realized I'd left some crucial things out. Back to the drawing board!

No...you're not supposed to be able to make much of that out. It's less about the content and more about the scribbly madness.



The tiny, inky door from that page above inspired the entrance to Miep's Corner, the future home of activities for kids on my site.

And just who is Miep, you might be asking?
Well, the original Miep was a Steiff stuffed mouse that I bought in Germany in the mid 80's. Miep was the name that came on her tag. (A famous Miep you might recall is the courageous woman who hid Anne Frank and her family during the war. Although my Miep has nothing to do with that one...it's just cool trivia.)

When I started the Critter Bag business, I decided I needed a proper model and decided to indulge in the purchase of my very own Webkinz. Yes, I am a grown up. No, I haven't activated it online. That'd be silly. I'll wait until my daughter is old enough to want to take over her account solely and not let me play anymore. At that time, I'll activate it and have my own account. :0) Anyway...I got the mouse. Something about her mousely proportions and the expression on her face grabbed me and she instantly reminded me of my Miep of long ago, and so I granted her the same name.

So Miep (the second) became my mascot for the Critter Bags, and as I drew her, I realized her charm should flow through the site a bit more. And perhaps if I stared into those beady, black eyes deeply enough, a story would emerge as well. And it did! Forcing a story to come out almost never works, but sometimes you're lucky enough to have one told to you...by some tucked away child inside of you. Suddenly, web design sheets were tossed to the floor except for one that had a little space left on the back. And there I started madly writing and drawing as fast as I could, as fast as the ideas were coming. A story played out in my head and in front of my eyes.

And here it is! Impressed? Yeah, doesn't look like much at this point, but it's all there...the nibblets of a story! Now to flesh out the actual story and work out a rough storyboard concept.

But I suppose for the time being, I had best get back to the website.