A3 books are not for the weak of heart...

I'v done the center and the girls a while ago and got back to it today. Been working on the frame letterings and those cicadas since noon, it's taking forever and also half the couch...

Just in case anyone's been wondering how it's been going.

Splotch Monster for Milo: "Hey, Quit Roughhousing!"

Here's one of Steve's Splotches which I made into not one but four Monsters for Milo's pocket--"Hey, Quit Rough-housing, someone might get hurt!"

The original Splotch is shown below.

This probably completes my work in and for Milo's mole, which I will soon send off to Mike. We are expecting out of town company, so there may be a bit of a delay, but it is about ready to go.

Painting in the Dark, Quick barroom sketches

So we have out-of-town company, an old school friend of my husband and we are sitting in a bar hour after hour, drink after drink, in a very dark corner while they talk about the old days and I m bored out of my gourd. I drag my tiny watercolor set out of my pocket and a little pad of paper and sit in my dark corner "listening" and painting little sketches.

The first one of the child with the book I "finished" today (added the background). I want to learn to paint well enough to illustrate my own children's books. The second I did last night practicing monochrome. It's hard to paint in the dark.

For Milo's pocket.

Milo's Pocket again: Fractal Dragon

I created this fractal in Xaos and then manipulated it in photoshop. You will not find another like it, I don't think, as it it quite changed from the original. For Milo's pocket.

Here is the fractal that I manipulated to get this "final" image. The image below was also manipulated from an original fractal, which I did not copy, on Xaos.

It is sort of like splotch monsters in that I looked for creature and a dragon is what I saw.

More Milo pocket items (well, one)

I know each and every one of you is dying for a picture of my husband, so here's one for Milo. I did this on the iPad in Sketchbook Pro--it's 100% finger painting. I can't seem to keep track of the stylus. It wanders away. Luckily, none of my fingers have wandered away yet. No photo was involved--it did this totally from scratch. Well, I had a photo of him to LOOK at and the real person as well.

Two pocket items for Milo (a bit of silliness)

A couple pocket items for Milo. I put so many pocket items in the last two moles because I had a long wait for them, but had no wait for this one and therefor, not many pocket items.

This first one is a watercolor memory test--I tried to paint the yellow ladyslipper from memory after a number of days of not looking at it. The second one is even more silly, a sort of doodle on the side of a kleenex box with metallic markers.

Gingko, by Ellen

:-D

Two more in Milo's Mole

Water Color, by me, Mary

Click images to view larger.

Ellen's Aboriginal Dragonflies

Aboriginal Dragonflies, by Ellen

What you can't see here is that they are shiny and sparkly. I thought it was too pretty to not post, so here it is.

Click on it to view a little larger.

Final 2.5 pages in Aya's book

This is a much larger drawing that I had in a 18x20 sketchbook, I cut it up and rearranged it a bit in this Moleskine. I realized as I was posting this here, I forgot to title and date it, weird.

Collab page.

In Milo's: Homeless and Hungry #100818-1147

Homeless & Hungry #100818-1147,

In Milo's Mole, looks a little like more of the same from Willie's book, but it's a little different--straight water color, no pen and ink. And, in spite of the similarity, my theme idea is a little different, which I don't know if I'll be successful at it until I do more of them. If it works, I'll tell you the theme. Click image to view larger.

I thought I would use the water color mole for its intended purpose, water color, especially since I'm one of the loudmouths who wanted to use them. Sorry to those who don't like them.

Anders and Ellen Collaboration

Is this on here somewhere? I couldn't find it. And it is just way too cool for everyone to miss, so if I am reposting something, I apologize, but I love this. Click on it to see it bigger.

First piece in Milo's Mole: Old Mama Bear with triplets

This is my collaboration with Steve, a splotch monster of sorts. Top: Mama bear with triplets, bottom: original splotch by Steve.

Round Three ~ Early Musings

When I was working in Aya's book I realized that there are only two people left to work in it and then it goes home to her. What??!?!

Thus, I have been doing some early thinking about round three. Yes, I said it, round 3.

I have a couple new folks who have emailed and want to join us. I have been considering a smaller number of people and going around twice, like Mary suggested last round. I have also been thinking that anyone who wants in for round three would have to pick one other artist that they know to join. For variety and so it isn't just artists I know and like.

What does anyone think? I know this has been a rough exchange, but I still find the collaboration and camaraderie extremely valuable and fulfilling. I hope a few of you do too.

Early thoughts from anyone else? Anyone willing to do this whole thing again? Anyone who knows they for sure don't want in again? Talk to me, people.

Aya's book is off to Canada!

What you'll live with and what you'll do without. ~ 8/10/10

In the pocket

Before facebook telling us when everyone's birthday was, people used this... a birthday calendar, or a perpetual calendar. A small calendar that has dates but no weeks in it, so that you can use it one year after another and fill in all the birthdays and anniversaries and then check who's got a birthday that day.

Since my topic for Ballookey's book was the zodiac, I decided to make her a little birthday calender with some more zodiac illustration in it.

I used the new Rapidograph for this. I'm starting to really like it though of course, as it turned out the .13 is too thin, and the .35 a little too wide, so now I want another one.

Sad to see the book go tomorrow, but happy that it's on it's way again.

Last 2 pages on Ballookey's book

Last page and half of a page for Anders. and all 12 zodiac signs in. This was a fun few days, I'm glad I manage to catch up for some of the lost time this book experienced. Going to send it out tomorrow.

In Business Again! YAY!

Woohoo! Milo's Mole came in the mail today! Thanks Steve! As usual, it was a joy to look through it. BB was in stitches. The boys thought the art was awesome, when they could spare time from their video games. (The black box at my chest is my heart monitor.)

Vacation!

Yesiree! I will be on vacation soon in Hatteras, NC! I can't wait. I was hoping to bring a moley with me but still did not receive one.
Sorry, Steve....nothing to mail to you this time. I will let you know when the next one arrives to me!

First piece for Milo's pocket

I don't have a mole (a traveling one, that is) right now, so I am working on some other projects (a Ms of poetry, a novel, some paintings). I painted ANOTHER yellow ladyslipper using the same photo I used on the one I made for Ballookey as a reference at the request of a friend--this one in gouache. I made a print of it and one of the picture I made on the iPad for Ballookey and am saving them for Milo's pocket when it arrives. I wrote a little bit about the project here, if anyone is interested. This is entirely painted with gouache. I used a rigger brush for the small water droplets. It was made from scratch on green paper. I made the original sketch in gouache, not pencil.  (It's still a big deal for me to just go ahead and paint without sketching first).

And just so you know I do other things but draw...

It's an onion! I used it yesterday while cooking chicken for dinner.

Ballookey's book pages 4 & 5

1 more page, which I'm going to start working on tonight, I was hoping to send it out tomorrow, but then I got a cool idea for the pocket so it'll take a couple more days (but not too many...)

A pen expedition...

I know I'm getting close to spanning the blog lately, but I'm just so happy to have a book...

I wrote this today about a new pen try-out I'm doing. I used Ballookey's book as a testing ground, and so thought I should share.



For the past 10 year or so, I've been using the same pen, it's a pilot gel pen called G-TEC-C4, it's not very common in the USA, in fact I only found one stores that sells them here, which is a Japanese book store, But in Israel they are pretty common as your slightly more fancy then ordinary ball point pen. They cost around 3$ in Israel, and 5$ in NY.


I always loved this pen, but in art school a teacher told me that writing pend are for writing and drawing pens are for drawings and I need to be more professional about my choice of pens. At the time, I switched to pen and ink, which has the most beautiful line, is waterproof and really messy.

Later on, I realized that in the where and when I draw, it's not a choice between a gel pen and a pen and ink, but a choice between a gel pen and a not-drawing-cause-this-is-too-much-hustle. And I went back to the G-TEC.


But, a few days ago, a friend forgot a rapidograph in our place. I remember those from my father and from high school and suddenly I kept wanting to try his pen, however, there was no ink and it was all dried out. So, on Monday, I decided to give myself a birthday present and got 2 of them. One is by Koh-I-Noor, and one by Rotring. It was sort of nice to find out that the pen design and color is still the same as it was when I last bought one of those, which was about 18 years ago.


I've used Moleskine exchange book to give the first one a try. The line is a bit thicker, which I don't mind so much (the Rotring is thinner) and the color of the ink is beautiful - super black and dark, the pen really flow nicely, though - more ink, more time to dry, and also a bit of spreading (but really just a tiny bit). The nicest thing is that unlike the G-TEC, the ink is not water soluble so when I do the painting part, the line stays as crisp which is great.


I'm still trying to decide if I like the result though I feel like the drawing I made with it is more illustrative in style and less artistic, probably because the lines are so crisp.


What do you think? can you even notice the difference?



G-TEC



Koh-I-Noor

Ballookey's book pages 2 & 3

Started the second page today and finished it this evening. Ned and I were shooting in the morning but things were going all unorganized, one of the models cancel, the hair stylist was late and then didn't show up either.
It was very nice to escape to a world that doesn't depend on other people...

The moleskine coated paper is giving me trouble, but I'm trying to resolve it in different ways. Some markers, a different type of markers and some crayons. My favorite markers work really nice on this, but the tip is very narrow and it take ages to cover the areas I want to paint.

Also, some interesting pen testing, which I might write more about it a bit.

I'm not sure how my next few days are going to be work-wise, but if nothing happened, I hope to get the book out to Anders on Monday or Tuesday (but we'll see what happens).

Page's 1/2 and 1 on Ballookey's book

We've been having a very busy week, Ned and I started working with a new department at "Ford" modeling agency and somehow managed to book 5 shoots in one week. So between deciding on cloths, cleaning the apartment, editing, editing more, photoshopping, picking up bagels and having beautiful young and tall woman going in and out of our place - I didn't get to draw since last Saturday.

Last night, after 2 shoots, dinner, 5 editing rounds and it being 1:00 AM I couldn't take it anymore and decided to put the first few lines into Ballookey's book. I stayed up for another hour drawing while Ned was working on 2 of the images to send to the agency.

This morning I woke up not wanting to do anything but draw.

So I dumped answering e-mails, running errands and taking care of work and spend about 6 hours on this. Then went to the art store to get some new markers and crayons, I forgot how difficult the regular paper was with watercolor.

cool mail day!

Look what I got in the mail today! a beautiful print by Mary. It's so nice to open the box and see an envelope with handwriting on it and no bill inside!