I drew this in my journal the other day…I’d always wanted to try this concept (inspired by Escher)…so I figured since it had been a few (too many) days since I had drawn in my journal, it was a good time to do a drawing that I’ve been wanting to do.

Today was an exhausting day…We have conferences this week at school, so I’m putting in extra hours. I don’t usually meet with parents during parent/teacher conferences, but still have to put in the hours, which I am using this week to get ready for the spring art shows. There is so much to do to get almost 700 students’ projects matted and labeled so they can be ready to hang. Around noon today, Sam called and asked if he could pick me up for lunch…a few minutes later we were riding to Wendy’s with Savannah and Andrew (Sam had picked them up from preschool) and Matt (Sam’s intern) IN A CONVERTIBLE!

Taking advantage of the nice weather, Sam borrowed the convertible from a friend to fulfill one of Savannah’s dreams…She has always adored convertibles…especially red…and Sam had told her someday we would ride in one…and today was that day. She was in heaven. She thought it was the coolest thing. After that I offered to let her hang with me for the rest of the day. I only had one class to teach this afternoon because of the kids getting out early, so she was my buddy today. I took her over to the school she’ll start kindergarten at in the Fall and introduced her to my principal and the kindergarten teachers. She played on the playground and had a look around the kindergarten rooms. She was very excited and really seemed to enjoy herself. It was a lot of fun for me too because I am usually all alone for all that time, and the time really drags on…but today was really alot of fun spending time together…we rarely do that. She is such a cool kid.

Last night, I sat down intending to draw one thing from each cupboard in my kitchen. I ran out of room at 10 and decided that was a good place to stop anyway. (There is really 15) So here is my entry for the EDM challenge #7. It was fun collaging all of the items. If you’d like to see everyone else’s entries for this topic go to the Everyday Matters Group and just click on everyone’s links.

I drew this picture a while ago as a gift for Sam. He keeps it at his office and I was in there the other night and wanted to scan it. Some of the stuff is special to us for sentimental reasons, and some of it is just nostalgic. Anyway, it’s a cool little collection and it was a lot of fun to draw.
(drawn with Prismacolor on Canson Mi-Tientes paper…date 1999)

Don’t you just love when your kid picks you a handfull of weeds and hands them to you. There is so much love in that act.

I did a project with one of my classes today based on a book called April Fools by Fernando Krahn. My students are making up illustrations of an April Fool’s joke they played on someone. They came up with some hilarious things…Maybe I will post them on April 1st…anyway, the illustrations in the book are ink washes…and the thing that is the joke (a dragon head) is the only thing in color (throughout the whole book). I copied a student’s drawing of her putting a whoopie cushion in her dad’s chair and then him sitting on it…and finished it as an example with the ink washes and it turned out really cool. So I was playing around with this pinwheel drawing I did…which I started in watercolor…but quickly became frustrated with trying to show the gold metallic…and all the other colors reflected in it. It is obviously overworked…and I wanted to throw it out, but I liked the drawing so I got out my ink and tried that. I liked the ink effect much better. Anyway…this is one of those things that doesn’t quite turn out the way I hoped, but I thought I’d share it with you anyway. There is no such thing as a bad mistake because we can always learn something from it that we may have never learned had we not made the mistake. I used to be so scared to mess up, so tense when I drew or painted. Drawing in my journal and doing the weekly challenges that I participate in has helped me to relax and enjoy drawing more. I accomplish more and I think my drawings have become more spontaneous and not so overworked as they used to be.

Savannah drew this for Sam for his birthday…it’s him outside with the flowers we discovered were popping up out of the ground this week.

A little late for Illustration Friday…I painted this this morning after I purposely broke this egg so I could paint it.

I am so sorry…it is Saturday right…Illustration Friday topics never change until MONDAY! So I upload my link without even noticing THAT IT’S ALREADY THE NEXT TOPIC!!!!! My apologies to everyone who came expecting to see an illustration of “BLOOM”…that will come later and I guess I will just post another link! Whatever.

When I was four years old, my babysitter, Irene, took me into her bedroom…it was filled with stuffed animals of all sorts: tigers, bunnies, teddy bears, everything you could imagine…I was overwhelmed…and then she told me I could pick any one of them to have and take home! I always loved dogs and hound dogs were my favorite (not sure why) so I saw this little hound on her bed and fell in love with him…I can’t remember his name, though I am sure he had one. I slept with it every night for several years. He wasn’t the cuddliest dog…he was very firm, like the stuffed animals you used to get at the fair. I would even venture to guess that was probably where he came from. He had reddish brown and white fur. His ears were lined with red sateen fabric. He had shiny black eyes and a fluffy black nose. Over the years of loving, his fur wore off…in many places you will notice he is now threadbare, his shiny black eyes have lost their sheen and the paint has worn off. His nose is barely hanging on by just a bit of glue and his sateen lined ears have only tiny remnants of the smooth shiny cloth attached by stitches at the seam. His neck ripped apart after a while. My mom tried many times to sew it with her heavy-duty candlewicking thread, but it still pulled apart. As a last resort, she finally held it together with some large safetypins (still there). A few months ago, Savannah discovered him in a box…and loved him immediately (I have no idea what the appeal was) and wanted to sleep with him. With his stuffing falling out, she decided he needed to be fixed so he is now at the “doggie hospital” at her aunt’s house. I would love to paint him again, maybe do some small studies from different angles. There is a part of me that doesn’t want him fixed…when I get my dog back, I will try to do some drawings & post photos of him…since this painting only shows part of him.

and a detail of the neck…

I painted this in college.

March is reading month…at school we always do all this stuff to promote it and motivate the kids to read more. We have what is know as DEAR time…it’s announced over the PA and students have to stop everything they are doing and read for 15 minutes. A good concept…except when you are in art class in the middle of a messy project…it’s not good at all. But on Thursday, it happened to be announced at the beginning of one of my 5th grade art classes and they all came in carrying their books, ready to read. I was asked by their teacher to cross any names off a list of kids who weren’t reading…so instead of reading, I was policing…then I started noticing how many different positions the kids were reading in…I wish I could have captured all of them. It was very interesting. One kid stuck his book up under the table and laid on his back on the floor. I don’t know if he was actually reading like that, but it looked like it. So anyway, I pulled out my journal and sketched a few kids really quick…I did all four of these in about 5 or 6 minutes. Not a lot of detail, I was going for the “gesture”…the positions their bodies were in…so focused on the books they were reading.

I haven’t drawn much this week. I spent about 45 minutes working on that baby drawing I am doing for a friend…and other than that, all I can say is that I had good intentions…but I didn’t keep them. This weekend I am hoping will go differently. I am going to temporarily forget about all the crap and stress of work right now (yes, I even ended up crying in one of my classes today) and I am going to enjoy my family, spend some time just for me being creative…get caught up on my Everyday Matters challenges (I am now behind), and hang out with friends. Tonight we had some friends and their new baby over…she is so cute! It was so good to see them after so long! Tomorrow we will have some friends over to celebrate Sam’s birthday too. Besides that, I do have to get some work done for school this weekend…some planning and typing up labels for the art shows coming up in May.

So check back soon, tomorrow I will post something…hopefully at least my toy challenge drawing…but I have to do it first, so I am off to draw.

This morning after eating breakfast with the boys, Max decided he wanted to draw. So we got out the big roll of paper and both of us drew. Max was doing a great job making circles. I told him so. He then informed me that those were not circles, they were bubblegum balls. He really has some kind of obsession with food…esp. cake and bubblegum. The other day, Jasmin made him a bubble gum cake…pink jello cake and bright blue frosting with bubblegum balls and candy sprinkles. He loves it. Last night we went to Shelly and Mike’s house and Max found some plastic blueberries that he would not put down. Shelly ended up giving them to Max to take home and he was so happy! What a crazy kid.

I drew this with one of those extra big black crayon’s…the kind you used when you were in Kindergarten…It was kind of fun!