Miscellany, Musings and Mystery

Space age cosmonauts anyone?

And other things, randomly:

*Deadlines and projects are keeping me really, really, really busy right now, but I'm trying to catch up on some diary comic entries and should have those up perhaps-ish over the weekend. Speaking of the weekend, Happy 4th to those stateside and Happy Canada Day/Bonne Fête du Canada to you nice people up North.

*The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics is crazy awesome. If you have the slightest interest in a digital workflow for illustration, pick this one up.

*Lesley Barnes' animation for Belle and Sebastian is supremely delightful.

*Annnnd I decided to start a craft blog. I like keeping this space mostly illustration focused, so if it involves knitting/sewing/crochet/or my obsession with baking homemade thin mints, it's over here.

And I found this on the sidewalk the other morning. I'd like to think it's part of some elaborate scenario in which I pick up the number, knock three times at an obscure alley-way door, get inducted into a secret society, etc., etc., etc. In reality, I found it near a pre-school, which probably offers a more plausible (yet mundane) explanation.

I think I prefer my initial hypothesis a bit more, however...

"Parks and Recreation"

Sketching some of Pawnee's fictional finest.

Marginally

She popped up in the margins of some sketches I was working on this week. Completely irrelevant to the project at hand, but when you want to draw righteously indignant royalty of vaguely Scandinavian descent, you can't stop the beat.

Also, I am like a magpie for ephemera, so I put up a mini clothesline to accomodate. The best thing is, I don't have to put holes in the wall and can change out stuff on a moment's notice. But the Kidrobot postcard? Yeah, that's staying up for awhile...

Pizzicato

I painted this over the weekend as a gift for someone who's having a baby and plays violin. It was a nice change of pace to make something that involved paint instead of pixels.

Illustration Friday - Shadow

Right under the wire, here's something for this week's Illustration Friday theme, "Shadows." And please, please, please tell me I'm not the only person who's jumped a foot when spotting their own shadow unexpectedly?*

*And then reached for a stapler, expecting to thwart would-be-attacker with said device, only to sheepishly realize the reality of the situation and the futility of doing hand to hand combat with an office accouterment.

One of Seven Sisters

Insomnia is for the birds. The ability to do a little star gazing out the window in the middle of the night, however, isn't half bad.

Stomping Grounds

Saturday I woke up ridiculously early, so made a pot of coffee, grabbed my sketchbook and went for a walk. I ended up by the mills near the river and decided to work on conquering my dislike of drawing architecture and/or perspective. I have a soft spot for abandoned factory buildings, but only recently learned that family had worked down river in a shoe factory at the turn of the century.

Funny how things intersect in life; I like those happy collisions of past and present.