hugs and smiles

I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day.  I just feel it is a bit ridiculous that one day of the year is focused on love.  Shouldn't everyday be filled with love?  But I do have to admit that I enjoy seeing the surprised looks on the faces of my students who received unexpected gifts from secret admirers, or friends. 

I began thinking about my new Mizzle.  I have decided she is a heart healer because she has this biological looking pattern on her.  Keeping that in mind, I looked up names that meant heart or healer.  I found two I like.  The first name is Corliss and it means good-hearted/ carefree.  The other name is Jalen, which means healer/ tranquil.  I'm leaning more towards Corliss, but would love feedback from anyone who has any thoughts on this.   Here is yesterday's drawing:

Today's drawing is a continuation of the love theme.  I love hugs, but when they are from friends and family.  I'm not too fond of random people touching me.  But hugs are great!  They provide so much healing and comfort.  I think it's just a natural reaction for me to immediately hug someone I care about when they are having a bad day. 

Nature Inspired

Saturday's artist play date really stuck with me this weekend.  One of my friends has an assignment for his architecture class where he needs to create an artwork from items found in nature.  I went with him to a park to find interesting branches and leaves.  During our hunt of curled branches I found these pieces of tree bark.  They were just so appealing I had to take them.  I plan on painting something on them.  Maybe I'll create mini portraits of my characters? I'll definitely post results.

 

To continue with the nature inspired theme, today's drawing is of Larry sculpting with branches.  He's made a heart with the branches in preparation for Valentine's day.

Weekend full of art

Yesterday, I met with my illustrators group for an artist's play date.  We brought various materials and began being creative.  It was so much fun to just play with materials.  I decided to use a piece of cardboard and collaged various torn pieces of paper.  For the girl, I used white gouache to create her silhouette and then used watercolor pencils on top.  I love the textures the paper created.  I have always been attracted to the edges of torn paper.  Something about it draws me to it. 

Today was busy with various chores, but I had another experience with the squirrel in my parent's back yard.  Her name is Striker and I went to feed her nuts.  I had set some on the tree and I held one in my hand for her to take.  But she came at it from a weird angle and knocked the nut out of my hand, so she kept taking the nuts I had set on the tree.  She would pretend to come get the nut from my hand, and then she would end up grabbing one on the tree.  I stood there in awe of how close she stayed near me.  She was the inspiration for today's drawing.

I even had time to do a quick watercolor version of one of my daily drawings.

What if Mizzles had real facial features?

Continuing with my extremely active day yesterday, I ended up creating this drawing while I was waiting for my yoga class to begin. 

"Uh, what do we do now?"

This semester for my beginning art and drawing students, we are focused on portraits.  We spent a few days drawing eyes.  Today, we took notes on how to draw and shade the nose.  After spending 3 hours of drawing noses, I began thinking "what would my characters look like if they had real facial features?"  It definitely changes their feel.

It is a little funny to see them this way, but they look too human-like for me.  What I have always loved about these characters is that no matter what expression I draw them with, they continue to have a loving, caring, friendly quality about them.  They are never too scary or threatening.  They also maintain a look of innocence

Busy little bee

Socks, socks, socks, socks!  This week I have decided to get ready for Pennies for Patients, which is my school's fundraising event for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  The past few years we have been one of the top schools in the nation who raise money for them.  In past years, I have made an abundance of sock dolls and sell them.  I didn't participate last year because I was super busy with thesis paper.  This year, our ASB has decided that we will do the fundraiser for a program in our district that helps students in need here at home.  I am really happy with this decision because the students will get to truly see the impact of their fundraising.

 I began creating some of my sock creatures yesterday.  Today I was able to complete 4 of them.  One, I promised to a former student.  Another was one I had wanted to make for my own collect.  The last two, I swear, are for this event coming up in a few weeks.  I just need to come up with names and a cute little background story about them.  I was able to sew the body shells of 2 more, so hopefully I will have those finished tomorrow.  My department thinks I'm crazy.  As my students are drawing, I walk around with some kind of sewing or crochet project in my hands.  There are times when it seems like I am constantly creating. 

For my daily drawing, I decided to rework a previous drawing, but I ended up not liking it.  I began giving the squirrel more texture and shading, but now the sock looks out of place.  I think if I color the sock the image will change.  Because I wasn't happy with this drawing, I created another.  I like this one a lot more, but need to darken up the surrounding areas to make it look more like the inside of a tree or a drey.

And now that I have finished writing this blog I can say I've had a pretty productive day.

Here is a photo of the sock doll I made for myself.

I still need to give it a name, but I am looking forward to drawing it!

No! Wait! I'm in here!

Trapped inside, all he could do was watch.  His opportunity of escape seemed to diminishing before him.

Have you seen this sock?

Yesterday, I hand fed the squirrel in my parent's back yard.  It was a fun experience.  I really wish my dad had a zoom camera to take photos of me actually feeding it, but I did get some close ups of the squirrel itself on my camera phone.  This squirrel has been a frequent visitor for a few years now.  There are other squirrels that come for food, but we know this one personally. It is the only one that will allow us to come close to it.  My sister named it Striker.  We thought it was a "he" for the longest time until I took photo of it and saw her underside.  Here she is in the tree eating or watching me carefully.  Even though I had food and she let me be close to her, she was still leery of me and my actions.

My story has always been about socks and the mysteries that surround them.  In my original story line, I explained in detail the magic behind the socks, but someone made a point to me that magic never needs explaining...it's just magic.  So, I have been rewriting my story and it has changed a lot from the original round.  Today, I thought it would be funny if one of my characters bribed the squirrel with nuts to help them find the sock, or if they were just asking them if they had seen it.