Meet Seamonkey

 

Seamonkey is a fun loving surfer girl.  She loves being in the water and making friends with different sea creatures.  Everyone loves her calm nature.  She never panics, even under pressure. When she is not in the water, she loves to spend her time on a swing, where she pretends she can fly.

Meet Anila

Anila was fun for me to make. I finally had a recipe for creating the Mizzles. I learned they turned out really fun and exciting when I used socks that had colorful patterns.  I have noticed that I'm really drawn to stripes when I'm creating Mizzles.

Anila is a busy bee.  She is always fluttering around Twinkling Treetop performing one task or another.  It is extremely rare to see her still in one place except around the bonfire when Buh-gee tells his stories.

Rain and Writing

I thought I could handle participating in the 12x12x12 and the pb dummy book challenges, but it has been challenging.  I have been able to keep up with writing one story a month, but I have fallen completely behind on the pb dummy challenge. I have realized that the story I want to create a dummy for doesn't feel quite right, yet.  Plus, I have just begun to figure out my writing routine.  So, I decided today I would sit in Starbucks and finish rewriting it.  This seemed to be a great idea until I sat down and realized how easily distracted I was by all of the people.  I sometimes forget my passion for people watching. It is just interesting to watch the movements, facial expressions, and reactions of strangers.  To notice the way they wear their clothes and hair and wonder who they are in this world... what is their story? I decided I should probably plug myself into my iPod and watch the rain for a few minutes before starting.  I listened to the inspirational rhythms of Bonobo as I watched the rain fall. Then I began writing.  It would flow easily for a few minutes and then I would stop, stare at the rain and watch the story play in my head.  Then I would write a little more.  I'm much happier with this version, although I feel like it needs polishing.  Before I left, I decided to take advantage of my creative mood and create my drawing for the day.  It is a scene from my story.

Book: A Daily Creative Journal

I bought a book called A Daily Creative Journal: Make Something Every Day And Change Your Life! It is a great book to explore your creative side.  It helps break through a creative block.  What attracted me to it was the possibility of using it in the classroom.  Before beginning spring break, I told my Intermediate and Advanced Drawing students they were going to have a homework assignment to complete over the break.  They freaked out a bit, but when I explained the project they were a bit curious.  I told them to choose a number between 1-365 and they had to create an artwork based on that prompt.  The artwork could be a painting, drawing, photo, sculpture, video as long as they brought in it or documented it to show me.  It could be made out of anything as well.  The whole point was to be creative and have as much fun as possible.  When they began hearing the prompts, they became eager to choose their own.  I opened up the same assignment to my beginning classes, but offered it to them as extra credit.  I'm a bit excited to see what they come up with.

Squirrels Read, too! Color version

This past week has been a very busy and hectic week with preparing and setting up our high school student art show, then to take it all down one day later.  But, somehow, I managed to finish a new piece.  I took my drawing from the Squirrel's Read, Too post and turned it into a color illustration. 

Influences 1- Tim Burton

I have loved many of Tim Burton's movies over the years.  But his creation of The Nightmare Before Christmas was the starting point a long family obsession of Tim Burton. His art and movies have been one of the many things my younger sister and I thoroughly enjoy together. Now, as an artist I know that we are influenced by other art and artists, but I guess I never truly put much thought into how much those influences affect our own personal art.  A few months ago, a friend was looking at my drawings for the first time and commented that it looked similar to Tim Burton's style.  I beamed and responded "I love Tim Burton."  I never noticed the influence into my own work until that moment.

His drawings exhibit a fearlessness of his materials, although I'm sure he would probably disagree.  All artists have this self deprecating way about them.  But the lines of his drawings are whimsical, fun, mysterious and quirky.  They capture the imagination that is without boundaries like that of a child.  His poetry holds a lot of the same qualities.

  Here are a few of my favorites from his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories.
 
Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love

Stick Boy liked Match Girl,

he liked her a lot.

He liked her cute figure,

he thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn

for a match and a stick?

It did quite literally;

he burned up pretty quick.

Voodoo Girl

Her skin is white cloth,

and she's all sewn apart

and she has many colored pins

sticking out of her heart.

She has a beautiful set

of hypno-disk eyes,

the ones that  she uses

to hypnotize guys.

She has many different zombies

who are deeply in her trance.

She even has a zombie

who was originally from France.

But she knows she has a curse on her,

a curse she cannot win.

For if someone gets

too close to her,

the pins stick farther in.

Poet- Octavio Paz

Today's poem is one of my favorites from Octavio Paz.  It it from a collection of poems called This Same Sky.

A Tree Within

A tree grew inside my head.
A tree grew in.
Its roots are veins,
its branches nerves,
thoughts its tangled foliage.
Your glance sets it on fire,
and its fruits of shade
are blood oranges
and pomegranates of flame.
                        Day breaks
in the body's night.
There, within, inside my head,
the tree speaks.
              Come closer--can you hear it?


This next poem is from his book Selected Poems.

Writing

I draw these letters
as the day draws its images
and blows over them
                              and does not return