I promised some progression pictures of my blue owl, and then once I actually checked my phone it turns out I didn’t take nearly as many as I though. Bummer. I also thought I had another stash of progress photos hidden away in my DSLR, but nope. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that there’s actually a 6 month yawning gap of no photos at all on there. I must have thought about taking them a lot more often than I actually did, because the timeline jumps straight from rough sketch to 70% complete. Maybe before that point I thought the whole thing was much too ugly to bother with. After all, I was struggling with it for a while.
I honestly can’t remember anymore. I’m going to blame it on Mom-brain. Because I’m a mom, and I can do that.
And…..just in case you forgot what the final thing looked like…..
Boom.
This week the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. We get a lot of false starts to summer here in Chicago, but I think we’ve finally kicked it into window opening, backyard barbequeing, fresh caprese salad eating, flip flop rocking, neighborhood strolling, doing-anything-in-the-wold-but-sitting-in-front-of-the-computer-summery-wonderfullness. Is wonderfullness even a word? Now it is. Anyway, I apologize for the quiet around here, but other than my continuing job hunt and the new patio set we bought at Target (it is pretty sweet though) there really wasn’t too much to report.
After what feels like forever and a day, I finally finished my latest picture! To this day, it still amazes me how much harder it is to do artwork with two kids running around the house. When I got laid off from my job I had these grandiose plans of how much I was going to get done on my time off. Reorganize the closets! Go through the kid’s rooms and donate old clothes to Goodwill! Plant flowers out front! Artwork! Baking!
Ohhhh….Micron pens. How I love thee.
I might have mentioned this before, but I have an obsession with watching people make things. It doesn’t matter what it is; a painting, a meal, a cabinet, a dress, I’ll immediately get sucked into it and can’t look away. People have walked in on me watching all sorts of odd things on TV, from woodworking to gun-making to pastry competitions. There’s something so interesting about watching somebody take raw materials and go from nothing to something absolutely amazing. When you look at the finished product you get that overwhelming feeling of “WOW, how on Earth did they do that?” but when you actually watch them go through the process you realize that it’s just a series of very small, often very precise steps. And a LOT of patience. And of course, a good bit of talent.
Last week I started and finished this picture. Wow. It’s like a dish of rainbow sherbet threw up all over the paper. I think this is the first time I did the outlining in a color other than black. The entire thing came out much brighter than I was expecting it to. I guess you don’t always end up with the picture you planned on.
First of all, I need to confess my stupidity. I spent the whole day without internet yesterday. The wireless icon on my computer was showing a full signal, but I couldn’t get a single website to come up. I tried restarting my computer…no luck. I checked my modem…no lights at all. I tried pressing the power button, unplugging and replugging the cables…nada. I figured the modem went bad (because it’s happened to me TWICE before) and resolved the call Comcast later in the day when I was done running errands. After dinner last night, on a whim, I decided to check and make sure it was actually plugged into the wall. And you know what? It wasn’t.
It’s been an unusually calm morning around here. Kids are content, chasing each other around and getting Fruity Pebbles all over the floor. Oh, and there are DVDs and socks all over my house. My little one is fascinated with both of those things right now. Or rather, fascinated with pulling them off the shelves/out of the laundry basket and then disseminating them across the house. And you know what? I’ve given up. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather have a messy house all day and do ONE massive cleanup at the end of the night, rather than constantly follow her around cleaning up after her. That kid can destroy a house MUCH faster than I can clean it up. I’m sure some of you out there can relate. Anyway, I’ve been lucky enough to get little pockets of time over the last few days to get this drawing finished.
