Yipee!

Yesterday I met with Brett and Sheila Waldman of Tristan Publishing. Brett had contacted me after visiting this blog and said he thought my work might be suitable for a future project, and he invited me to submit some sample illustrations depicting exuberant youngsters. Best of all, he invited me to come visit their headquarters, which by coincidence is in my neighborhood! So I brought my sketches to their office where I was given a royal welcome, initially by the four-legged doorbell named Bugatti (a charming Shi-Poo who I think would make a perfect date for my little Suzi-Q) and then a Grand Tour of the premises.

Not only did I discover that Brett and Sheila are genuinely lovely people, their publishing house reflects this sensibility. Each book they have published has received undivided attention, resulting in unique formats but all finely crafted with lush colors and various illustration techniques. And since each book's author delivers a message of inspiration, the resulting combination is, well, just lovely!

Check out their website here.

It's always great to meet people whose passion for their work makes the world a better place in general.

Sewing

Why didn't I learn to sew? I'd like to have a new fall wardrobe, but I'd like to not spend any money. I do remember having a sewing machine at one point in my life, but the tension bobber thingie was always breaking my thread. I took it to the repair shop, and they supposedly fixed the little contraption, but when I set about using the machine again, boing!, the thread snapped. Try as I might, I couldn't reset the tension button.

Many years later, I have no sewing machine, but I still have lots of tension that I can't seem to reset. Some things never seem to change.

CULINARY CUTIE - Our Lady of Left-Overs

Back to School

I'm a school girl again. I enrolled in a community college to take another class in Illustrator, having taken one six years ago and completely forgotten everything I learned. This is not a workshop or one day seminar, no this is the real thing with real HOMEWORK and all the suffering that goes along with sitting 4 hours in a classroom every Thursday morning filled with a lot of other suffering souls, determined to better themselves or just get through it to fulfill their requirements. I'm awful at this. Everyone is so much younger with innate computer sense. These young whippersnappers don't even need to listen to the instructor lecture and demonstrate, they are completing the homework assignment and texting friends and websurfing while she speaks! Meanwhile I am still trying to figure out how to turn on the computer. I wonder if I will live through this.

Early Girl

Summer is fading fast, and my tomato plants are pooped. I had 2 big "Early Girl" plants in my little garden. I watered them, weeded them, lovingly tended them for nearly 4 months, and in return, they gave me 5 tomatoes. Five! They were rather small, hard as nails, but a brilliant MAC lipstick red and nary a blemish. They not only looked perfect, they tasted deeeeeevine!!! So when I ask myself, was it worth all the trouble when I could just drive to the farmer's market and buy tomatoes instead, the answer is, YES YES YES! Nothing in the world tastes as good as a homegrown tomato straight out of your own garden.

First Day of Fall

First day of fall? Today? Wait a minute! I'm not through with summer yet! I haven't had that vacation to some far away national park, I haven't cleaned out the garage from last winter's collection of debris (well, now I won't have to, since winter is nipping at our heels), I haven't been to a picnic...I'm just not ready to say goodbye to summer yet. So I won't. The first day of fall is now officially November 1, please mark your calendars accordingly.

Ivanhoe Road

I had an epiphany the other morning while driving in my car. An epiphany in a car is almost as dangerous as a spider, I nearly drove off the road. Sometimes it really IS just how you choose to look at things that determines what you see. And if that doesn't make sense to you, I'll try and illustrate it with these photos of my neighborhood.

This is a little side road, off the beaten track, near my home where I walk every morning. Even though there are homes along the way, I never see anybody in them, there are never any cars or people. It's just quiet and other-worldly, quite different from the noisy middle class neighborhood my tiny house sits in, where I hear roofs being repaired, the hum of the freeway, kids screaming and trees being cut down, lawns being mowed. You know, the usual never-ending racket of summer in the burbs.



But just a few blocks away is Ivanhoe Road, a secret escape where I can walk and feel as if I am on vacation a thousand miles away.



There are marshlands and prairie grasses flooded with sunlight, and all I hear is the silence broken only by the wind or the birds and the frogs.
OK, you get the picture. Now it's important to note here that there is a big tall fence in the background of this picture. You can't see it, it's hidden by the foliage in the background. It was ages before I even noticed it.




Here's the picture taken the day of my epiphany. I was driving along humming a tune thinking of the groceries I had just picked up and how they were probably melting when I looked out my window. OMG, there was that fence! That meant that Ivanhoe Road was right on the other side, but I couldn't see it because of all the foliage. That meant that for years I had been driving down this road to the grocery store, going past this strip mall and all the urban blight that was so annoying, and hidden on the other side of these trees was Ivanhoe Road. My Paradise Lost was right next to a mall. Only 50 feet away! What a difference 50 feet made - it was like living in a dual reality. It made me wonder about the rest of my life, and how I could look at it. Ivanhoe Road and the strip mall were almost the same, it just was a matter of sliding a little more this way or a little more that way that determined whether you were experiencing heaven or hell.

This sounds so dumb. One person's epiphany is another person's "well, yeah...". You just had to be there.

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Pardon me while I interrupt the dazzling stream of posts to put this code here. It's so rude, I know. This is to connect my blog to Technorati.com. Technorati is a search engine and blog directory. A better (and definitely longer) definition is here.

So now my blog will be easier accessed by those who are looking for illustration sites, and I can find other blogs with similar interests to link to.

If you'd like check out the indexing and search for blogs and specific subject matter, it's an amazing directory! Check it out: technorati.com

Buggy over Buggies

More stationery illustrations I recently created for moms and moms-to-be (the calligraphy is by the talented Crystal Kluge), all available for purchase at Pretty Girl Designs. Check it out - there are pages and pages of cute illustrations (mostly created by owner Darcy Jerome's current illustrator, the above mentioned fabulous Crystal Kluge) that you can select for your very own customized invitations, announcements and general all-purpose happy day greeting cards!

Memory

I had something really profound to tell you today, and I forgot what it was. Unlike an elephant, who never forgets, I do forget a lot lately. Someone told me that as we age, we store a lot more memories in our brain, like an overloaded file cabinet. So when we go to retrieve that particular memory, we can't remember where we filed it! That makes sense! And it's profound, but that's not what I was going to tell you, maybe I'll remember tomorrow.

Pretty Girl Designs

I'm so thrilled to have my illustrations included in Pretty Girl Designs! Creator Darcy Jerome began her stationery/gift business with the motto, "Happy girls are pretty girls", and when you see these sparkling creations, you will just light up! She has taken glitter to the next dimension, finishing each piece by hand. Be sure to visit her shop and blog and check out the fun announcements, invitations and cards available for purchase.


Crystal Kluge has been illustrating for Pretty Girl Designs from the start, and I am totally awed by her playful style and versatility. Check out her blog for an artistic treat.

Happy 4th of July!

Hope your evening sparkles!

The Plaid Poodle

Here she is, the Plaid Poodle. I just love the idea of a plaid poodle, and I'm trying to decide what to do with her. In the meantime, she will be flaunting her fine purse until further notice.

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY- Fleeting

Beauty is fleeting. And the older one gets, the more it fleets.

Minnesota Medicine Cover - May

DETAIL

This is a cover for Minnesota Medicine magazine, illustrating a feature article concerning the integration of alternative healing methods into mainstream medicine. These people are so wonderful to work with, they encourage me experiment with different styles, which I so appreciate!

Miss Fifi Poopoo

Announcing - Miss Fifi Poopoo

Dooley

As a child, our home was run by a sweet terrier named Dooley. This doodle reminds me of him.

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Poised

Such poise for such a little kitty!

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Rambunctious

Happy Holidays, everyone, from a very rambunctious reindeer!

Treadmill

Original sketch


Cover


Detail


Here's the latest cover for Minnesota Medicine. The theme of the featured article was the increasing burnout in physicians, and the renewal of energy and insight that the Bush Foundation medical grants provide them. Since I couldn't find a giant hamster wheel, nor convince any models to dress up as doctors and run around in it, I had to invent the whole darn thing in Photoshop. Phew, that was a job, but really fun!