Lost and Found Art

Just thought I would share some of the finds as I have been packing up our house in preparation to move. Interesting to see the collection of art that I have amassed.

drawing from Oct. 26, 1992 by me

by me, age unknown... hopefully 6-7ish

by Grace Geralds to me, puts it at 4th grade, so age 8-10

from highschool by someone else

by John Morrison to me, of my now husband, from high school

from a coworker from my years working at Tom Thumb, 2004

by my brother, date unknown

from Carol Mackiewicz, who blog is linked to the right, circa 2009

 

MOVING

As of today my husband and I are officially homeowners. The last week has been spent packing, packing and more packing. We move in on monday so expect a few more days of a lack of posts. Apologies. But as anyone knows, moving is a PAIN!

More Fishes and a Little Me

Sorry for the absence... I went on vacation for a week to visit some good friends for the 4th of July. Ate good food, saw Foamhenge, drank wine, watched fireworks, etc.

I of course felt the need to make them Fish Hats of their own as a kind of "thanks for having us" gift.
One I made with a teacher in mind and the other is a Ghost fish, since she likes ghosts.

The Ghost fish with black hole eyes.

The teacher fish, so called because I see pencils when I look at this one.

My good friend is also a crocheter... person who crochets.... whatever. And I was surprised on the last day of our trip with a pair of Little Me's as I call them now. In case you do not know us, they are meant to look like my husband and I.

I could not be more thrilled. With my blue hair and the button eyes I have been told I look like Coraline, which only adds to the awesome! I plan on doing one thing to mine: making some tiny glasses for her.

My new traveling companion.

Chinese Dragon Hat

So I teased you earlier last week, and again this week with images of my latest project: the Chinese Dragon Hat. I am happy to report that it is finished. I call it that because I was looking at these images for inspiration...

As I mentioned before I had the idea while making the 5 fish hats. I had originally thought that I would like to try a fish hat that looked like a koinobori flag or a red koi fish, but as that would require changing colors in the middle of rows and all manner of confusion, I decided to leave off that idea for now. Instead I thought, why not make the hat go on for a long while and be a scarf at the same time.

So I picked out 7 colors that I liked and had about one skein of: a pumpkin orange, a jake the dog  light orange, brown, khaki, hunter green, pale yellow and a dusty blue. Figured I would be upset with myself if I didn't have a blue in there since I wear so much of it.

It is as tall as I am, so about 5 1/2 feet in lenth.

I followed the fish hat patter for making the mouth. Once I got to the end I just continued the single stitch rows out for longer until I felt the head was long enough. Then to make the head blend with the body and make it just a little bit more of a long dragon head, I added a few shell rows of the same color. Then I started rotating through my colors until I reached a thickness that I felt was right for a scarf. (Following the pattern terms, I stopped decreasing at 10 shells.) I feel that it might be good to say that I had thought of making the colors random, but then decided against it because it would bother my slightly OCD brain. So I had first arranged them in a general ROYGBIV sort of order, but didn't want it to be a rainbow dragon, so instead opted for a sort of compatible light dark light dark arrangement.

You can see ears, horns, eyes and whiskers here.

I added red lips around the face and white teeth in a similar shell pattern. Once I reached a length that would wrap around my neck once, I started decreasing the shells again down to two and then fanned out a tail. I also used a half circle pattern for eyes, the shell pattern for eyebrows, a leaf pattern for ears, a modified version of the fins pattern that came with the fish pattern for horns, and a made up kind of chain for the nose whiskers. The entire project took about a week to make and sew together.

Tail Fan

I expect I will have orders once I start wearing him out in the winter...

UPDATE: Added some nostrils and a neck fin... images in this update post.

Crafty Moving

So this week will most likely be light on posts since I am in the process of buying my first home, packing, planning and working. Not much time for crafting or doodling. So stay tuned for updates, but you might just check again next monday. Apologies.

In lieu of a doodle today, I will tease you with a few images of the status of my Chinese dragon hat idea loosely based off the fish hats pattern that I have used in the past.

Ears and Horns

Head with lips and teeth, body in progress.

Here is the thought doodle in case you missed it.

Rice Boy Fan Art

Rice Boy by Evan Dahm

Rice Boy is actually a story unto itself, but is also the name of the website. Evan Dahm has created an entire complex world compete with histories, races and fantastic environments. All of his stories take place in this world, called Overside. He is also the second half of the blog, The Exquisite Beast, I mentioned before.

When I started reading this comic, it was with Rice Boy. It follows Rice Boy who is suspected to fulfill of a prophecy. Then I got caught up in the Order of Tales. Order follows the last of a race of storytellers. And now I religiously follow Vattu. I have also devoured everything in the short stories section.

It is hard to classify these comics... I guess the best way to describe them are as "epics".  Most follow a single main character through their experiences, but rapidly bloom into a much larger scale conflict that this one character is caught up in the middle of. There are reoccurring races and characters which help to give every story depth, once you have read them all.

If I had to pick a favorite character, it would be T-O-E (The One Elecronic). He is super cool... carries himself kind of like yoda, dracula, and the lone gunman. I kind of relate him to Roland from the Dark Tower series...

Anyway, I am really enjoying Vattu so far and since it is the latest, I wanted to doodle her. I like Vattu's city a lot and while I started sketching her sneaking off to a sword practice with the War-man, I started giving her a companion. So here again is that Kenku kid from before.

This Kenku is actually a character I created for a DnD campaign that never went anywhere. But I spent a lot of time thinking about a back story and purpose and goals and things like that. So Chrypi is a girl kenku (which is hard to tell, similar to Vattu) and she grows up on the streets of Sharn in Ebberon. That city in the DnD lore, is gigantic and full of tons of races and hierarchy and lords and all kind of stuff. I felt like Sharn is a little like the city that Vattu is in since they are both full of all kinds of races. Chrypi one day finds a Bard mentor who teaches her to sing and make a little money storytelling. I had the idea for her to have a custom scimitar that had a harp built into the curve of the blade, a harpitar. Never sure where she learned to use a scimitar, so maybe some lessons from a friend might be fun.

My Little Sailor Moon

This idea has been stewing in my sketchbook for a while, so I thought I would actually give it a go. I like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I also like Sailor Moon. Similar to the Adventure Time/Avatar the Last Airbender mashup I did before I felt this was kind of obvious. I have a feeling that someone has already done this better somewhere, but I had a lot of fun picking colors and merging styles.

Each pony is colored on a separate layer, the line art is one vector image from illustrator that sits on top. I added another layer for a shadow. And the background is from this link, set behind everything with a gaussian blur on it.

Original Sketch...