Happy Friday! With daylight savings beginning this weekend, it feels like summer will be rapidly approaching and this, of course, turns my thoughts to vacation planning. We don't actually take very many vacations. Mostly it's because M's work schedule is unpredictable and this makes it tricky to plan trips. One of loveliest family vacations we took was to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island with M's parents a few years ago. We rented a cottage that K called the "trip house", and the atmosphere as a ... Read more
Happy Friday + Randomness
Happy Friday! This painting above was not done by me, though I wish it was. It's one of the countless charming things about Seattle. One minute you're rounding the corner onto an unfamiliar street, then the next minute you're met with an expertly painted elephant (Bell Boy? Doorman?) on the side of a building. And the trunk is a drain pipe! People's creativity always amaze me. I wish I knew who the artist is so I can credit him/her properly. It's been a productive week! I met my first big ... Read more
Happy Friday + Randomness
Happy Valentine's Day!! My goodness, with the way I kept going on and on, you'd think it's the only holiday that matters to me. Case in point: I can't seem to stop making bookmarks, though my excuse is that I'm practicing my digital painting. So these are the ones we ended up assembling for K's class (K helped punch holes, though she quickly lost interest; she did, however, write out all her classmates' names for each bookmark bundle). K said that the animals looked too girly and was ... Read more
And Then There Was Love
It's Valentine's Day tomorrow and I have love on the mind. Let me start by saying that I've always been a late bloomer. I didn't have my first kiss or boyfriend until I was seventeen (I somehow managed to miss out on the requisite pre-adolescent spin-the-bottle games). The other stuff came much, much, much later. I was angst-y in my twenties, and I'm certain that I emitted a "stay away from me" vibe for most of that decade. It was terribly confusing to me that I sailed through my prime dating ... Read more
Happy Friday + Randomness
Happy Friday! This week I've been diving in full force and working on my book, and I've just made a happy discovery. I love painting with gouache, but with the kinds of illustrations I want to create I need a lot of control and the flexibility to change things on the fly. The beauty of traditional painting is the lovely unintentional effects that can happen. The not so beautiful part is the permanence of a painted line when mistakes are made -- no undo button! Enter digital watercolor painting. ... Read more