Illustration Friday: Stay Up All Night

So it's been a while since I did Illustration Friday. The theme this week is "stay," which made me think of staying home so I started drawing a house... but then it got a little lumpy (what can I say... drawing things that actually look like things is not really my forte' but this is all for practice so I'm laying it all out there, yeah, Internet, so there) so it turned into a tree house.

I always wanted a tree house. I used to draw plans for tree houses and try and convince my dad to build one. We had this great (somewhat dead, but great) dogwood tree in the backyard. It would have made an epic tree house tree but it was hollow soooo maybe not the most structurally sound tree.

Oh Hello Color

Here are some more designs with added color. I'm really not sure why I find this so exciting but every time I've gone back to a black and white design and clicked that little paint bucket tool in Photoshop, I'm thrilled to see the result. It's never quite what I expected. 

I hate these color separately but I love them together. Here's the black and white version. 

I called this one "Flaming Chicken." Here's the black and white original. There are larger versions of both color versions on my Flickr as well. 

Week Ten: Everybody Loves Crafts

"Crafting, or 'making things,' has always been a delightful pastime of mine because it requires putting common elements together in order to achieve a lovely something that nobody needs." - Amy Sedaris, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People.

So our Border's bookstore is going out of business and everything is 50-70 percent off. Perfect excuse to buy a useless/hilarious book. Amy Sedaris is like a snarky Martha Stewart. Her book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People is useless AND hilarious. For example, one featured craft is a Kitty Tea Cozy. Instructions: "self explanatory." I plan to put this on my bookshelf right next to my Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.

In addition to releasing the book, Amy also created several funny "how to" videos demonstrating some of the crafts in the book. Here's one:



In case you have any doubt how funny Amy Sedaris is. Here's a clip from NPR's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," where Amy plays the game "Not My Job." (class note: I hope this counts as a "type" of content...) Her brother, David Sedaris is a regular on This American Life, another favorite show on public radio. I highly recommend both Amy and David's books if you are looking for an afternoon of snarkiness, but only if you think you need to learn to stretch before and after crafting.

The Flaming Chicken Redux

Um, this looks like flames or chicken feathers, hence "The Flaming Chicken..." I've actually finished three or four designs this weekend, which means it was an extremely productive or an extremely unproductive weekend depending on how you look at it. More to come soon.