Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Life With Girls

 Have you seen the Life With Girls webcomic yet? Mr. Handmade has been writing new strips for the old Daily Life cartoons since before Christmas, and has rebranded it as Life With Girls. Basically, it's stories about being a stay-at-home dad of two daughters. Right now, he's republishing all of the old Daily Life illustrations as he works on a new format, moving forward into a more ongoing story, instead of a series of anecdotal illustrated status messages.
He's pretty excited about the whole thing, and we are very proud of how the project is shaping up. You can find it at www.LifeWithGirls.com.

Watercolor Wednesday:
Spring is finally (maybe) here in Missouri, and when it's not raining, Mr Golden peeks his head from behind the clouds. Today is one of those glorious sunny days, and I thought I'd celebrate it by posting this sun painting in the Online shop.

As always, thanks for stopping in, take care, and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Gnomes, Camping, and Cats

I seem to go through bouts of blog attentiveness. I like to write, I really do. There's a lot of things that I want to share, or at least talk about, and sometimes the girls just don't cut it. So, blogging is part sharing what I'm up to, and part organizing my thoughts...Also, I'm maybe involved in too many blogs for someone who doesn't get paid for it. Ha-ha-ha! This is getting awfully close to an apology post, which I promised I wouldn't do! Basically, I was looking at some blogs before bed, and thought "Self, you don't write enough anymore. You enjoy it, so why don't you do it?" and I figured I'd explore that "out loud".

This week I finished up coloring  this set of illustrations, and I'm super excited about them. This is one of those dream projects, where you enjoy the whole thing from start to finish. 

 The brief was basically gnomes and camping and off we went, looking at Moonrise Kingdom, merit badges, mushrooms and rainbows.
We treated size pretty fluidly as the imagery was explored...How big IS a gnome, anyway? We're all really glad that spring is here, and are looking forward to the summer, when Mrs Handmade is on holiday from school. We think this is the year for a camping trip. :D

And finally, it's watercolor Wednesday in the online shop. This week, we have a playful little kitten with a ball of yarn. I don't have any pets myself right now, so sometimes it's hard to think of complete themes in these paintings. Luckily, as an active member of the craft community, I know about four hundred ladies with cats...

Doing a little side illustrating each nite as a warm up is a great way to get some personal drawing time in, explore content that I may not normally work on, build on drawing skills, and get into a "work" frame of mind.

I hope you all have a great week. Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey