All these pictures were taken on my iphone and processed with
instagram. You can follow me if you want too! My user name is redherringjeff.
I love my kids, and I love being home with them. As any stay at home parent can tell you though, the hardest part of that job is that you never get a day off. For me, nap time is spent working or cleaning and there is very little time left for personal projects. I talked to Mrs Handmade about this the other day, and we hatched a plan for some time set aside for those things that I don't have time for, and also time to just be alone. On the
Design Mom blog last week, Gabrielle Blair talked about
being alone and included this wonderful little video about it.
So I've managed to get out to Bread Co, or the library and get some work done on the blogs, or in my sketch book. and it's been really great. My wife is pretty rad.
Speaking of rad, this past weekend Mrs Handmade had another idea...trade a day of babysitting each week with one of our friends. My head exploded. What a perfect, simple idea that would be great for everybody. Why hadn't we thought about it sooner? Six hours home alone. Six hours to get some work done...during the day. This week was my first "day off" and while it felt a little indulgent at times, I made an actual dent in my work load. And then we went to see "Brave" after picking up the girls. And it was great.
Here's a little peek at my six hours...
9:30. After dropping Amy off at work, and the kids off at the sitters I sat down to frame some calendar prints for the shop and watch the "new" Conan movie. The movie had just the right amount of fluff to make actually paying attention to what I was doing possible. Also, in case the R rating didn't warn you, this is not like the older Conan movies, and I wouldn't watch it with kids. There's a lot of boobs and blood.
11:00. I spent 20 minutes in my super messy studio looking for picture hanging hardware that I'm sure I have. I briefly considered both cleaning up the studio and going out to buy the hardware. Ultimately I decided to just let it go and work on sketches for the fairy tale book and calendar...
Eating lunch while listening to Neil Gaiman read "Stardust" and sketching ideas for "The Emperors New Clothes". I'm thinking that instead of going with the traditional
Rococo inspired designs that I'll do Napoleonic empire clothes with 20th century
Arts and Crafts sets.
1:30. After lunch, back down to the studio to rework some drawings for a barbecue competition team shirt I'm working on. One of my instagram followers said I need to post more of this type of stuff. What do you all think? More artwork? Is there anyghing in particular you'd like to see here on the blog?
3:00. I caved and went to buy hardware on my way to pick up the girls. I just know that in the next couple of days I'll find the stuff I already had...it's not like I wont use it all or anything, just frustrating that I wasted so much time looking for it. Ha-ha-ha!
4:00. I picked up the girls at the sitter. They were glad to see me, but sad that they had to leave their friends. Ha-ha-ha! Life's so hard when you're a kid. We went and picked up Mom, and then went and saw Brave. The movie was great, and I think it's unfortunate that Disney did such a terrible job marketing it, because it wasn't the movie they made it out to be.
And that was my "day off". Over all, a pretty good and productive day, and I hope you enjoyed spending it with me. Is this something you'd like to see as a regular feature? Are there things that you'd like to read about that I'm just not thinking of? Would you like to see more tutorials, reviews and shows? Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear from you!
Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey
Things I'm into right now:
Thundercats. I finally got to see some of the new Thundercats cartoon, and it's pretty cool. One thing that's interesting to me is that this is the second cartoon that I've seen recently that borrows a lot of it's themes from the A-team.
Neil Gaiman Books on tape:
I'm listening to "Stardust" right now, and have "Coraline" to listen to while I work next. One of the cool things is that Neil reads his own books, and he has such a wonderful, English voice.
Here they are after being inked and taped down to boards for coloring. Each illustration is 6 X 6 inches. This gave me enough room to really make a scene, but was still small enough that I didn't get over my head. I've been interested in faeries and sprites since I was a kid, and well...I felt like drawing some. Ha-ha-ha!
So after inking, I put in a light sepia wash to give the paper some tone, and then using transparent washes start laying in colors and textures.
Here it's almost finished. I was originally planning on those being big teeth on his front, but as I thought more about it when coloring, I decided that it made more sense for them to be like flower petals. Add a little splash of color.
Here's the finished piece still on the board, next to one of it's mates. You can see that I use a pretty big scrap area to test my colors before putting them on the picture. Maybe one of these days I won't be quite so timid in my painting.
The finished piece under glass. Usually I scan things before framing them so that I have a good head on picture, but...It was late, and I forgot. Anyway, that's why it's kind of tilted at an angle. The flash just wrecked it otherwise.
Got this pic of the girls playing house the other day. Unfortunately it took too long to find the camera, so I missed the part where Olive was laying on the floor looking through the front door. Those kids inspire me every day.
