off to Bologna!!!

Pink portfolio, yellow tights and red suitcase - everything ready for our Bologna trip! Looking forward to italian espresso and all these beautiful picture books I am going to see at the fair.

if: toy

For some mysterious reasons I woke up at 5.30 am yesterday. I went for a long walk (love early Saturday/Sunday morning walks. The world seems to be more spacious then), made the illustration for this week's IF topic and then baked scones for breakfast. I also finished putting my portfolio together and "binding" the dummy book. And as a reward - a trip to my favourite coffee shop to do some people sketching and doodling! Drawing people is not as fun as drawing animals but I decided to do some more of that. Perhaps it is just the matter of practice.

castle street

Another birthday present. There is a dramatic love story behind this picture. I think I will need to do some more painting soon. Painting is fun. For the moment I am stuck in Photoshop getting my portfolio ready. Off to Bolona next week!!!Yay!

nameless creature

I made this guy for a friend as a birthday present. He was pretty sad because he didn't have name and what is even worse his paws were shedding. Not very fortunate if you are a birthday present. I hope he is better now!

Japan!

After the devastating earthquake and tsunami Japan is struggling with a huge humanitarian crisis. They need our help. Maggy from Red Ted's Art is running an auction on her blog to help raise funds for victims of the Japan quake and she kindly agreed to have one of my prints put on auction there! The bears are happy that they can help.
You can take part in the auction by placing your bid in comments under the post. All details how to take part and how it works are described in detail here. If you win, all the money goes directly to Save the Children and you get the print. I cover the shipping cost. Simple as that!

Many thanks to Kate from Tastykaeru and Zoe from Playing by the Book for their help with organising the whole thing. Zoe is also running auctions on her blog too, like this one with a beautiful flower brooch by Tastykaeru.

finished!

I finished the dummy book! And I am back to normal mode now, which is very pleasant. It was particularly pleasant to go for a long walk on Sunday and see real people, real trees and real landscapes. I also got my reward (yes, the main reason I finished that book at all) in a form of grilled fish and white wine consumed in a beautiful place with live jazz music. The good thing is that even though I am allergic anything to do with pencil and photoshop, I still like the characters. They make me smile. A good sign I think.

And these tiny guys (that you might recognise) are for a competition. The brief was to make an illustration for front cover of a magazine about children's books.

a very productive weekend

This weekend I managed to draw 5 cats, 5 dogs, 3 mice, 1 parrot, I also baked 1 sourdough bread (from sourdough base I produced myself - good fun) and 6 wholemeal scones. I also opened running season - hooray, hooray! My book is advancing an it looks like I will be able to meet the deadline, which is next Sunday.
Now back to work!

sketching trips

Sketches from our recent drawing trips when I was being very lazy. With the second one I was feeling like making a sketch and then destroying it by adding more and more black until it dissapears. Fortunately, we had to leave before the sketch dissapeared. I think I will have to do some collage and photoshopping now.

My dummy book is progressing and it looks like I will be able to finish it before Bologna. I got most of images scanned and now I will need to make friends with photoshop again.