New Nature Alphabet Book

At last, it's ready!

When I first thought of making a series of nature-themed images to illustrate the alphabet, I was also thinking it would be neat to make a simple, informative children's book out of it. I was trying to find a way to have it printed as a rigid board book (sturdier for young tots) but it seems like all printers of such books are large factories in Asia. They're cheap- by the book- but I would have had to order cases of 1000 or something, which wasn't an option.

So I went with Lulu, the self-publishing company. I was very impressed with the quality, considering how easy the process was. Fortunately, my book had enough pages to get a perfect-bound spine, which I think looks much better than saddle-stitch and closer to my original board book idea; nice, square and flat:

It's titled 'Acorn, Bur, Conch' and has a little, simple blurb on each natural element chosen for each letter, an array of fruits, plants, animal elements and minerals. I think it's pretty cute and it's dedicated to my daughter- who is, conveniently, currently obsessed with the alphabet- Penelope.

Available for sale through Lulu's site. There's a preview as well.

Individual letter illustrations are available in my Etsy store.

Halloween costumes!!

This was a busy month indeed, after making loads of little masks for Maker Faire, getting ready for our first Zombie Walk and now just finishing our Halloween costumes. Whew! November is going to be looking rather mellow after this.

So after the gore-fest of Zombie Walk (and a very effective mess of corn starch, corn syrup and food colouring)...

..we're going classy again with some more masks. We experimented with new materials this time: Jacob modeled and sewed together the base shapes with foam board (bristol boards with a layer of foam sandwiched in-between) which created nicely detailed yet comfortably light masks. He has a plague doctor costume and I just had to go with a spider (after making the miniature mask).

Jacob's mask has polymer clay eyepieces that I painted to look like oxidized copper. There is an inlay of red cellophane to look like red glass lenses:

My mask has (once again) a Venetian feel to it with golden patterns, a few Swarovski crystals and 8 ostrich feathers (to somewhat evoke the spider's hairy legs). I'm conveniently reusing my wedding dress for the costume (which was a simple raspberry red dress) under a black cape:

We'll try to take nice pictures in a park near our house (with old buildings and an old creepy well to boot). It was too windy to get it right today...

Hoping the weather allows for lots of little ghouls visiting us tomorrow!

Alphabet series!

It had been working on a series of illustrations of the alphabet for about 5 months.

The theme was natural elements or objects and it took me about a month of research on appropriate terms for every letter (some letters took a rather long time and much debate). It got tedious at times since I wanted a variety of vegetal, mineral and animal elements (although no actual animals, only animal creations or products); it was a matter of keeping a good balance and not having too many flowers or rocks or of any given type of 'thing'. Each item had to be visually appealing in its own way and they also had to look good together.

At last, the last letter was finished last weekend! So here is the full alphabet poster design (each letter- and the poster- are available in my Etsy store, of course):

And here's the alphabetical list:

Acorn
Bur
Conch
Dandelion
Egg
Feather
Geode (as a gemologist, I have an especially soft spot for this one)
Hive
Ivy
Juniper
Kumquat (thank you cute little fruit for starting with the letter K)
Leaf
Milkweed
Nut (Pedant alert: The ones I portrayed are 'true' botanical nuts, not the ones commonly found in trail mixes. It's surprising to learn how many 'nuts' are in fact seeds, fruits, legumes, etc...)
Orchid
Pebble
Quill
Raspberry
Samara
Toadstool
Ulexite (very cool mineral. Get some: It's cheap)
Violet
Web
Xerophyte (funny enough, I had several contenders for the letter X; xylocarp almost made it but it would have been redundant with 'Nut' and it was neat to get cacti in there)
Yew
Zinnia

Ottawa Mini Maker Faire 2012

Finally taking a few minutes to post about the fabulous weekend Jacob and I enjoyed at the latest Ottawa Mini Maker Faire. We were lucky enough to have had the opportunity exhibit our masks and met loads of amazing people in the process. Where to begin... We spent the couple of weeks prior to Maker Faire frantically making our signature miniature masquerade masks in order to showcase as many designs as possible. We have been making masks ever since that minotaur mask I've posted about a couple of years back (for Jacob's Halloween costume) and brought our full-sized masks as well. Here are a few of the newest masks we managed to finish on time (we had several other designs already completed, namely the ones featured on our Etsy store). As usual, we had a great time thinking of a bunch of small creatures and decking them up carnival-style:

Of course, things got too hectic for either of us to remember to take pictures of our own table (have a few taken by friends floating around that I might get a hold of eventually... fantastic blogger I am). Anywho, the event was a success, attracting hundreds of visitors and featuring a colourful and eclectic mix of traditional art, cutting-edge technology and science mingling together in various ways.

The crowd was simply amazing: Visitors and exhibitors shared a playful curiosity and enthusiasm that gave the environment the vibe of a bunch of children in a fabulous candy store (there were actual children in the mix as well, as the entire effort was very family-friendly). We got to meet lots of great creative souls despite the fact that it was difficult to pull away from one's table due to the steady flow of visitors (which is a pretty good thing all things considered!). One of them was fellow mask-maker Ian Langohr whose giant, clever masks were a neat complement to our tiny masks. As Jacob and I verified, his masks were as cushy and comfy as they were funny:

We unfortunately didn't get to cover every single exhibitor (or even to see everything on display) but the list is still available on Ottawa Mini Maker Faire's site and is absolutely worth perusing (many great projects and websites to enjoy). Really looking forward to next year's Faire (definitely being discussed and hopefully even bigger!). Awesome way to spend a weekend!

Something wicked...

...this way comes.

...

Kitsune - Fox Spirit

New illustration post, again. I haven't been very good at this whole blog thing. The point is probably to say a tiny bit more about my art and (gasp) thoughts than just "here's a drawing", which is pretty much what my latest posts have been. Will try to elaborate a bit more in the future... And by that I mean not today :P Anyway, here's one of my latest illustrations, out of the Shinto mythology theme I've got going... I've had this image of a Kitsune- or fox spirit- floating in my mind for a while...

More action coming soon...

Magnificent Frigatebird

Here's a new finished illustration. A Magnificent Frigatebird in flight. The male inflates a bright red pouch to court the female. I thought it looked a bit like a big red heart in some angles, which was a bit like the bird carrying a Valentine around to his belle ;)

It is available as a print on my Etsy store... as many other illustrations of mine. I ought to advertise about it a bit more about it :P

Barn Owl Illustration

Two more illustrations of animals: A barn owl and a giraffe.

My next idea is pretty epic (still fauna) and I'm so excited about it that it's going to take me a little while to plan out the layout and exact elements. I want it to come out perfectly. To be continued...

Blue Whale and Giant Squid posters

Two new finished pieces: A potential duo, appropriately themed- and sized- to be printed as posters (up to 16" tall). They were loosely inspired by Alphonse Mucha's art nouveau posters for plays and various products. At first, I wanted to put more text, like they were advertisements for the animals ("Blue Whale - Gentle giant of the sea!" Or some such) but in the end, I opted to leave most of the space for the fauna itself. I felt that too much text was taking away from the actual subjects.

Here's the majestic blue whale:

and the mysterious giant squid:

I'm working on more nature-inspired posters, but all I'll say for now is that the next one will either be an insect or a bird...

However, when I was looking for ideas and references, I ended up spending so much time admiring the amazing shapes and colours of various tunicates (the plant-looking animals underneath the squid) that I'm thinking I might dedicate an illustration just for them...

More Shinto goddesses

I finally got around to finishing the triptych I decided to undertake when I finished Benzaiten. I'm not sure that I am entirely done with the whole ukiyo-e inspired style yet. I really enjoy the ethereal look, with the figures seemingly suspended in time and gently considering their surroundings. But for now, these are the deities I thought would complement each other nicely.

So there's Benzaiten/Benten, as previously introduced...

Then it's O-Ryu the willow goddess with Konohanasakuya-hime the cherry blossom goddess. I liked the contrast between the two trees/goddesses: An sturdy, tall green tree beside a dainty flowering tree...

Lastly, there is Amaterasu, the Sun goddess. I wanted her to look colossal, as the Sun shines on the entire world, but I wanted her to still look nurturing and poised...

Even though I didn't carefully plan how each picture would look when finished, I quite like the effect when putting them all together. There is a nice spectrum of elements going on with the goddesses and the colour schemes, Benzen being water, O-Ryu and Konohanasakuya earth and Amaterasu fire...

What I've been up to...

I did mention before that I'm not so great with personal blogs... but even I am willing to concede that a year between posts is pretty pathetic. Oh well. Where was I... I did end up drawing a fair bit, much of it being for a single children's magazine in Austria. They're fun little stories about a grey fox and a chipmunk. There is a small pile of them, as I do several illustrations per issue. So here's a quick little compilation, just as proof that I wasn't slacking offline quite as much as online ;)

DIY- Medusa geisha Halloween costume

In compliance to this year's Greek mythology Halloween theme, my costume was the Gorgon Medusa but with a Japanese Kabuki/Geisha style.

I was lucky to find lots of helpful elements to build the rather elaborate costume around. I wanted a very lavish kimono in tones of black, gold and red, to match with Jacob's Minotaur costume. A trip to the thrift store (Value Village) yielded a kimono-top dress and another large dress in the right colours for a total of $20:



I got a bit more fabric from the fabric store for about $40. A glossy black fabric to make the kimono's long sleeves, a rich golden fabric with dragons for the kimono's 'Obi' and some red trim ribbon:



After visiting several craft/dollar stores without success, I found some nice-looking rubber snakes in a toy store (no picture, sorry) and a basic black wig.

I found some neat yellow contact lenses, to finalize the Medusian look that could turn onlookers to stone, at www.fashion-contactlenses.com for a pretty good price. Their shipping was very fast too.

Putting the whole costume together was a somewhat haphazard affair, as I had about a week left and a busy little 3 month-old to entertain. I wish I could have made a more comprehensive tutorial, but it basically consisted of sewing the various parts (sleeves, trim, obi etc...) together. The kimono was assembled in two parts, attached with snap buttons, to allow me to nurse Penelope easily. An interesting observation was that Penelope seemed completely oblivious to my attire, full-face makeup and creepy eyes eyes: She just giggled and demanded her embraces and feedings as eagerly as usual :D

The final look:





Little Penelope also had a costume of sorts to celebrate her very first Halloween. She sure nailed the essence of jolly, carefree Pan:



... She got more enthusiastic once she got out of the car seat, promise ;)

DIY- Minotaur Halloween costume

This year, for Halloween, awesome paper-craftster Jacob (and my hubby) and I decided to go for a Greek mythology monsters theme. However, we were a bit underwhelmed by the usual plain toga idea so we thought of mixing other cultural elements to the costumes.

I picked a Kabuki-inspired Medusa and he went with a Venitian carnival Minotaur.

Here's the Minotaur in all its glory and we're pretty psyched about it! :D



Step-by-step:

First, Jacob made a rough structure for the bull head. I'm always impressed at how he can capture the basic essence of a shape with very little effort. Here' the bovine shape made out of a cereal box:



The horns were molded out of good old papier mâché and some fine wire for support:



Next, Jacob used plaster of Paris to solidify the shape and add more details. Since this is a functional mask and bovine eyes are too far apart to serve as seeing holes for a human, he added a few seeing holes on the front:



The finer details, like eyes and nostrils were made out of a baked clay-like putty (which was lighter than the plaster, as the mask was getting quite heavy), then glued to the plaster head with contact cement:



The final, fully plastered mask model:



It was my turn to paint the bull mask, Venitian style. I began by painting the whole mask with black acrylic paint to create a uniform base:



Then I used a sponge to dab some gold paint mixed with black for a bronze-like effect that would show through the other colours:



Using a warm, antique-white, I outlined the mask's patterns:



It was then only a matter of adding some finer details in gold, black and red paint:



And here's the final Venetian Minotaur mask!



My Medusa costume is coming along well; kimono, snake-wig and all... Pics coming soon!

Work in progress - God of Birds

I seem to have been dabbling heavily in mythological/god-like figures lately. It's mainly because I enjoy the allegorical quality of such characters: It's like putting a human face on wonders of nature and life.

With that in mind, I was pondering one night on the fact that, aside from some animist societies, we represent deities, nature spirits and allegorical figures as humans or, at least, partly human. Even Death, despite being universal and a reality for all creatures, is traditionally portrayed as a human skeletal figure (my own piece featuring Death coming soon ;) ).

Therefore, I was wondering whether our fellow animals would personify objects of worship as their own species, if they were so inclined.

To explore that concept, I began with the God of Birds. I figured that birds would probably come up with a sun-deity. Since birds tend to begin singing at dawn, many birds who flock do an impressive 'dance' at sundown and migratory birds rely heavily on celestial bodies to navigate (the sun being the brightest), I pictured birds celebrating a surreal, vaguely bird-like god in the shining orb.

This is a first sketch, entirely digital (as opposed to a pencil/ink drawing) and the style turned out quite different compared to my usual stuff: The God of Birds-