Yay! My first IF in a long while! It is soooo good to get back to painting. I've been doing digital illustration lately and although it's fun in its own way, it's just not the same.
I've had the song The Heart's A Lonely Hunter (by Thievery Corporation Featuring David Byrne) in my head for the last few days and about the only line I can remember to sing from it is 'welcome to my spaceship' - so this came out. Hope you like!
We recently had lunch with some friends of ours who are jewish. They have a little one year old girl, so it was easier for us to go to their place. One of the great things about having friends with kids is that they always have lots of children's books! I fell in love with this one in hebrew, Hannan the Gardener by Rinat Hoffer. They got it in Israel and it isn't available here, so my friend let me borrow it for a while.
Hebrew books are cool, they read right to left so they open backwards. I just loved the colours in this one, the shapes he uses, the texture from the watercolours, and that the book itself is square. And the story is just beautiful too. I can't read hebrew but from memory it goes a little something like this....
This is the cover. See that little heart in his pocket? Hannan plants it and out grows a heart-tree.
He picks from its bounty...
and gives (ok sells) them to his friends. They each buy things of their own colour (there are about 4 spreads of friends buying fruit - red, yellow, green, pink....)
He says inside each fruit is something special.
They each find a heart inside their fruit and in turn grow their own heart trees!
It's so beautiful. I'm really in love with it. I keep picking it up and leafing through it over and over again. I think the black lines were done with a pen but they're just so perfect they almost look digital. He must have had a slew of rulers and circles to trace at his disposal. I also love the textures he creates with the watercolours. You can see a detail of that in the back cover here. I'd like to try doing more of that personally.
Well I haven't painted for over a month and I'm aching for it. I just (today) finished a digital illustration project, so as much as I love my computer, I'll be happy for it to gather a bit of dust so that I can get back to brush and paper. Well, except for my blog postings of course! ;-) I'm hoping for a good I-F topic to get me back into the swing as well... so more soon....
Well it's been quite a while since I've posted - things have been busy once again. The holidays flew by (what holidays?) and projects that were postponed from December came back to eat up my spare time. But more about that later.
My holidays were mostly spent at home, fixing up and cleaning our poor little house which was very neglected in the last few months of 2006. Yes, scrubbing bathtubs, cleaning shelves, weeding the garden, dusting and deodorizing, that is how I spent my vacation. A lot of work (okay, in between family get togethers, smoked salmon & champagne and bbq's, I must admit) but it was all worth it.... I'm no longer embarassed if someone just 'pops over' unannounced (unless it's 2pm and I'm still in my pyjamas, as sometimes happens when I'm working at home)
But I digress... the best part of this whole cleaning frenzy was fixing up my studio, which i started doing in October or so - got it to functional stage, but not aesthetically pleasing stage. Well now it's all done, including shiny new 20" iMac, and I love it. Love it love it love it. love. it. It feels so good to be in here. I keep saying to A, "I feel like a real illustrator now!"
so here are some before and after pics:
my old G4, and table I used for drawing. (2 pics stuck together - that's why the table looks askew!)
"shelves" for books made from old wooden boxes
and, ta dahhhh...... (click to see bigger)
oh so much better. so much more room. notice the bench top on the right which runs from wall to wall (thanks A!) and houses my scanner, computer, drawing board, supplies and light box, with a bit of extra horizontal surface for piling things on, which is always good!
here are some closeups of other stuff
it's not a huge space (though not small either) but I think I've made it work and I feel really happy with it. Plus it's just in a nice part of the house - though the last photo was taken standing in the kitchen; my studio doesn't actually have doors which I often lament - but the good part is it ajoins the lounge which has french doors out onto the garden. So it gets lots of light, is warm, and just feels good!
still haven't gotten back to Illustration Fridays yet but I am working on a few other fun things which I hope to post soon....
xx
ps. just for the record, it is really hard to handwrite on a computer, even using a wacom tablet. My writing isn't THAT bad, I swear!
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