This month I’m sending out my first issue of Delicate Paperwork, my email newsletter. To celebrate, I’m offering a giveaway to my subscribers. I’m giving away a set of five notecards featuring my artwork from this past year.
To enter, subscribe here and leave a comment on this post using the same email address. If you’ve already subscribed, no problem, just write a comment below to enter. You have until January 16th at 8 am EST to enter and then I’ll randomly draw a winner and announce it on my blog that morning.
Recent mental stress has left me in a creative rut, so I have nothing very interesting to post at the moment. What I have been doing is refilling my “creative reservoirs.” Here are some of the things that I have enjoyed recently.
Flipping through old sketchbooks:
Ernest Shepard’s original pen and ink drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Browsing through the portfolio of illustrator Oliver Flores.
I hope everybody had a great holiday weekend. I had a really nice time myself and now I’m busy cleaning up the house and getting full use from some of my Christmas presents (Bejeweled 3 comes highly recommended). Below are some photos that I copied and pasted together of a desk calendar that I ordered from Snapfish. I gave them away to some friends and family for Christmas. I am really pleased with how my artwork looks reproduced and now I’m getting excited about some other things that I can get printed up. I will definitely make my own calendars from now on and maybe I will make some to sell in the future as well.
Last year, I had bought myself a set of the first three issues The Beany, which is the illustrated journal of Michael Nobbs. I enjoyed them and I am now looking to give them away to someone who will enjoy them as well. At one time in my life I wanted to hold onto all the things that I liked, but these days I just don’t have the space, and I’m trying to simplify all my possessions. I’ve never done a giveaway before but I think this would be the perfect thing to gift to one of my readers (and more fun than just throwing them into the box for Goodwill).
How to enter:
Leave a comment on this post with a link to a website, blog post, YouTube video, TED talk, or anything else that you find interesting. I’m not picky. The deadline to comment is Thursday, August 26 at 9 pm Eastern Time. Then I’ll randomly pick a winner and announce it along with my thoughts on your links on Friday, August 27.
I read the other day that Michael Nobbs is in the process of selling off his final 40 sets of the Beany for $15.95, so there won’t be too much time left to get some copies if you want to buy them brand new.
I’m not really huge into crafts and it kind of annoys me when crafters/artisans call themselves artists, but every now and then when I’m in a non art mode, I like to make these little magnets. It is fun to pick out the pictures when browsing through old issues of House Beautiful, and I like to give them as gifts in an Altoids tin. Whenever I visit one of my sisters, they have them all arranged in the coolest mosaic-like designs on their refrigerators.
The other day I was looking through the recent activity on my flickr account and I came across a comment on a picture I uploaded ages ago. It was surprising to me really, because it was something I did in my former life (notice I don’t sign my work this way anymore) and I wasn’t really expecting to see it.
Orin Zebest took this image I made of an “imaginary landscape”:
and used it for the background for this “imaginary postcard”:
I really like seeing the creative evolution here. When I originally made this drawing in 2008, I used this photo as an inspiration, then Orin used my drawing to come up with the postcard to use on his (really cool) wedding website.
Most things I read about copyright are negative, such as Google and other corporations in the US and UK lobbying to change legislation to profit from individual artists. Katherine Tyrrell recently wrote about The farce of the Digital Economy Bill, which is a really informative post about the situation in the UK. In general though, I think most individuals are respectful of others, and the Creative Commons licenses are a great way to allow others to use your work for creative projects like Orin’s wedding site. I don’t know that I could go so far as Leo or Michael and uncopyright all my work, although the concept is very intriguing. My default setting on flickr is to label everything “all rights reserved,” but I will soon undertake a project to reorganize my flickr page and I’m already looking for some pieces that I can release under a Creative Commons license. And certainly, if you would like to use a piece of my artwork for a project, drop me a line and I’d love to talk to you about it.
Cathy Johnson invited me to be a contributor to her new group blog, Sketching in Nature. You can read my introductory post here. Go check it out — there are a lot of really talented artists featured. I can’t wait to get started!
Mr Bean on the Diving Board, Lamy fountain pen and colored pencil in sketchbook, Jan 2009
I love Mr. Bean. I’m normally a very serious person but I find Rowan Atkinson (especially his Mr. Bean character) so funny. I paused the video at 3:13 to make this tiny sketch.
The highly esteemed Ces of Ces and Her Dishes awarded me with some blog awards, which I will now pass on to some other people. I think you are supposed to pass it along to 7 people or something [excessive] like that, but I didn’t get the instructions.
The “I xo your art blog” award goes to Stephen Hall. He’s based out of the UK and he does some really detailed work that I appreciate.
Next, the “Kreative Blogger” award goes to Kimberly Shaw. She paints lovely watercolor greeting cards of teacups (teabag included). I visit her blog when I feel like indulging my girly nature.
I feel like I have sort of dropped off the face of the earth lately as I have been so overwhelmed by all the work I have to do. Next year I am going to get my handmade Christmas presents done months ahead of time because I will never be able to do this again! But after Christmas I should have a lot of nice things to post…
Delicate Paperwork
Enter your email address below to sign up for my free monthly newsletter, Delicate Paperwork.
