A Test of Character

I left my latest copy of Computer Arts magazine lying around, and Nico, our 8-year-old, grabbed it. She quickly found the article on tips for creating a character, and decided she wanted to make her own character. So I told her to make a small sketch, and I would work it up in Illustrator for her.

She must have been in a literal mood, because she returned about fifteen minutes later with a drawing approximately 1/4 inch high of some small, cute animal. It was a black and white ink drawing, which, after some prodding, she told me was named Superbear.

So I began making the character in Illustrator, using basic shapes to imitate her drawing as closely as possible. Or, at least I thought I was doing it as closely as possible. "No Dad, the head is an oval, not a circle." "The body is a square, it's not a circle." So, multiple adjustments later (and making sure the hair, in particular, was exactly to her specifications) I asked her what color she wanted Superbear to be. Keep in mind that what I got from the beginning was only that 1/4 inch black and white ink drawing. The real fun began when she told me she wanted the body (which I had made from several merged shapes) to be half black and half pink. Let's just say it's the weirdest gradient I've ever had to make.

So, without further ado, here is Superbear:

Fabric and Family

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was born in Germany. He died when I was in the seventh grade, but I've always felt close to him somehow. I think it might be because of all my relatives, he is the one I most physically resemble.

In high school, we had to complete a family history project, so I found all the information I could about Poppet's family, which wasn't much. But what I did discover is that when Hitler came to power, my great-great-grandfather shipped both of his sons out of Germany--one to America and one to Australia. My great-great-grandfather owned huge textile factories; my great-grandfather was sent to America to learn more about American textile manufacture. This didn't happen, however.

Maybe it's some errant gene, but I've always found myself fascinated by textiles. Not clothes, per se--mainly the highly patterned types of textiles that go into furniture, wallpaper, etc. Last summer I found myself creating patterns that would make interesting fabrics, but then I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. I started learning about screenprinting, but that seemed more suited to single images, like t-shirts, and not for repeating patterns. I gave up, more than a little frustrated.

This summer, as I began to prepare for a new course I'll be teaching this fall, Digital Illustration and Typography, I wanted to make a side-by-side comparison of drawing in Illustrator and in Corel Paint. But I couldn't think of anything to work on, so I grabbed one of my oldest son's books--a collection of drawings by anime artists. I worked on a couple of figures, but I kept getting drawn to the work of one artist in particular, who placed his characters against these highly patterned backdrops. I abandoned the characters and starting working on the backgrounds instead.

About the same time, I stumbled on an article in ReadyMade Magazine about an illustrator who had been commissioned to design printed fabric for the furniture in a children's art center. Unfortunately, the article didn't include any information on the manufacture of the fabric, and I found myself getting frustrated once again.

Luckily, I had to revise my book order for the fall. One of the texts I had chosen had gone out of print in the US, and the publisher sent me a pdf of a new title. I didn't want to search through the pdf for the ISBN number, so I went to Amazon and did a search there. And after I got all the info about that book, I saw the list of recommendations. Among them was a book on digital textile printing. I don't know how I didn't stumble on that particular combination of words during my previous search, but plugging them into google produced a mother lode of useful returns, including some great companies for outsource printing, Spoonflower in the US () and Stoffn in Germany ()

And now I am eagerly awaiting a test swatch of my first fabric from Spoonflower. Here's a peek at the pattern:


Needless to say, I can't wait.

Explosions in the Sky

What a weekend! It began on July 2, which was Isobel's 12th birthday. After years of having everyone be out of town on her birthday, we decided to postpone her party for a week. But in place of the party, we brought everyone over to our friend Sandi's house. Her neighbor puts on the biggest fireworks display in the county, and we more or less had front row seats. I spent the hour running up to the fireworks taking pictures of the clouds and the sunset. Haven't gotten around to doing anything with those images yet. But I did have fun taking images of the fireworks themselves. This time around I used my telephoto lens, so things are a bit crisper than last year.

July 3rd took me out of town to Oswego, where Isobel and I attended the bon voyage picnic for her trip to Australia. I'll post some of those pics closer to her departure time.

July 4th found us at Trout Lake, as Ginger's family's camp. Between the two picnics I've really gotten in touch with my inner George Hamilton. Or should I say my bottle of aloe is now my bff. The Norwood fireworks display was a bit anticlimactic, especially since all the kids were way overtired by that point.

July 5 has found me in either a heat-induced stupor or torpor. Whatever word best fits lying prone on the breezy front porch all evening. I did manage to muster up the energy to process some of the fireworks images. I've been thinking for a couple of weeks now about contributing to an art project being run by some of my colleagues. They purchased an old cigarette vending machine and have turned it into an art vending machine, featured during the summer Artwalks in Saranac Lake. Nifty idea, but the art pieces have to be small enough to fit inside a cigarette box. My original thought was to use my Superman leaps image, as I already have a screen. It would have been easy enough to print out a run of twelve for the machine. But the dimensions would not have worked without rotating the image into portrait orientation, and I just didn't like the composition.

So instead, I'm processing 12 images of the fireworks into small art pieces I'm calling Skylights. Here's a preview of all 12 together in a collage:



Each segment is 2X3. I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to print them--I'm going to try some giclee prints and some color laser on black paper first. All for now.

Erma and me

Hello my long-lost friend...
Having recently learned of people making a mint by blogging, I've decided it's time to expand on my facebook stati and get a-pecking here on our very own BB&B. Trying to keep posting upbeat was somewhat of a challenge - plus I'd run out of steam/ideas for what to write about. Now I'm just gonna let it all hang out, considering our ongoing experience with comic writing, thanks to the Norfolk Hepburn Library. Among the 10 or 20 books I took out earlier this week is "Aunt Erma's Cope Book" by Erma Bombeck. It's retro, about 3 decades, and for lack of anything better to do (hehe), Chris decided to read it. This morning, I awoke to what sounded like sobbing, only to find that it was - Chris was laughing so hard he was crying. He's been reading sections of it to me all day, and it clicked that perhaps reading about our crazy life, foibles and all, would be kinda fun. At least it's fun for me to write about how there's something in the toybox that talks - but only when you are far enough away that it's impossible to find it.
We have an ongoing battle these days in the Sweeney household - it rages on weekdays between the hours of 3:30 and 4:30. It's the battle of the scentses, meaning that for some reason, the god who gave me the ability to smell cigarettes from a mile away is also the same god who gifted me with Nico, Sterling, and Troy - 3 human beings who, individually, can put another human into a coma with the stench of their feet. I wish I was that human, but alas, I am awake to endure the hour-long accusation, denial, and subsequent relenting and foot-scrubbing that is our collective reality during said time period. If it were not for that damn PE class, I would have thrown away every last pair of sneakers, but as it stands now, I may resort to throwing all the sneakers and newly purchased sandals away. If only I didn't fear being labeled and uncaring, cruel mother for sending my children to school shoeless... My next tactic involves an aerosol can of antiperspirant for the offending feet and a bleach-dip for the shoes. I sure hope the battle is won and I can focus my energies on what to make for dinner when there's no food in the house - even though it's Friday, and on Wednesday we spent $300 on groceries for the week.