I’ve never really ventured into the world of patterns before, what do you think?
Can you believe it, you can buy my art on a bathmat. Wish it went with the colors in my house! You can find a variety of pillows and stationary at my Society6 shop, and slightly different selection of housewares and stationary at my Redbubble shop.
Considering that I have blogged for years, and blogs are all about one’s own self, writing a bio should be easy, right? Right?
Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice! When asked to tell “a little about myself” I instantly forget everything I have ever done or accomplished. I’m starting out as a real estate agent, and at our first firm meeting we went around and introduced ourselves. I don’t know why I didn’t think that would be a part of the meeting, I could have prepared a statement (which I would have forgotten half of, but still).
I gave perhaps the shortest summation of my other passions, which completely did not convey the passion or degree of investment I have in them:
The epic web serial I’ve been publishing for almost three years? “I like to write, and I write fiction.”
The store I started last November selling my art? “I draw and paint, too.”
My lifelong passion for riding and training horses on the side? “I also ride horses.”
Yeah. Opportunity missed.
But perhaps, like the spiel I have developed for my day job, I can develop and memorize a spiel for my passions. Something to turn to when my mind goes blank.
Something more like this:
“I write an epic web serial that releases new episodes on Mondays. Eventually I will edit the series and publish it as a book. I also paint, and sell my art as prints and other products online. In addition, I have been riding horses since I was a kid, and hope to ride and train more in the coming years.”
That’s a better start, anyway.
Tried painting some beach scenes with my watercolors. Man, color mixing is a real art form. I’m much more familiar with acrylics, and I have a bajillion colors to choose from. Very rarely do I need to do anything more complicated than tinting the colors. Time to grow as an artist!
These are scenes from my favorite beach on Cape Cod.
Also, rocks are hard. (haha)
Every afternoon, when I was a kid, I would turn on the radio at 3pm (sometimes earlier, depending on what novel was being read aloud on the 2:30 program) and spend the afternoon listening to stories. Some of them were books read aloud or dramatized (Sugar Creek Gang, some program that started “If I could paint a picture”) others were original. I also loved listening to Adventures in Odyssey, an original show produced by Focus on the Family. I generally preferred stories to music–though I love music, too, now, I still love a good story.
It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I jumped at an opportunity to work with one of the creators of Adventures in Odyssey on a new original audio drama, and it has now been released! It’s called Iliad House, and it’s about a boy who lives with his uncle on an island off the coast of VA. Oh. And time travel.
Believe it or not, audio dramas are great for kids. Audio dramas engage the imagination–even today’s kids, who are accustomed to video. You can listen while you color, play with blocks, or fold laundry (you know, depending on who you are) and you don’t have to worry about keeping one eye on the screen. Plus, all those articles about screens being bad for you? Not a factor here. Car ride bonus: No car sickness from watching a video in the car (or is that just me?).
Anyway, give it a try! You can listen to the first episode for free on our site and if you like it, you can purchase the rest of the series on itunes, Amazon, or our site.
Full disclosure: This project was actually completed in 2013. But it’s still pretty epic.
There is that one picture of an AT-AT made by a baker in CA that has dominated the gingerbread geekdom and it really made me want to try making a geeky work of gingerbread myself. I’m really not sure if it were me or Zorro who said we should make it, but I got in the supplies, called in Zorro’s siblings, and whipped up the dough. I also came up with one twist for our AT-AT which solved the problem of structural soundness.
He was a happy AT-AT, and he tried to go ice skating.
Zorro made a schematic, then he and the Minstrel spent forever measuring and cutting pieces. We decorated gingerbread cookies while it baked, and then the gluing and waiting and then finally decorating took place. We started working on the schematics at 1 in the afternoon, I think they put the finishing touches on around 11 that night!
I’m so excited for how it turned out!
We had some leftover dough and made the shield generators, and tried to make an x-wing, but it came out more as an imperial shuttle. It tried to ice skate, too.
Merry Christmas!
