Game On!

We have decided that instead of a generic board games night (yawn), we are going to have a Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit tournament. We played it at our last board games night, and it seemed to be the one game that brought everybody together in a fun competitive way. So I painted some props--the game elements, plus Harry Potter specs--for the flyer. These feel a little boring--I tried to think of a way to snazz them up a bit, but I'm drawing a blank (so to speak). They'll do the trick for the flyer, I guess.

I thought I'd put the game pieces in one corner of the flyer and Harry's specs in the opposite corner. We'll see if it works.

Books!

I realized last week that I needed a new illustration to go on the cover of the Reading Logs for this year's Teen Summer Reading Program, since all the books I did last year are beginning to age (their sequels are out, or everyone has already read them). So 20 minutes before closing on Friday, I frantically searched the New Books shelves in the teen section for books that might be familiar or recognizable to some but were fresh enough to be intriguing to most. (They're so new that I have only had time to read two of the five myself.) I laid them out on a table and took a couple of shots with my cell phone camera. I did the drawing over the weekend, but didn't get to painting it until today.

Here's the drawing, which shows what was defined and what got drawn/painted in with watercolor. (Also, what parts of the drawing were unintentionally obscured!):

I realized a couple of things as I moved through the painting--there was some bad planning with putting the two blue books right next to/on top of each other; and I picked some challenging covers to illustrate! Also, I could have arranged them better in terms of seeing more of the covers on the underneath ones.

But...despite not being satisfied with several key elements, I'm so far behind that I'm not going to rearrange or reselect and start over--as it is, this painting took me more than two hours! I realized, from this one, too, that I really need to start painting these things on actual watercolor paper instead of continuing to do them in my sketchbook--while that paper is pretty forgiving, fixing things like transparent shadows is impossible without overworking the paper, and these really needed some fixing! Oh well...

Here is last year's. It was a little better color-balanced, and the layout was more compact.

Stay tuned for the final few TSRP illustrations...

Cinema Sign

Even though movies are one of our least popular events with teens at the library (for some reason we haven't quite fathomed), we usually show a few for summer reading club, just because they're easy--stick in the DVD, put out some snacks, and you have a program. This year, however, we have decided to show only one (and are having the dickens of a time deciding WHICH one), but that still means I need a "cinema" sign for the event publicity.

I had the same problem this year that I had last--the inherent drama of a movie theater sign is that the neon and white lights appear to best advantage in the DARK, but I don't want to do a big dark cloud behind the sign, because it overwhelms everything else on the page. I tried painting one without the drama of the dark, but still tried to convey neon. It's a bit overworked, and I also don't know how successful it is--I suspect not very. It's a little bland, to my eye. I'll show it to a few people and see what they think. Maybe I will give up on the fancy sign and just use type.

Micron pen, watercolor.

Here is last year's, when I did everything in primary colors plus green. I have to confess that that one felt awkward to me as well.

Book Café Reborn

Book Café was such a huge success last summer that Anarda and I have decided to make it a regular feature of the Teen Summer Reading Program. So once again we will hold four sessions of Book Café, and everyone who comes to three of the four gets to choose a free book from our stash.

They also get to book-talk to each other, and they get to meet some authors. So far I have lined up Mary McCoy, a Los Angeles Public Library librarian who wrote a wonderful noir teen mystery set in the 1940s called Dead to Me. We have high hopes for a couple of local authors whose books some of our teens have read in book club, but I won't mention names until they're booked.

And, not the least, they get Book Café refreshments! Coffee didn't go over real well--American teens don't seem to start drinking it as early as they do in some other countries--but cocoa and cappuccino are immensely popular to go with their cookies.

Even though we are doing the same program again this year, I didn't want to use the same illustration from last year to advertise it, so I worked up a new look and feel for the Book Café "logo" for this year. A little more sophisticated, with more muted colors, but fun, I think, mostly because of the name done in "syrup" on the surface of the café latte!

Micron pen (but in sepia tone instead of black), and watercolor. This is the second time I have used this cup and saucer for an illustration--I was initially terrified by the level of detail, but if you just suggest what's there without being slavish, it works.

Here's last year's:

I can see a few places I need to touch up and re-scan on this year's, but as usual, I couldn't resist putting it up the minute the paint dried!

Breakfast out

This morning I woke up just in time to make it to the chiropractor's for a tune-up during his one-hour Saturday morning session. After, I decided I'd treat myself to breakfast out. I was trying to think where to go, when I remembered the picture I drew in my sketchbook for Valentine's Day of my neighborhood coffee shop that had never merited a return trip, so I decided I'd give it another try.

Nothing has changed at Heart's Coffee Shop. And I mean nothing! Still looks exactly the same as it did 30 years ago when I moved into this house; still run by two cranky Chinese ladies and a cook; still features mediocre service and dishwater coffee; and still as busy as if it were a much better eatery!

When I got there, no one was sitting at the long counter, but all the tables but two were full. Since I wanted to draw the counter I asked for a table; the waitress directed me to one, but because of the view, I stated a preference for the other. We had to argue about it--she kept waving me to the table with no view in the corner, and I kept waving at the table with a good shot down the counter, in the other corner. Finally she threw up her hands in exasperation and seated me where I wanted to be.

The entire breakfast experience was surreal; seated in front of me was a middle-aged couple who giggled so much throughout their meal that I assume there was some marijuana involved at some point shortly before this breakfast. Seated next to me at four tables shoved together were two families--two couples and their five children--who were devout Christian gun dealers. No, I'm not kidding. I listened to their conversation while I was drawing and waiting for my order to come, and it ranged from how much ammunition they sell during hunting season, what to do to make money in the off season, and how, when they had a disagreement with a vendor, they asked the vendor to "pray on it and get back to us."

I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on my sketch. The food turned out to be okay--the scrambled eggs were dry, the hash browns were well done just as I had ordered them, and the toast was hot with plentiful butter. The waitress glared at me when she saw I was including her in my sketch! By the time I was done with it, a party of 12 had come in and filled up almost every seat at the counter, and an old man and his dog had taken the table where the waitress tried to send me, and were sharing his bacon. I would have loved to stay and make another drawing with the seats populated by heads and shoulders, but people were waiting for my table, so this one will have to suffice.

Micron pen, watercolor.

Here is the picture of the exterior:

Getting ready for Summer Reading

It's that time again. Actually, it's well past time, but I've been MIA from the library for about 10 weeks, between physical therapy for a knee injury, a particularly tenacious flu that has lasted a month now, and some other health concerns, so I'm running incredibly late for getting started on Teen Summer Reading. But (since I am obsessive-compulsive) despite the fact that I'm late, I'm still planning to do illustrations for all my flyers. I have assured Anarda (which is mostly true) that making art for the brochure and flyers isn't work for me, it's fun.

It's also not quite as daunting as last year, because we are scaling back a bit on the number and variety of programs. (See health concerns, above.) Book Cafe was such a success last year that we will be repeating our plan to do four of those, so that's just one illustration; and we have four or five other programs, max, for which we will need flyers.

The theme this year was problematic, because the State Library and the American Library Association insist on connecting the theme for summer reading to things that don't really relate very well to reading! This time it's the Summer Olympics, so everything is supposed to be about health and activity and games. But if you know anything about kids and teens who actually come to the library and want to sign up for summer reading, it's that they're not generally the athletic set (those teens are at tennis camp and swim practice), they are the ones who think a summer spent sitting in the corner with a good book is a summer well spent! So we are struggling to come up with thematic programming, which means using an exceedingly loose interpretation of "Get Your Game On."

One program we are doing, at our Northwest Library where there is no auditorium so the programs have to be outdoors in the adjacent park and parking lot, is directly related to athletics: We have hired a group called StuntMasters to come out and present a BMX Bike Show, with stunt riding and ramps. We think this program will appeal not only to teens but to their (terrified) parents and younger siblings, so we anticipate a good turnout!

Here is my interpretation, for the flyer, of a BMX rider catching some air:

I'm trying something a little different, inspired by the art of a Facebook friend--a monochromatic approach to the illustrations. My plan is to pick one, two, or at most three colors, plus grays, to render each of my subjects, and give each flyer a different color spectrum to make them stand out from each other. Next is a new interpretation of the coffee cup and books for Book Cafe, in warm browns and rose-red.

This is LePen and watercolor--Cobalt Blue, Payne's Gray, and a little mix of Burnt Sienna with an unidentified rose color I had in my palate for the skin tones.

More to come...

New days in March

I'm still not feeling entirely healthy, so I haven't been keeping up with the drawings, but last night and this morning I was inspired to do a couple of them.

#11, SOMEONE YOU KNOW:

I have had an ear infection for 2.5 weeks now. The antibiotics are done, and the hearing is slowly coming back, but my ears are still full of fluid. (The doctor did say it would take about three weeks to fully dissipate.) Yesterday, my chiropractor told me about a trick to drain them faster. It's an old wives' thing, but at this point I'm willing to try anything!

You cut an onion in half. You heat it up really hot so that steam and onion fumes are coming off of it. You wrap half the onion in a thin rag (like cheesecloth or a thin dishcloth) and hold it close to your ear (and right on the ear once it cools off enough). The theory is that the onion fumes, combined with the heat, go down the eustachian tubes and thin out the fluid, which dissipates faster. So today I tried it, and I actually think it might be working! If nothing else, though, the heat made my ears feel better. 

While I did the second ear, I snapped a selfie, and then I painted it. I call it, "Me, with onion, amazed." LePen and watercolor, about 30 minutes.

#13, WOODLAND:
It's daffodil time at Trader Joe's, when they sell bundles of daffodils for $1.49 apiece. I always splurge and buy five or six bundles, and put them all over my house.

Since we are supposed to be challenging ourselves with new media, I used some Prismacolor markers that I recently bought but have never used. Green first, and then yellow. I used pencil for the vase, because it is gray, and because I wanted it to be unobtrusive below the vibrant daffodils.