Inktober Week One

What if little Stevie had not answered his Fisher Price telephone the day it rang for him?

I like to at least dip my toes in the waters of Inktober, and do a few of the daily prompts. Above is Inktober 1st and below is Inktober 4th.

Magic Bookcase

This is set to be the month of November in my calendar. The leaves will disappear. 

The world turns cold and gray. What better time for the magic of books?

This piece started in my 2012 Sketch-A-Day book (heaven's sakes I loved that book and why haven't I got myself another?) to illustrate the word - EXPLORE.

I went on to do this next piece a few years later:

And the one at the top is just me saying (as per usual) "I can do better."

I Love September

     This is my newest version of September and it has come a long way.

The originals were on my blog in September of 2015. You can click HERE to give them a peek.

I wanted to rework it for my calendar into a piece more related to children's illustration.

The first day I pulled it back out to work on I ended up with this:

Then this:

There were things about it I liked, but all in all I considered it a hot mess. I stewed on it for a couple of weeks, then had the idea to add the sunshine. Since this is digital and was in several layers I added the sunburst over the background layer but behind the tree layer and it all just popped! I scrapped the first girl and puppy and started over, eventually giving up all the work I had put into the picnic items. It's not an easy thing to throw work away but if it's not working, you just have to let it go.  

U F O

This is a cool, digitally altered photo I found online to go with the following bit of very short flash fiction I recently wrote (below) for a prompt shared with my writing group.

UFO

     They hold hands, staring at the ceiling as sweat evaporates from their bodies. They’ve been married 27 years and have never made love with such ferocity, nor at the same time, with so much tenderness that both of them had cried.
     At last she speaks. “What have you heard?”
     He answers as though in a trance. “Everything is in chaos.”
     “But, what did you hear?”
     He turns on his side to face her.
     “I saw the president speak. He gave a prayer.”
     “I saw that too! I nearly came unglued when he cried.”
     “What?! He cried?”
     “Right after his prayer.”
     “I didn’t get that far. Several of us at the office were hovering around one computer. I was crowded out, but I’d seen and heard enough. I just wanted to get home to you.” He brushes her hair out of her eyes and pulls her closer. “Have you spoken to the kids?”
     She shakes her head. “Everything went off after the speech. There’s no television, no phone, no internet.” She shudders and her breath accelerates. She’s falling apart and nothing can stop it from happening.
     “I can’t reach my babies!” she wails.
     “Shhhhh.” Her husband holds her, rocks her, tries to maintain his own sanity for both their sakes.
     She eventually rolls away from him and reaches for an old tissue on the nightstand. “What do you think they want?”
     “I’ve no idea, my love.”
     He moves until he’s behind her. He wraps his arms around her middle, her back to his chest, her warmth against a terrible coldness closing in on him. Two people alone in a world of seven billion people, who are also alone.

   
     I read this to my group last week and as I neared the end I heard my friend Brenda catch her breath. As he "moved behind her" she thought he was going to wrap his multiple arms around her!!!  Haha! That would have been a great way to end it!

   

Willow House

  As I mentioned in my last post, I recently finished writing a manuscript for a middle grade novel. I wanted to a have a book cover design in my portfolio so why not my own book?! This is a mixture of an acrylic painting (below), with a little digital help, including the addition of the paint pour from my last post.

  The next image is the first rough draft I did on my iPad. I'm going to set it all aside for a while because I think the best result lies somewhere between, and like the manuscript, it needs time to simmer.

Paint Pour

 This is a paint pour - acrylic paint mixed with Floetrol, poured in various color layers into a plastic cup and dumped over a canvas. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the gist. If you're interested in learning more, there are a lot of online tutorials or you can check out this book Paint Pouring: Mastering Fluid Art by Rick Cheadle. I did a few experiments on small inexpensive canvases and below is how one of them turned out:

 I uploaded this photo to Procreate on my iPad and played with it, adding a bit more black and a few highlights, etc. to get the image at the top. I'm wanting to experiment with more and possibly incorporate these beautiful designs into my illustrations! 

 This is the kind of messy project I want to do in my studio, not the dining room table. I've been waiting for my basement studio to dry out from all the rain, but it's been damp with rain puddles down there for months. I may have to go get myself a pair of rain boots and just do it.

 One more thing before I go, something I want to put out into the universe - I finished a manuscript yesterday for a middle grade novel!!!! I don't have co-worker authors to give me a high five. My phone didn't automatically ring with publishers and agents begging my attention. No big check appeared in my mailbox. But, I did it! Yay!!!