It almost feels like spring...

Today actually felt like spring outside here this afternoon. As long as I forgot the snow I'd seen this morning. Ugh. Still dropping snow on us! But I was running around downtown without my jacket in a t-shirt. In and out of stores, of course, so it hardly counts!

I've been awol from cards for a few days and I'm starting to feel guilty about it, especially as I offered to make 15 cards for my friend and I still have 9 to go! Hopefully this weekend will be productive without hot cross buns to slow me down! I've also been working on drawing some images which I will share as soon as I work them into cards. My mother kept reminding me that I should draw more. To explain, in high school I was sure I wanted to teach art. I loved to draw especially and took an extra art class before regular classes started. I even applied to university initially in Visual Arts. That did not last as all the forced creativity just felt wrong. Slowly over the years I have drawn less and less, especially since I started making cards for my creative outlet. I usually draw with pencils and do alot of shading, and almost exclusively faces. Not the usual choice of images for my cards! After I kept finding stamps that I wanted but just couldn't justify, especially considering shipping adds up nastily, I had the light go on: "Why don't I just DRAW images that are inspired by things I like?" Yes, one would think that as a PhD student I would be smart enough to have thought of this long ago. Apparently not. I have since drawn a giraffe (after I drooled over numerous giraffe stamps), a cat in a party hat which I have done in two versions with different expressions, started a cow jumping over the moon, and stared a frog (to be varied into frog prince, princess, holding flowers, etc). I have gone outside my usual comfort zone for drawing into more cartoon/animated types of line drawings finished in black ink that I can trace against my window onto cardstock. Now the problem is finding what images I want and getting them to look the way I want. But then I get to trace and colour them! That's where all the shading comes in! And someday I'll actually do something in my usual style, probably a fairy as I am amazingly inspired by the work of Brian Froud. (In case you're wondering, he did the conceptual design for Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and is the artist behind Lady Cottington as well as the book Faeries.) Amazing artist, to say the least. After looking through his books I find it difficult not to be inspired to try a variation on a pose he's done. Almost like having a live model, but easier because everything is already flat!

Hope to have some new pictures to post soon! Hope everyone has a great day!