STEM Guides Cover and Interior Design

Sometimes when working on projects at my company we don't get to design a whole series of books. We have to split up the series and work on a few books each. This series was interesting to work on because of the subject of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). We had to do a bunch of research to figure out the proper pictures to go with the text. I really enjoy when I get to work on any of the space titles. I love doing the photo research and finding all the beautiful space pictures.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 19 ~ Honoring Your Inner World

This lesson was taught by Danielle Daniel, and was about honoring the now. I loved that she ended up with a girl in meditation. The biggest take away that I got from this lesson was to create your own stencils. I cut the cloud shape out of a piece of thicker paper and used that to paint the silhouettes of the clouds. I really enjoyed working on this and like the way it came out. I still have a ways to go on my figure drawing and still need to work on the shape of my mouths. This lesson also taught me I should sit down and meditate more often!

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 17 ~ Gratitude

This lesson was taught by Tascha Parkinson and the theme was Gratitude. In this lesson we were taught to draw a big headed girl. The boyfriend actually said she looks like a bobble-head. I approached this one a little differently than what was taught. She used acrylics for the background and then on a separate sheet of paper drew her girl and painted with watercolor. She then glued the girl onto her background. I had just purchased some gouache paint and decided to give it a go. I think I tried to use them to much like watercolor, but I don't think it came out to bad for my first time with the medium. The other thing we were supposed to do is write the things we are grateful for in the background. I was going to write them in the spiral on the background. I decided to not write on it right now for a couple of reasons. One I really do not like my handwriting. Two I was having a hard time even thinking about things that I am grateful for. All that kept coming to mind was my Mom and how it was hard to feel grateful, when she is just laying there in a nursing home. So I decide to leave that part out. I noticed that I tend to leave the writing part out of a lot of these journal pages.

I really think this came out super cute. Although I am noticing that I need to work on the mouths of my girls. The look crooked and I'm not sure I like the shape of them.

July Adventures

July has been pretty hectic. We have been trying to get our Master Bedroom/Bathroom prepped for the installers to come in next week and start installing the tile. I will be showing pictures and writing a full post about that.

I only took one sky picture this month, but it has a little rainbow in it so that should make up for it!

I have actually been painting and drawing quite a bit this month. I hope this feeling sticks around.

I purchased some art supplies from Dick Blick. I have been researching using gouache paint and wanted to give it a try. I also purchased these water soluble crayons. These are neat because you can color with them and then take water and brush and they work like water colors.

I have been doodling a lot at work lately because our computers have been running slow. This first one is kind of funny we have a font at work called Hamburger Heaven so I drew this to go with the font.

This one I was playing with an idea that popped in my head.

This was a study sketch for my next LifeBook lesson.

This is the final sketch for my latest LifeBook Lesson I am working on.

I purchased this Dylusions Art Journal a couple of months back and finally started using it. I drew this from my little sketch from my work doodle above. I still need to put some paint on it.

I also finished a couple of my LifeBook lessons. You can check those out here and here.

I just finished the fourth book of the Outlander series. These books are so long they are taking me just about a month to finish them. I am so intrigued by the story of these people that I can't stop now. This fourth installment was good. There were some slow parts with some parts where I couldn't put the book down. There was one point I had to keep reading to find out what happened to a character and once I found out I had to put the book down for a bit. My heart was racing so fast trying to figure out what happened to this character.

That is all for this month. I am hoping I will be just as productive next month.

2014 Library Catalog Cover

This year's catalog is off to the printer and I can't wait for it to be finished to see the final product. I always love when our books or catalogs come back and see my designs printed. I realized I am about a year behind showing off some of my Graphics work. This was the cover I designed for last year's library book catalog.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 15 ~ Quirky Animals

I had so much fun with this lesson. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. This lesson was taught by Tamara LaPorte of Willowing Arts. I really love her fun whimsical style. When this lesson came up last year I already knew what animals I wanted to do. The lesson encouraged us to list out how we are feeling and use an animal to represent those feeling. I decided to go a different route and chose mine and the boyfriend's astrological signs, in both the Chinese and from the traditional zodiac. When I sketched out the animals they came out a bit more cutesy than I planned but I went with it. The boyfriend would have liked to see them look a little more fierce. I will have to work on drawing different facial expressions. I had so much fun working on these I didn't take any progress photos. I did take some photos of the finished piece from different angles.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 14 ~ Journaling Collage

I am really trying to push through these lessons. I have decided that if I watch the video and an idea doesn't come to me right away or I am not feeling called to the lesson or technique I am going to skip it. So I decided to skip Week 13 and move on to Week 14. I loved this lesson taught by Dyan Reaveley. I just love her fun funky style and quick techniques. Her Dylusions sprays are so much fun to work with, and the colors are so bright and bold.