Nap Time

I try to regularly draw things...Wait, let me start over.

Part of my daily routine, when I'm not just too crazy busy is doing warm up drawings and paintings. That's where the Watercolor Wednesday paintings are often made, as well as where I manage to get work done a little bit at a time on ongoing projects. It's also where I'm able to experiment with new ideas, techniques and materials.

Crow quills aren't really new to me, but honestly I don't use them that often. I thought I'd get them out the other day and play with them a bit. I've got a big project coming up that I'd like to use them for. I love the thick to thin that they naturally give line weights, and I have the feeling that as I use them more, I'll grow to love them a little bit.

This fox warrior is the result of me working out some ideas for another comic project that I'd like to do. The story outline is coming along nicely, and I'm excited to share more of it a bit at a time.

Who's Your Keaton?

It's actually kind of amazing to me after looking him up on IMDB just how few movies Michael Keaton has been in. Favorites of course are ones like Beetlejuice, Batman, and Toy Story 3, but films like Gung Ho, and Night Shift will always hold a place in my heart.

Right now, Olive's favorite is his voice role as the title character in Porco Rosso from Studio Ghibli. I think it's so funny the movies that she get's really into, because they're very different than what you would expect a two or three-year-old girl to want to watch over and over. The last one she was like this with was Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind. Both movies, while being essentially all ages appropriate, deal with a lot of complex themes. Things like this support my feelings that even though kids will accept any brightly colored piece of plastic we hand them, they really appreciate things that are well designed.

I Can Watch Whatever I Want

I watched a lot of movies that first couple of months during naps and feeding times. This was before they were big enough to have an opinion about what we watched, of course. These days I end up watching a lot of My Little Pony. In other news, we've discovered a station that has a lot of musicals on it on Pandora, including Disney and Broadway...So I've been listening to a lot of songs from Frozen and Tangled, and Wicked. They're really good. We saw Frozen over the Christmas break, and enjoyed it a lot. For a lot of people of my generation, I think Disney got a bad reputation during the 90's. There were just so many straight to video movies, and even the theatrical releases were only so-so. It's been great to see so many quality films coming out of the studio, and also to realize that they've been doing some fantastic things for several years now. Not just in animation either, the recent Marvel movies, Narnia, and John Carter were all incredible, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they have planned for Star Wars.

Baby Burritos

My mom "hates" it when I pretend like I'm freaking out because I "forgot" to do whatever it is that she's reminding me to do. Something that I've been noticing lately is that often a strip rewrites itself a little bit while I'm drawing it. It's kind of liberating to know that my notes and thumbnails aren't set in stone and the work can still evolve past the idea.

Speaking of Baby Burritos, that's what we call Mrs. Handmade's swaddling blankets. They're the first thing she made for our online shop, when we realized that the ones we brought home from the hospital were terribly small, and the ones at the store weren't much better. Our daughters were what allowed me to start staying at home, to save on day care costs, but those blankets were what set us on a sustainable path. I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, though.

It's Great Being My Own Boss

It really is great. It's funny now though, looking back at it how easy it was at first because I could mostly concentrate on the kids. I can hardly believe how lucky I am to have been able to do some of the things that I have over the last three and a half years, and how slowly we were able to start. BIG thank you to every one who helped us on the way.

This past Friday, I participated in the First Friday event at the Saint Louis Science Center and was interviewed for this little promo video from it. I talk a little bit about Handmade Family, and a little bit about the Zombie Panic board game. Pretty cool, huh?


F3: Board Games January 2014 from F3-First Friday Flicks on Vimeo.