Life with Girls Fairy Tales Book

It's been a busy week, as I'm painting like a crazy person, trying to get ready for Green With Indie this coming weekend, and Wizard World-Saint Louis in three weeks...and keep up with freelance work at the same time. So tonite, with my strip written but not yet drawn, I was faced with the decision of giving you a quick and potentially very bad strip, or some art. I decided to go with the art.

This is the inked cover of the Life With Girls Fairy Tale book that I've been working on for most of the past year at Handmade Family. Featuring 12 stories and 36 illustrations, it's been a big job filled with delays, but we're in the final stretch now, and it's coming along great. We're all really looking forward to releasing it in the next month or so.

To see more images from it, you can check out the Handmade Family Blog, or my Instagram feed.

Questioning

It's a tradition that we watch our friend's kids for Valentines day. Grown-up time comes at a premium these days, and we all have to grab it when we can. It's fun having boys in the house every once in awhile, and the girls sure give them a run for their money. The youngest boy is in the 3-year-old questioning phase, which is pretty funny. A question for everything, he get's his answers and then is on to the next thing. This is one of those days that I wish I had video of the older one at that age. Boy howdy could that kid ask some questions! Ha-ha-ha!

 Dragon taunting from redherringjeff on Vimeo.

100 themes - silence

Being a stay-at-home parent and freelancer is mostly awesome. I get to spend my day with the girls, playing, taking care of the house, going outside. I never have to set my alarm clock, and I actually KNOW my children.

Most of my work, I do at nite, but the kids do still have nap time...usually. I put the kids down, make a cup of tea and deal with e-mail, phone calls, and hopefully get some design work done. Sometimes though, phone calls come to me in the afternoon. Sometimes I leave my phone upstairs. My phone always rings LOUDLY, throwing off the delicate balance of quiet time, ha-ha-ha!

Building a home - animation from redherringjeff on Vimeo.
Being a stay-at-home parent and freelancer is mostly awesome.

100 Themes - Smile

Smile SHOULD be an easy theme. The problem is that there are so many instances in our day to choose from, that it's hard to narrow them down. Both girls love to play, and love to make jokes, smile and laugh.

My first idea was to do a little strip about lunchtime, and a habit we have of holding up pieces of food and saying, "You have a cheese beard!" or whatever the food is. Then I thought it may be nice to show when Amy comes home, and how happy the girls are to see her. I was all set to start drawing it when Abby came up and asked me to draw something out of the blue...

"Dad, Do you think tonite you can draw a picture of me dancing? I want a picture of me dancing with all my skills." So I worked on this one instead from a video of her dancing at the Saint Louis Science Center First Friday event last week.

Dance from Jeffrey Johnson on Vimeo.

100 Themes - Misfortune

 

Olivia can be relied on to play quietly with blocks for a few minutes before wondering off to play with other things. Unfortunately, she's also known for her Godzilla impersonation, or Olive the Destroyer.

Both Girls love to make things, but Abby has gotten really into Crafting and drawing. She's making things from morning to nite. She also loves socializing, so we've started taking her to Craft-Togethers with our crafty friends in ShowMe Etsy and Fusion. She enjoys being around so many amazing, creative people, and making stuff.

On our way to Crafternoon last week, her little voice piped up from the back seat, "I'm glad my sister isn't coming with us. I don't like it when she wrecks my crafts."

Olivia is getting better about leaving stuff alone, but I guess some wounds heal slowly.

100 Themes - Insanity

I'm not going to lie. Getting up in the morning is hard. The kids are already wide awake and ready to tackle whatever the day throws at them. For me that sometimes seems like an insurmountable task. Luckily, they're pretty good about giving me a little space to shake all those cobwebs off.

It's a delicate balance though, because if I get distracted by little chores, read too many blog posts, or chat on FB too long, the morning will cease to stand still. I'll have two crazy, imaginitive, little girls clamoring for me to draw pictures or build the "tower of power" out of blocks, which honestly I don't think I'd trade for all the quiet mornings in the world.

Happy New Year!

 The 2012 holiday season has been one of firsts for me. It's the first time in a long time that I've looked forward to them, planned for them, and enjoyed them. I really have my family, Abby's excited anticipation, and our great friends to thank for that.
     On New Year's Eve, I'd gone shopping, and came home with popcorn, marshmallows and hot cocoa (Olivia says Hot Doh-Doh) for our snack as we waited for midnight...or whenever. We set up the papason cushion in the center of the room for the girls to lay on while we watched "Brave" in our own little movie theater with the lights out. It was a great, quiet, family nite, ending with the noise of banging pans on the front porch as we welcomed the New Year. Looking back on the memory, it feels like a little bright spot in a sea of possible futures. :)