Illustration Friday: Soar

Illustration Friday: Soar

Acrylic Paint

In August 2004, my 3 1/2 year old niece Hanna died of cancer (http://www.caringbridge.org/ms/hanna/). In November of that year on what would have been her fourth birthday, her friend Eli was with his family at DisneyWorld. He had the Disney Princesses sign a balloon with messages for Hanna and they released it in front of Cinderella's Castle. Eli's little brother was a patient with Hanna at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. You can see the photos from his balloon release at http://www.bens-story.com/disney.html.

Illustration Friday: Excess

Illustration Friday: Excess (The Allens)

Acrylic

The theme for Illustration Friday was "excess". I just finished painting this picture and it kind of went with the theme so I posted it. It is actually a joke. The middle school staff at my school had a White Elephant Gift Exchange (where you give each other tacky, weird presents). As a joke, I painted a "portrait" of two of our teachers (who both happen to be named Allen). It was a big hit at the party. On the left of the seated Allen is a blonde wig (he always jokes about his long flowing golden hair). On the right of the standing Allen is a picture of his parasite. At the party, someone took a picture of the two Allens in this pose holding the picture. I will try to post it when I get a picture of it.

Illustration Friday: Superstition

Illustration Friday: Superstition

Tempra Paint Batik

This week's theme is "Superstition". In Korea, magpies represent good luck. Supposedly if you see a magpie in the morning you will hear good news or receive visitors.

Method: I drew the bird on heavy paper. Next I painted all the areas with tempra paint except where I wanted it to be black. When the paint was dry, I covered everything with black ink. When the ink was dry, I put the picture under running water and rinsed off the ink. The ink washes off of the paint and sticks to the paper where there is no paint. After the picture dried, I went back and painted over some of the areas that looked too faded.

Illustration Friday: Hats

Illustration Friday: Hats

Cut Paper Collage

This week's theme for Illustration Friday was "hats". I tried to create a hat shop window. I had a few different ideas, but I wanted to make something out of paper. This is what I came up with.

Illustration Friday: Grow

Illustration Friday: Grow

Graphite pencil with a sepia colored pencil overlay

For this week's theme of "grow", I automatically thought of my kids. I decided to draw a picture from a photo of my kids when they were younger. I always loved this one. I think the drawing looks much better than the uploaded image. For some reason I couldn't get the coloring to look the same on the computer. The real photo was done in sepia tones, so I drew this picture in graphite pencil and then lightly colored over the top with a colored pencil to give it that sepia tone look.

Illustration Friday: Open

Illustgration Friday: Open

Graphite Pencil and Colored Pencil

This week's theme was "Open". I drew this picture from an old photograph of my daughter when she was a baby. I love seeing such a sweet little yawn.

It started out as a graphite pencil drawing. I then added a little colored pencil over the top to give it that feeling of an old colorized photo.

Illustration Friday: The Blues

Illustration Friday: The Blues

Acrylic Paint

This week's theme was "The Blues". I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee (home of the blues), so I had to paint Beale Street.

I went to see a Monet exhibit this week, so I was inspired to paint in a little bit looser style.

Illustration Friday: Momentum

Illustration Friday: Momentum

Colored Pencil

Every Saturday she vigorously starts cleaning the house. It doesn't take long to lose momentum. This is the story of my life. Maybe this is why my house never gets totally clean. I am a very good starter of projects, but I often lose momentum and stop before I finish.

If you are wondering why the "Windex" bottle is in a different language, it is because I live in Korea.

Illustration Friday: Alphabet

Illustration Friday: Alphabet

Pen and Colored Pencil

The theme was "Alphabet". Here is my daughter writing in one of her school books. I was hesitant to post this for my illustration Friday theme. It got negative reviews at home. The face isn't quite right. Oh well, I worked on it a long time and now the kids are hungry for their supper, so it will have to do.

Illustration Friday: Visitor

Illustration Friday: Visitor

Colored Pencil

This summer I was a visitor to New York City. On my trip to the Statue of Liberty, I joined everyone else there taking lots of pictures looking up at the Statue.

P.S. My sincerest apologies to my loved ones in this drawing. They look much better than this in real life!!!

Illustration Friday: Twist

Illustration Friday: Twist

Colored Pencil

I am a little behind on my Illustration Friday blog. I did some travelling, so I wasn't able to get anything posted. This week the theme was "Twist", so I drew the twist tie on a loaf of bread.

Illustration Friday: Suit

Illustration Friday: Suit

Colored Pencil

"To the disdain of women everywhere, it is swimsuit season again."

I tried drawing my husband's suit, and a suit of cards, and then I remembered that is about time to try on swimsuits ...UGH!

Illustration Friday: Your Paradise

Illustration Friday: Your Paradise

Pen

A bubble bath, a good book, scented candles, and Norah Jones on my ipod sounds like paradise to me. I couldn't quite figure out how to add chocolate in there.

This is my second attempt at this week's theme. My first one was a picture of my kid's laughing, but I didn't like the way it turned out. This was kind of a quick one because the week is coming to a close.

Illustration Friday: Cars

Illustration Friday: Cars


Graphite Pencil and Colored Pencils


For this week's theme, I drew a picture of some of my son's Hotwheels. I had several different ideas, but I didn't have a lot of time to work on it this week.

Illustration Friday: Signs

Illustration Friday: Signs

Pen and watercolor

I decided to illustrate the sign for "I Love You". If you click on the picture, you can see that the shading is made up of the words "I love you".

Illustration Friday: Citrus

Illustration Friday: Citrus

Torn Paper Collage

For this week's theme, I decided to do something a little different. I made a picture of lemons using torn paper. I wish I had spent a little more time on the lemon on the left. I am not very satisfied with the way it turned out. We are moving this week, so I should be packing. I had to give up on it for today.

Illustration Friday: Neighbor

Illustration Friday: Neighbor

Watercolor

"Good fences make good neighbors" - for this weeks theme I decided to paint a picture of my front gate.

Illustration Friday: Remember

Illustration Friday: Remember

watercolor pencils

I remember staying at the beach house last summer and the boys playing their gameboys in the stairwell.

I have been working on this picture for a while, I finished it this week, so I figured it would work for my Illustration Friday submission. Scroll down to see a different version of this same picture made with words.

Illustration Friday...Polar

Illustration Friday...Polar

Pen and Ink

This week's theme was "Polar". This is a picture of my daughter playing with her MegaBlock Penguins and Polar Bears. No, she isn't about to eat her toys with her giant man-hands:) Can you tell I have a few issues with this picture? Drawing with pen is pretty unforgiving, so I just have to live with the consequences. By the way, she doesn't really have giant man-hands, they just look that way in my drawing.

Illustration Friday...Fortune

Illustration Friday...Fortune

Graphite Pencil

This week's theme for Illustration Friday was "Fortune". I had a really hard time thinking of something to go along with the theme. One symbol of Good Fortune in Korea is the bat. Sometimes symbols like this are carved in the the roof tiles. This is the closest thing I could find to a bat (The middle section carvings represent a bat). Also, there is a dragon in the upper right hand tile. Dragons are also a symbol of good luck here. I may be stretching it, but it was kind of fun to draw anyway.

Illustration Friday: Green

Illustration Friday: Green

Watercolor and Colored Pencils

This week's topic was "Green". I thought of Korean celadon ceramics and green tea. Korean's love green tea, you can get all kinds of things with green tea flavor (cookies, candy, cereal, muffins, ice cream, and even green tea McFlurries at McDonald's).

Gameboys

Gameboys
Pen and Ink

Zoom in closely to see that this entire picture is made of words. This is a picture of my son and two nephews while we were at the beach last summer. They were sitting in the stairway playing gameboy.

In one of my classes, we were talking about values. You can use anything to create different values (lines, dots, patterns, even words). For one of their projects they had to draw a picture and use words to create the light and dark values in the picture. When you look closely you see all of the words, when you step back, you see a picture.I did this picture as an example and to work out any kinks my students might run across.

Most of the words say: Zeke, Andrew, Jack, Pinnow, cousins, gameboy, play, fun, win, concentrate, Gulfshores, Alabama, Beach. There are a few areas in the drawing where I wrote about our trip (kind of like a journal- who was there, where we stayed etc.).

There are a few problem areas in it, but my experiment worked out ok. I think I will try to do this picture again---normally (meaning no words).

Illustration Friday...Snap

Illustration Friday...Snap

Colored Pencil

The theme this week was "snap" . I decided to go the literal route and drew a picture of the snaps on my daughter's coat.

Kimchi Pots

Watercolor Pencils

This drawing was from a photo of a set of kimchi pots sitting outside a Korean vegetable restaurant near our house.

The Parkers

The Parkers

Watercolor Pencils

A friend from our school saw my picture of Zeke and Jeff and asked me to make a similar one of her family for a Christmas present for her husband. (I really need to start getting better at drawing front views of faces:)

The Boys at Busan

The Boys at Busan

watercolor pencils

This drawing was made from one of my favorite photos of my husband and son while looking out over the East Sea.

Abby at Gulfshores

Abby at Gulfshores

watercolor pencils

This is a picture of my daughter while we were at the beach. My only disappointment about this picture is that she looks so old. The angle of her when I took her photo makes her seem taller and thinner than she really is.

Illustration Friday... I Spy

I Spy... A ribbon, a rose, gears and arrows
Lace and a button, a tornado, an eye,
bubbles escaping into the sky.

This is my first contribution for Illustration Friday. The theme was "I Spy...". It started off as me sitting in front of the tv with a pen and my sketchbook and I just kept adding and adding to the designs. My 6th grade students have been working on textures in class, so I guess I just felt like creating lots of textures.