One Chapter Ends & A New One Begins

As we were finishing up our Sketchbook Project entry last weekend, I was relieved that we were able to make our deadline but I knew that we weren't out of the tunnel yet.

We had planned on creating our sketchbook digitally since day one, and our ultimate goal was/is to post our sketchbook to our site so that anyone can view it. Well, the time has come to get cracking on that task!

The Sketchbook Project tour is set to start in the beginning of March and we want to make sure that our sketchbook is up on our site and fully functional by then. We're not really sure how we're going to incorporate the sketchbook into our site so if you have any ideas we would love to hear them ;)

In the meantime here's a quick sneak peek at some of the characters in our story as well as the story's cover page. You can also visit our arthouse co-op page to see some actual photos of our sketchbook.








So as one chapter ends, a new one begins. Happy Sunday!

Alligators Can't Stick Out Their Tongues & Other Randomness

I will start this post by saying that I intended to write this last Sunday evening; however, due to unforseen events I have not had the time to do so until right now.

Secondly, let me wish everyone a happy 2011! It seems like just yesterday I was making New Year's plans and now here we are with the first month of 2011 half over. Wow.

Thirdly, the above mentioned unforseen events centered around our entry for Art House Co-op's Sketchbook Project. At the last minute we decided to go in a different direction with our sketchbook and while the sketchbook has been in our posession for several months now, our story was started and completed within the last 7 days. As an aside, we would not recommend this approach for anyone who values their sleep or their sanity ;)

But now on to the truly pressing matter and the real reason for this post: Alligators can't stick out their tongues.



No, that's not an alligator. That's our 4 year old cousin who shared this bit of information with me last week. I asked her where she had heard about this as I'm a pretty avid Discovery channel fan and this was the first I had ever heard of these issues surrounding an alliagor's tongue. Her response was simple: My teacher told me. My first thought was wow, I went to school for quite a few years and none of my teachers had ever mentioned this fact. My second thought was man, how do alligators eat ice cream? My third thought was what would an alligator be doing with ice cream?

Although the alligator conversation with my cousin lasted only a few moments it reminded me of something Henry David Thoreau once said:

"Every man is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him."

My 4 year old cousin reminded me that I don't know as much as I think I do and that we can all learn from everyone if we take the time to listen. Thanks to my 4 year old cousin, in 2011 I resolve to talk less and listen more. Thanks cuz ;)

Happy Sunday, more randomness soon.

Sketchbook Project :: Part 5

Well, things have been pretty hectic recently and truth be told we haven't made much progess on our sketchbook the last few weeks. The plus side; however, is that we started super early and have until January to complete the project ;)

With that being said, this past week we started to lay out the plot for our story. We don't have many sketches yet but the story is coming along pretty well. For those who may have missed earlier updates, our theme is 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' and we are going to create a comic inspired design!

Looking forward, this week we plan to continue working on the plot of our comic and laying out a bit of the storyboard. We'll keep everyone posted.

We'll be giving a weekly update on the project here on our blog as well as posting progress photos on our Arthouse Co-op page.

If you're participating in the Sketchbook Project please let us know as we would love to follow your progress as well!

Sketchbook Project :: Part 4

This marks the fourth week with our moleskin sketchbook! We started preparing for a craft show that's in a couple of weeks so we didn't have a ton of time for sketching this week but we were able to draw Jack's back.

Jack has been our mascot for some time now but surprisingly enough we never drew him from the back (I guess not too many people would be interested in a tshirt or sticker of his back). The plan was basically to reflect our regular drawing of Jack vertically and then fill in his face with hair ;) Here's what we came up with:



For those of you who had a chance to check out our October newsletter, we announced that we have decided to give our sketchbook a comicbook look!

This week we hope to start coming up with the plot of our comic and laying out a bit of the storyboard. We have to continue preparing for the show as well as finish an article design before its deadline so we'll see what we can accomplish ;)

We'll be giving a weekly update on the project here on our blog as well as posting progress photos on our Arthouse Co-op page.

If you're participating in the Sketchbook Project please let us know as we would love to follow your progress as well!

Happy Sunday ;)

Sketchbook Project :: Part 3

This marks the third week with our moleskin sketchbook; but sadly we don't have many updates to report this week.

After doing a bit of research online we were able to pick up a set of needles and wire that we plan to use when it comes time to re-bind our sketchbook:



I described what we're looking to do as far as the re-binding to a lady at the store and she basically said 'Oh, as long as you can sew a button you should be fine.' I've never sewn a button so we'll see how this one goes ;) If anyone has some sewing tips for sewing paper into a moleskin sketchbook we're all ears!

Hopefully next week we'll be able to make a bit more progress with our sketchbook.

We'll be giving a weekly update on the project here on our blog as well as posting progress photos on our Arthouse Co-op page.

If you're participating in the Sketchbook Project please let us know as we would love to follow your progress as well!

Happy Sunday ;)

Sketchbook Project :: Part 2

We've now had our sketchbook for one week. Let us begin by saying we have no previous sketchbook experience and our immediate reaction when we opened our moleskin was, 'Wow, this paper is pretty thin.' Well, the paper IS very thin. We tried a pen on a couple of the sketchbook pages and tore right through; so, we made our first big sketchbook decision: we are going to use thicker paper.

This first decision paved the way for our second big sketchbook decision: we will be creating our sketchbook digitally. Much of our work is currently done digitally so we figured it's only natural to carry this style over to our sketchbook. We will ultimately print out our work and have to figure out how to rebind our sketchbook (sure that will be fun).

Enough of this rambling though, this is what we accomplished this week:

Photographed a pen & pencil drawing of Jack that we had so we could get him onto the computer:



After we got Jack onto the computer we redrew him in crisp black and white:



We then gave Jack a bit of color:



That's pretty much where we're at for now but we're excited to see where this week takes us ;)

We'll be giving a weekly update on the project here on our blog as well as posting progress photos on our Arthouse Co-op page.

If you're participating in the Sketchbook Project please let us know as we would love to follow your progress as well!

Happy Sunday ;)

Sketchbook Project :: Part 1

This weekend we received our sketchbook for Arthouse Co-Op's 2011 Sketchbook Tour Project! For those not familiar with the project, you can read a bit more about it here.



The theme we went with was 'The Greatest Story Ever Told.' We've done a bit of brainstorming and have a few ideas to get the ball rolling ;)

We'll be giving a weekly update on the project here on our blog as well as posting progress photos on our Arthouse Co-op page.

If you're participating in the Sketchbook Project please let us know as we would love to follow your progress as well!

Happy Sunday ;)