Ferocious

'Ferocious,' quickly done for this week's Illustration Friday's prompt. What that thing is I do not know. It looks like a floating peanut, and the kid doesn't look very scared. Not as scared as I am today,  in the messy middle of doing my overdue tax return. Aaargghhh...

Spring Stuff

I don't write much here about my online shops - not sure why, because it's a big part of what I've been doing for a year or so. Maybe it's because I wanted to keep this blog separate from all the promotion and social networking and hoo-ha that goes hand in hand with selling online. A kind of quieter place, where I could get away from posting about the latest greatest or not-so-greatest thing I've designed. Except for today - today I wanted to show a little bit of the other stuff I've been doing. This pattern was inspired by a bed sheet from the 1970's, found in a Tauranga opshop and taken home to live in the hall cupboard with the other residents of my ever-growing fabric collection. I usually draw everything by hand and colour it digitally - this time I did everything in Illustrator and played with offsetting three different layers to give the look of block printing. And speaking of printing, the onset of spring is making me want to go and learn some new things. Like printmaking, or painting. Something different and hands-on and a bit messy, for a change.

Boundaries

Illustration Friday theme this week: boundaries. Hmmm. We are having lots of pushed-to-the-limit boundaries at the moment. Smarty pants talking back and statements like 'You're not in charge, I am.' These days it's all about time-outs and consequences and half-hearted attempts at star charts. I suppose no rules seem particularly fair when you're seven, and will always be challenged. I remember constantly pushing the boundaries. I pushed as hard as I can, to see who would explode first, and then when I got a smack and sent to my room for eternity, I could suffer with the terrible unfairness of it all. So now when L says things like "You're too mean to be my mother and you're never nice to me and I'm going to run away forever and never live with you again," I know exactly what's going on!

The R Word

Photo: William Hall Raine / National Library of NZ on the Commons

I don't like rugby and I'm not in the slightest bit excited about the Rugby World Cup. It starts on Friday, and media frenzy is escalating by the hour. Every time you turn on the telly there's another glistening All Black striding towards the camera in slow motion. If I could be airlifted out of Auckland for the next six weeks, I'd be off in a jiffy, but as that's unlikely, I'm trying to look on the bright side. Is there a bright side? Well, the city's been tidied up in lots of nice ways. Shiny new art galleries, theatres and public waterfront areas have opened. All road works are banned while the Cup's on, and three and a half tonnes of kiwi, kowhai and pohutukawa-inspired fireworks will be lighting up the city on opening night. I discovered this photo today - it's a shot from the 1930s of rugby jerseys drying on a Wellington washing line. Seems like nothing much has changed, really!