Illustration Friday: Total

I found that getting a sense of action using a style that tends to be static is difficult. I'm not sure I'm all that happy with this one. (The hieroglyphs say "Total air." The cartouche at the bottom says "Heather" and is based on a cartouche I had done when I was in Egypt.)

Illustration Friday: Wired

This one took me a little longer (Probably because my first priority this weekend was the 3 year-old birthday party...) But I was happy I found a way to fit it in with the Egyptian theme. (My initial vision for "wired" was of an ADHD brain...)

Illustration Friday: Hide

When my husband saw last week's illustration he said, "It would be cool to do a series like this of them doing everyday 'now' things." (I'd been complaining to him that I'm incapable of developing a "personal style." even though I've been drawing/painting for over three decades) The other part of it is that I find exploring multiple styles so fascinating I can't give up the others to focus on just one. However this is a detriment in marketing myself as and illustrator and there I feel a quandary. It was heartening to read the IF interview with Von Glitschka ( http://www.illustrationfriday.com/inter … tschka.php )

where he said he let the project dictate the style.

But I bet I need some samples of maintaining a consistent style in my portfolio to prove I can do it.

(The hieroglyphs in this one say, "Ready or not here I come.")

Illustration Friday: Communication

Communication has a long and complicated history. How to get something so transient in an image? I've just read Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS and REINVENTING COMICS ( http://www.scottmccloud.com/) He talks about Egyptian hieroglyphs and tomb paintings as early "comics." Regardless, they were a form of both written and pictorial communication at the same time. So I'm trying to portray how communication reaches both backwards and forward in time. (Plus I think Egyptian art is really neat. Seeing the "Palette of Narmer" in the Cairo museum is still one of those stand out moments in my life.)

And just to prove the mind boggling array of the web, I got a hieroglyphic translation for "Once upon a time" from this web site: http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/nomhiero.html

Illustration Friday: Gravity

I'm not completely over the theme of spilled liquid yet. I started with the child and something was missing. Guess I still feel out of control in my own relationship to gravity.

Illustration Friday: Crash

When I read this week's topic the first thing that came to mind was the image of water crashing to the floor. Probably not a typical reaction but I'd just received word that the vacant house we are trying to sell in another state had been seriously flooded. Somehow (still unknown) someone had stopped up the sink, turned on the tap full blast and left it running.

Illustration Friday: Sprout

This was an interesting topic. Once it took root in my mind it continued to grow...and grow. I started with the pretty typical concept of a sprouting tree. This then blended with how my son is being taught to organize his ideas for writing in school using a story tree. And then I thought about the thought process behind creating a story. So I also took this as an illustration challenge to create a character and try to keep that character consistent through a range of expressions. Harder than I thought! Any advice?