It didn’t quite match the vision in my head but on the whole I’m pretty pleased with this card. The lettering is basically balanced and the cat is pretty cute. I got some very wonderful new art pens and all the fine lines are from that set, and then the thick ones are Sharpies.
Our school mascot is a lion and this card is for the outgoing librarian, who sadly had to leave yesterday. But hopefully she carries the spirit of the lion with her wherever she goes.
Somehow or other, I did it again: a literary journal written and illustrated by children. I used tax credit donations to pay for professional printing, which saved me about 5 hours and really provided a superior product. Although these books cost a little more than $7 each to produce. This year we have fiction, poetry, 3 interviews (1 real, 2 not), 4 songs (3 original, 1 a parody of “Eye of the Tiger” called “Nose of the Panther”), a very silly book review, and a lot of drawings is lions, plus a few other things.
Tuesday we had a release party and literary reading. The kids catered it so there were a LOT of cookies. We had about 40 people I’d say, which is not a bad turnout for a literary reading.
If you would like to support the arts and writing programs, you can visit this site: https://www.tusd1.org/donate
Select “Lineweaver Elementary” from the school menu and “Writing Program” from the item menu. If you are an Arizona resident, you can apply this money to your state taxes and even if you’re not a resident it’s still tax deductible.
It’s a bit pared down but my hands are still in recovery mode from the feigned glass windows (ultimately a ~30-hour job) and also it was 108° outside, the breezeway, where this bulletin board hangs. I use metallic paint pens rather than staples, because it’s easier and that cork is getting destroyed.
it’s the back of a lion. The Lineweaver Lions go back to school Thursday, and I drew a lion’s back. That is the whole gimmick.
i also knocked together another simple design so there wouldn’t be an empty bulletin board right at the beginning of the tour on parents’ night, which I’ll put in a separate post.
Just a little guy I made for someone else’s “character strong trait” display. There are 9 of these traits they want to communicate to children, one for every month of the school year. We added “kindness” so the weights could balance, plus we’re a “Be Kind” school. I guess they’re going to laminate the pieces and reuse then for a while, but it’s not my bulletin board so I don’t know the whole story.
As I was working, one kid informed me that, “there is this thing called heterochromia,” and that I should make a lion with different colored eyes. Then another kid told me that I should give this lion abs.
This is my most recent commission, finished a few minutes ago: the school logo (not my design, I copied it from another wall in the school) 5 feet high in the vice principal’s office. It took about 12 hours, not counting the time I spent waiting for the paint to dry before I changed colors.
It was nice that they paid me, since I don’t usually get paid for the work I do here (the only other time was the giant blue Morpho butterfly and parrot commission that was later destroyed by kids) even though it worked out to substantially less than minimum wage. At least I’m getting paid to paint.
it’s not my best lettering work, due to the fact that the wall is uneven in myriad ways and myriad directions, and also I’m not used to working on a vertical surface above my own head. But I think it will do the job, which is to make the vice principal look better when she’s in Zoom meetings.
Honestly the room look better as soon as I painted that cream background over the institutional gray of the rest of the office.
Anyway, it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
qwertyvsdvorak 