An Educated Dragon

Tags

book, books, dragon, educated, education, library, magic, magical, read, reading, weekly sketch

I forgot to post this one here when I finished it quite awhile ago. This was one of the weekly sketches (done with my wonderful friend Sarah Bodnar, formerly Sarah Krzynowek) that I actually completed while that lasted. For awhile my husband, Ethan, and Sarah’s husband, Matt, would take turns coming up with a topic each week and Sarah and I would see what we could make of it. We’ll pick them back up again soon, but things got pretty busy for awhile, so we’re on break.  I have a couple more that I’ll be posting soon, too.

Let the Breeze In!

Tags

breeze, curtains, mediterranean, ocean, sailboat, shutters, sketch, spring, summer, waves, window

This is the more dramatic version of what I did this afternoon after recess with the students. When I stepped outside, I checked the thermometer outside the door and thought it was broken, because it read an unbelievable, miraculous 59 degrees! It was gorgeous, no one wore jackets for more than a few seconds after stepping outside, and we played cricket with upside down trash cans and a tennis racket. Recess sped by (a frequently rare occurrence) and when I came back inside, Ethan and I opened up several windows to let the fresh air in. This was a good call not only because there were still paint fumes from the kindergartener’s drip painting project, but also because it was relatively warm and smelled like the promise of spring (albeit a faraway one)!

I can’t wait for spring to come for real, but this was a very nice preview.

 

If Only

Tags

book, children, flashlight, fort, if only, nighttime, nine, pillow, pillow fort, reading

Just a quick sketch. It’s been a rough week.

A Room with a View

Tags

architecture, bridge, calm, canal, city, europe, european, evening, lamppost, las vegas, peaceful, sketches, trip, venice

I did this one over the summer, while we were in Las Vegas for a teacher training conference, and I was desperately trying to pretend I wasn’t in Las Vegas. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard once I figured out how to navigate without walking through the casino and just stayed around the Grand Canal area in the Venetian. There I could sit on benches in the fake but believable eternal twilight, listening to the water and hearing the gondoliers sing in accents I could almost believe were Italian if I wasn’t listening too hard, while people walked by, shopping and talking. There were even pigeons, which I tried to capture in a few other drawings I did over those couple of days. I need to scan and color the rest–I was pretty pleased with how the architecture turned out, as I’ve always been rather afraid of drawing much more than people and found that I actually really enjoyed focusing on the buildings and bridges, and most of all, lampposts!

It was actually, after awhile, a pretty peaceful trip, especially after our crazy rush to plan a wedding in a month or so and move across the country in three days once we found out we had jobs. In the mornings, while Ethan was in the conference (it was about Singapore Math, which I wasn’t going to be teaching at the time, and funnily enough, am now) I would sit on a bench with some coffee and just look around and imagine myself in Europe instead of Nevada. It was so quiet, before the gondoliers came and the tourists started their shopping. Very peaceful.

I don’t really know where that was going. I suppose I was just thinking about all the things that have happened this year and wondering what’s coming next, once the school closes and we have to move on this summer. That trip was kind of a calm between storms–moving and school starting–and I guess I feel like most of the rest of this year has been all storm. Although it is rather exciting to think about the upcoming adventure of moving and new places again, calm sounds pretty good.

The Teddy Bear

Tags

bomber, book, computer illustration, death, germany, historical fiction, illustration, markus zusak, pilot, teddy bear, the book thief, world war two

This is an illustration I did for “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak while in computer illustration class last spring. In this scene, Rudy Stiener, a German boy, arrives at the scene of a bomber crash in time to give the enemy pilot a gift just before he dies. I love this book, and especially the scenes in it like this one, that clearly, painfully, beautifully show the best of what it means to be human. Just for clarity’s sake, I don’t own the characters and the story, they were magnificently crafted my Markus Zusak. I just drew a picture of them.

At Heart

Tags

adventure, boy, child, childhood, imagination, knight, play, pretend, stick, sword, warrior

So it’s been quite awhile again. Although it’s been totally crazy, believe it or not, I do actually have a few new things to post, but before I get there I wanted to catch up on a few pieces I neglected in all the insanity of graduation, wedding, move, and first year teaching. I’ll be posting a few more over the next week or so!

This one was for computer illustration class on the prompt “sword.”

Be the First Katie Eder

So it’s been while. So long, in fact, that the name in the title of my last journal is no longer accurate.

I actually started this draft of a post right before graduation. At the time, I wrote this introduction:

I’m sorry for the delay in posting this, the final journal of my senior project.  With final projects completed and packing begun, I finally have a moment to post this while I wait for my school files to copy over from the server to my hard drive.  It’s weird doing this for the last time.

And it’s kind of weird doing this now, too, after so much has happened. It’s weird how different things are after school, out in the “real world.” Weird how little anyone mentioned about this very awkward and painful transition.  Weird how much I had forgotten about the things I learned from my senior project. Re-reading this journal did me a world of good amidst all the scary reality and confusion that is life post-graduation. I think in a way it’s a very good thing I didn’t have the time to post this that day when I started this draft, because I really needed to hear what my past self had to say today. Hopefully it can help you, too.

So without an further ado, the final journal of my senior project:

Senior Gallery Exhibit

I realize it’s been awhile since I posted, but there’s a good reason for that, honest! My Senior Gallery Exhibition was last week, and now that all the chaos of putting it up and taking it down has subsided I can return to a more normal senior project schedule, though even that is altered by the knowledge that there are only two weeks and two days (as of right now) between me and graduation.

Anyway, I only remembered as I was tearing down my exhibit that I hadn’t gotten a picture of me in front of it, so unfortunately it looks a bit sad with a third of the images missing.  The two puppets on the left are mine, made freshman and sophomore year, and the iPad is displaying “A Lot of Erasing: A Year’s Worth of the Thoughts and Drawings of a Perfectionist Artist,” which is the iBook I created to document my journey over this past year. I’m working on getting it published through iTunes, and I’ll be posting more about that later.

This is also an accurate portrayal of me in my most natural and comfortable working attire. I doubt I’ll ever outgrow my love of overalls.

I’ll have a few more things to post before this is officially over, but the gallery was the beginning of the end, in a way, and it feels very strange to realize that now that I have a minute to breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Fair Trade

Tags

apron, art, baking, cookie, cookie dough, couple, cute, fair trade, graphite, illustration, kiss, six by six, sketch, trade

Beautiful

Tags

art, beautiful, brown, children, daughter, dress, family, father, father and daughter, graphite, illustration, lace, lacey, love, moment, parent, quiet, sash, sketch