Couple more pics. Showed another class the massively lovely Harmony page and it was a lot of fun to see a new group pick it up and play. To explain how it worked I pretty much did this pic and just finished it off over lunch. Hurrah

Wish, wish, WISH it did vectors so it could upscale but hey ho, you can’t have everything and that’s like saying it’s a shame David Beckham can’t play the saxophone. What Harmony does well it does brilliantly

Man I should be on commission

That said it’s a free piece of art playfulness so commission wouldn’t buy me the luxury Sushi I crave.

Also: team Pixelmator – if you ever read this please get this into a future iteration of Pixelmator Would love to have things like undo, shading, higher detail etc…

(incidentally – finished in Pixelmator as always )

Ahhhh the class of ‘09. Sometimes a good year, sometimes not so much. I look back on these guys with mixed feelings but a huge amount of happiness and joy.

I’ve been thinking about ex-students and the Book Draw a lot over the past couple of weeks. I’m coming up to the final months of, possibly, the last classes at my workplace and a number of students have been asking if I’ll miss them. Spoiler warning: (I will) and who knows what will happen in the future. I do know that some of the guys and gals I have worked with this have have been entertaining an fun to be with.

Which leads me to these guys: the class of ‘09 Big Book Draw version. It was a wonderful day (click on the Guildford Book Draw tab to the right for more details) but a project that often nearly broke me. For a start I had huge dreams – as with any project – and I really must learn to stop doing that. One of the dreams was to have a launch party with a difference. I made forty copies of the book (and since each copy took at least an hour to make that’s a fair chunk of time when times always a pressing). The idea was to have a night out where people who had helped on the day could be given their copy of the book at random. The next step on this project is to wrap each book in brown paper and post them to recipients and give them to those more local. It was a lovely plan. Added to that I wanted to have a storyteller there on the night to read out the story of the Dragon and his Princess and the Fish’s Library (a story I’m quite pleased with ) and it would all be lovely.

Of course it wasn’t to be. I tried but hey ho, some dreams fly too high and the reach of my net feels very limited. But I do still intend to send the books off to people, at random, and with a bit of luck the people who receive them will photograph themselves and their book and email that back to me. Then, and only then, will I know who got what.

It’s been a funny old road but one that’s kept me amused through some dips last year. Now I’m onto the semi-sequel (Wombat and Wambot) which, again, is a youth work venture and, again, will be drawn by teenagers who I’ve yet to meet and can’t wait to do so, and hopefully I’ll look back on the project in the Summer as I wrap it up and smile as much as I do with the mini-books above. We’ll see. I’ve yet to learn to stop dreaming but, since the dreams help me with the ideas in the first place I can hardly complain when the rough goes with the smooth I suppose.

In other news the final, FINAL copy of Sylver went of to the publisher today for print and release in early May. More on that when I have the time to type but youth work calls for tonight so it’s time to plod onwards on a different path…

He needed his own background so here it is…

All routes seem to be leading to this at the moment. Again a work in progress but made me smile…

And yes, I know that he wouldn’t hang like that if the strings from the parachute wee in the back of his head but hey ho, it’s a doodle.

Probably another case of life informing art. Nice colours though…

While I’m at it. The moderately amusing thing about the poppies is that they’re made of coffee cup stains.

So once (most of) my list was done today it called for a little bit more Pixelmatoring. To wit:

and:

Neither are exactly where I had in mind where I started but they’ve been fun to doodle on regardless.

Strange how little things turn the bigger ones around. Last week was not ‘the best week ever’ for a variety of reasons and yet sitting here playing with Pixelmator things seem more fun and less complex. That’ll change tomorrow with a list of things to do as long as my arm but hey ho, tonight is fun. Wifey’s happily making soft toy mushroom houses (long story will post pix later) and watching Lark Rise so I get to sit in the kitchen and doodle more Pix pics.