After an overwhelmingly successfull Earth Hour ‘08, it’s exciting to think of what could be in store for Earth Hour ‘09, to be held on March 28th at 8pm everywhere! 58% of adults in Australia’s capital cities participating in Earth Hour this was quite impressive, with many coming up with fun ideas for how to spend Earth Hour with their families. I think my favourite idea was two young boys who formed “Earth Hour Police” and went door-to-door asking their neighbours to shut off their lights. I wonder if they wore special badges :) Maybe next year I’ll do some Art In The Dark!

With only 3 illustrations left, the finish line is in sight for Charline & Lauren’s story, “Tartan Meets the Queen!” Here’s one of the most recent illustrations completed, I’m hoping to have the rest done in the next few weeks (depending on how long my baby Hera naps each day to let me draw!)
To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Teaparty
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | A few finished illustrations
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Sketches
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles

Well after a little navel gazing, I’ve updated my Top 10 Illustrations list…

Tom Krause |”The Little Boy’s Smile” children’s book illustrations

(Read on …)

My favourite comic strip artist, David Malki of Wondermark, is having a zany “make-something” contest, check it out! We’ll see if I have time to whip something up between burping Hera and illustrating Charline & Lauren’s storybook.

Just finished anorher illustration for Charline & Lauren’s story, “Tartan Meets the Queen.”

To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | A few finished illustrations
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Sketches
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles

I’m pretty stoked as my most recent children’s book, “The Lottle Boy’s Smile” by Tom Krause, has gone to print at Trafford! I’m not too embarrassed to say I’m proud of this book and am happy with how the illustrations turned out! I was given quite a bit of creative freedom in the project, thanks to the generous author, and I think my enjoyment in the project reflects throughout. Will post once it’s printed & available online.

To see other posts about “The Little Boy’s Smile,” check out :

• • The Little Boy’s Smile | All Done!
• • The Little Boy’s Smile | One last sneak peak…
• • The Little Boy’s Smile | Another Sneak Peak
• • The Little Boy’s Smile | Step-by-step painting
• • The Little Boy’s Smile | Sketches

It seems that everywhere you turn, products and businesses are going (or claiming to go) “green.” Among the ambiguous buzz words is “zero waste,” which implies that your product or service creates no waste from its infancy to death… it is created from renewable materials and is able to be reused or recycled, avoiding landfill.

But how realistic is it for an office (or art studio!) to create zero waste? The GreenBiz article, The Zero Waste Office : Is it possible?, addresses that question, and gives some great achievable goals that we designers & illustrators can adopt into running our own green creative studios :

“At this time zero waste is more of a journey than something that can be achieved,” said Larry Chalfan of the Zero Waste Alliance, a non-profit consortium of educational, government, business and other groups. “Too much of the things we need simply aren’t ready for us to truly be zero waste. That said, a lot can be done, and many organizations make the goal ‘zero waste to landfill’ and then further define it to mean over 90 percent of waste being diverted into reuse or recycling.”

For more info on how to be a greener designer, check out these other tips & posts on my blog!

I managed to sqeeze in 20 minutes of sketching from the couch yesterday for SketchCrawl 18, while holding my 6-week old daughter. Sketching babies is one of those things you have to do really loosely… they just wriggle around too much to get too focused on the details, so quick gestural drawings are all I really had time to do. Was fun though, will be keeping my sketchbook closeby to do more scribbles of her cuteness.

Be sure to check out some of the fabulous sketches up on the SketchCrawl forum, such as the one above by Marc Taro.

We also had a nice time for Earth Hour last night… hung around with family and chatted in candlelight for my birthday. Was kind of fun not having the lights on, with the occasional cheeky comment from brother-in-laws about the fridge light being on whenever someone went for a snack!

This is a bit of fun : The HowDesign.com forum has an album up where you can upload a pic of your desktop, and the designer who receives the most votes wins a free subscription to How Magazine… very cool!

This Saturday, March 29th, aside from celebrating my 28th birthday, I’ll be satisfying my creative and green sides by participating in SketchCrawl 18, followed by playing a game of Settlers of Catan by candlelight during Earth Hour from 8pm-9pm.

Earth Hour is an event set up by the WWF, where they’ve encouraged thousands of people worldwide to turn off their lights for one hour to increase awareness of the need for action to act against global warming. Just switch your lights off between 8pm-9pm your time… and if you’re really enthusiastic, switch all electrical appliances off, too. Then take a moonlit walk outside and watch the stars with friends, or just take a catnap for an hour. For more details check out the Earth Hour website. (They’ve got a cool web-banner in which your name floats by once you’ve signed up, ta-hee!)

SketchCrawl 18 is basically the artist version of a pub crawl… meet up with a bunch of friends / artists, and sketch like crazy all day! Combine it with some good food (or even with a pub crawl!) and unique locations to visit, then visit the Sketch Crawl forum to share your sketches! Our sketches will be up on my blog as well as on the SketchCrawl forum under Adelaide.