This is a bit of a sentimental illustration. We just bought Hera a dollhouse at a garage sale and she’s loving it. My sister & I had an antique dollhouse as a kid that we loved playing with… we had Sylvanians in the 80’s, my sister had the bunny family, I had the mouse family. Somewhere along the line with moving around over the years we got rid of much of our childhood toys, and I didn’t think of them until we bought this dollhouse.

So with my own daughter coming up to dollhouse age, I went a bit crazy searching on eBay for vintage dollhouse furniture (can’t bear to stuff a dollhouse full of plastic furniture!) …and I teared up when I discovered the exact mouse family I used to have. I won the auction, and was thrilled to find it was in mint condition, one mouse even had the original sticker on the bottom dated 1985! I have to remind myself they are for HERA, not ME! (Am glad Hera’s too little to have her Christmas present spoiled by me posting this on the internet)

Ok, I had never heard of a “freegan” before being sent this link to “50 Freegan Living Blog Posts We Can All Live From.” So I Wiki’d “Freeganism“, and the super short definition of a freegan would be someone whose diet is comprised of tossed away vegetarian food… so basically, dumpster-diver-diners.

While I’m more than a bit grossed out by that idea (there’s a big difference between day old food sold at the bakery/grocery store and sifting it out of the bin beside someones snotty kleenex!)… I’m more than ok with the idea of salvaging others trash, which a lot of the Blogs listed in the above article are about. From rescuing clothing to furniture, the freegan attitude can be part of your lifestyle (even if the diet isn’t!)
I’ll put my hand up and admit to being a dumpster-diver-at-heart, having rescued discarded wood and metal from scrap piles for artwork (the above painting was done on scrap wood I found in the bin, and the paper from this Hera’s Stuff Bébe illustration was also recovered material.) There’s something super satisfying about making artwork out of something that was free and thrown away. Not to mention damaged and scrap materials often have a wonderful distressed look which gives paintings quite a bit of texture and genuine character. If you’re keen to become a freegan artist but you’re a little shy to poke your head in someone else’s trash bin… check out Freecycle, where people constantly list items free for the taking.

Here’s another of my drawings for my diary of Hera’s stuff, a little Oilily top with Peruvian doll pattern. I used a completely different “medium” for colouring this illustration digitally… used my iPad! I’ve been loving my iPad (my 30th birthday present) and I use it more than my imac now due to its portability and super functional apps.

So this weekend I took the plunge, broke the bank and spent $7.95 to buy Sketchbook Pro, the acclaimed sketching app for the ipad by Autodesk… and LOVE it. I’m not much of a digital illustrator, but I do like to colour my pen/pencil drawings on occasion on the computer.

I gave it a go yesterday for the first time, and must say it’s a much nicer experience colouring on screen with my fingertips than it is using a digital pen and looking up at a monitor. Not to mention was pretty cool being able to draw on my iPad away from the computer snuggled up in bed! It’s extremely intuitive to use, and aside from a few pages showing you how to use the program I didn’t need to look up any supporting documentation to figure out how to adapt it to my illustration style. From start to finish, the app is very simple to use, I just :

• • Dragged the scan of my “real” pen drawing into an Album in iPhoto I’ve dedicated to artwork.
• • Plugged my iPad into the laptop to sync with iTunes.
• • In the iTunes iPad Photo tab I set it to automatically sync all images from my iPhoto artwork album every time I connect my iPad. (Note : the Sketchbook Pro app has the ability to “Add” images to itself from iTunes, I just didn’t find it worked. The “Send To” button DID work however, which is how I later got the PSD file out of iTunes)
• • Once the sync was done, just opened up Sketchbook Pro and clicked on “Open Image” icon to access my photos on the iPad, and found the album titled “artwork” and found my sketch.
• • From there I found it similar to working in Photoshop, in that you have layers to work with (and can set the opacity of, or adjust to multiply or screen), a myriad of drawing tools. I found I kept wanting to do more (like cut, paste, use the magic wand…) to finish up the illustration, but found the drawing experience itself very enjoyable. Especially zooming in and moving around the image, felt much more intuitive than using keyboard shortcuts and a digital pen.  Felt a bit like finger painting… without the mess :)
• • Once I was all finished with the colouring, I was able to “Export Layered PSD to iTunes,” and from there send it to my desktop.

So far, I really like Sketchbook Pro. My only complaint is the small canvas size (1024×682 at 72dpi)… would love to be able to work on actual hi-res sketches. For any illustrators using an ipad, it’s well worth the spare change! I’m waiting to hear from my brother with his experience using a touch screen stylus in conjunction with this program… if it’s good I might buy one as well!

Has been a while since I’ve done some illustrations for my Diary of Hera’s Stuff… was feeling like doing something creative for myself after being off sick with morning sickness, having a couple projects keep me busy (greeting cards & cheese packaging, which I’ll share once the packaging is launched!), and surviving cold & flu season! Anyway, with Aussie winter coming to an end I’m putting away clothes that don’t fit our growing girl… here’s one of the outfits I drew, was a cute little knitted sweater picked up second hand knitted by some other little girl’s grandma.

Every Sep 13th is marked by kids around the world are celebrating the world’s best storyteller, Roald Dahl… and if they’re not celebrating, they should be!

I fell in love with Roald Dahl’s stories in the fourth grade, when my teacher, Mr. Ridley, read to us Danny the Champion of the World… I’d watch Mr. Ridley’s mouth as he read as he always had slobber strings stretching and breaking between his teeth… but even with such distractions I thoroughly enjoyed Dahl’s books and was hooked!

So read a few Revolting Rhymes, have a few snozcumbers*, or download your own activity pack on the official Roald Dahl Day website here. Happy Roald Dahl Day!

*According to the Roald Dahl Wiki : “The Snozzcumber is a fictional foodstuff featured prominently in this The BFG. The Snozzcumber resembles a cucumber but differs in various respects. The snozzcumber varies from nine to twelve feet long. It is striped lengthwise black and white, with wart-like growths all over its surface. It, along with Frobscottle, is the sole diet of the BFG until he has captured the man-eaters.”

Guest article by Ink and Media

Instead of throwing away used ink cartridges have you ever wondered what else you could do with them? Wickford based ink cartridges retailer Ink and Media Ltd with the help of Midlands based artist Faith Pearson have fused a love of sci-fi and film with ink cartridges. The result is a series of recycled art pieces that recreate a range of cinematic moments - including King Kong, Godzilla and even a model of the Star Trek enterprise. The scenes were all created by hand and a series of background installations were designed before the final pieces were complete.