Illustration Friday – Expired

My thoughts during my walk to the bus stop this morning:

IF – Adjust

I'm a bit late with this, but I haven't had much time to sketch these days, because... I've been biking to work. Crazy, I know. I'm loving it so much, except for the fact that without the need to pass two dreary half hours sitting in a bus seat each day, my sketchbook doesn't get much action.

The Illustration Friday theme of 'adjust' was timely for me this week. I've been feeling the growing pains of my bike and me adjusting to each other. It's proving tricky to figure out where I now sit between this new sporty me and the normal me who likes to wear pretty heels and not squish my hair in the mornings. My threshold for sloppy clothes and a generally haphazard appearance in public has changed significantly, and I've found myself not embarrassed in the least in situations I would have been before. The thrill of cycling leaves me walking around in a happy bubble sometimes. Especially when it's so sunny and everyone around me seems to be in a friendly-neighbour mood like they have been this week.

But there are moments. Such as when I left Laura and Michelle's place last night after dinner, dressed in my normal office outfit, except minus the heels and with helmet and sneakers quickly slapped on and pannier in hand, to step into an elevator full of preppy, critical-looking people. I felt very conspicuous and not at all like myself. Ick. Then I toppled over while trying to get on my bike. The first inevitable fall.

Adjusting, it takes a while...

Butterflies, pants, and hamburgers

As promised, the comic I drew for Raisa's baby shower.

And it doesn't lie, she's having a boy! The shower was lovely – it was fun to hear others' pregnancy stories. Most impressive and strangely inspiring was the story of Sue's sister, who hopped on her bike and rode to the hospital after going into labor. Whoa.

Thanks for the opportunity to collaborate on telling your adventure stories Raisa! Can't wait to meet the little butterfly kicker.

IF – Talisman

[Click image to enlarge]

Earlier this week I was thinking about the word talisman, and that I didn't have any personal association for it. Then, this story surfaced. It had been floating around in my head for a while. I sketched it out on the bus on Tuesday morning, and just as I was arriving at work, had a random thought that maybe scratchboard would be cool to try for this. I haven't used scratchboard in who knows how long – high school? first year of art school? I bought a pack of ten sheets, and a couple of scratch tools, and started to play...

This went from a very rough sketch, to a comp with some quickly snapped photos pieced together in Photoshop, to working directly on the scratchboard. I'm excited to play around with this process some more, for other stories, and see where it takes me.

IF – String

Just in time...

Click image to enlarge

Illustration Friday - Worry

Illustration Friday – Geeky

On Saturday I wanted to go to the beach. Also on my to do list for the day was Illustration Friday – Geeky. I thought, great, there will be lots of geeky people at the beach I can draw! Hmmm. Turns out that really, sincerely geeky people don't hang out at the beach so much. Not at Sunset Beach anyway. So I spent the day looking around wondering, could she be geeky? Is he a geek? Are they doing something that could be considered geeky in any way at all? So here I present for consideration, a compendium of things that may or may not be geeky beach activities. You decide.