(also: Illustration Friday, Beginner)

So this weekend, my very stylish sister took me shopping and I learned a lot about what I will and won't (and shouldn't!) wear. While I've been dressing myself most of my life, I don't know that I was necessarily dressing myself well. I'm still kind of a beginner at this.

One thing I learned this weekend was that I dislike empire waists (on me). And not only that, I especially dislike how an empire waist looks on me when there are no sleeves involved. According to my sister, I look fine, but to me, that's just putting "the girls" (as she calls them) on display a little too much. I think it all smacks of maternity wear to me! But something belted where I actually have a waist? Or something soft and flowy? That works. It amuses me that I'm hitting a milestone birthday this summer and I still have so much to learn about myself.

Another thing I feel like I'm back to being a beginner at, is painting. I have had some incredibly loooooooong stretches with no paint, as I've said, and forcing myself to get the watercolors out is sometimes just plain hard. Compounding this is the fact that I am trying to work using as little pencil as possible, and letting the paint suggest what's going on. Less is more.

I almost didn't post this because I thought it was so bad, but I think there's a kind of redemption in the way this doodle progresses from the first figure (ugh) to the last (kind of getting the hang of it). Not to mention I've never painted my hair since my new haircut - I have to devote a day to a curl study, and the way light bounces off them, and how to suggest curls without having to paint each one. As Michelangelo said in his 80s, "I am still learning."

The new layout's here! (And yes, the new layout looks an awful lot like the old layout, which was what I wanted - I don't have time for a sitewide redesign right now.) While I still have a lot of tweaking to do, the blog is functional. And though I didn't appreciate being forced to do it (I find it difficult to believe that the almighty Google can't handle FTP service to their blog clients), I'm happy about some new additions I was able to make to the site. There are many features I've wanted to add but didn't have the time/ability to do it before but they're here now.

So here's what's new:

• The address of the blog. Not something I wanted to change, but had to. So please kindly point your links to blog.frenchtoastgirl.com.

• Related posts. This is something I've wanted to do for ages! Now at the bottom of each post, you'll see four links to other posts with an accompanying thumbnail for each. So on an Illustration Friday post, you'll see four others that also feature Illustration Friday entries, or a post about making homemade ice cream cake might have links to other recipes, watercolours, or family posts. I've been writing this blog for almost 9 years, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes up after each post because it has an element of randomness I rather like about it.

• Twitter feed. Tweet! These are the kind of things you'd be used to hearing about from me - links and thoughts about design, painting, art, family, music... I generally don't post about what I ate or if I'm going to the movies. :) Feel free to subscribe if you wish.

• Tag cloud. All the labels I use for tagging posts are arranged alphabetically to the side - you can now see what I write the most about (art, as it's the largest sized font) and how many posts I've written about paintings done with coffee (11).

• Expanded archives. Instead of clicking on the month and having to scroll down to look for a particular link on the left, you now can open the month in the sidebar, read all the post titles, and choose the one you want to read. Or you can still click and read the whole month if you like.

• Friendconnect. You can "follow" the blog - it's another way to get the feed and to know when I've posted something new. I'm still not really sure how this one works, but I'm willing to try it out.

Things I know are still wonky:

• The links to the rest of the site aren't showing up in IE. I'm trying to figure out a workaround to that, in the meantime, you can get there from here: frenchtoastgirl.com.

• My old comments are not synched up yet. I have to make a request to the service I use (it's not Blogger) and get them ported over, though new commenting should work just fine, so please feel free to say hi!

I'm looking forward to an evening not spent staring at code! Who knows, I might even.... paint!

So here's what I've been doing: blogger's decided that they will no longer support FTP publishing, which is how I've done this blog for almost the past 9 years. So.... instead of painting? I'm coding, just to try to get the blog to stay mostly the same for now, because what I don't have time for right now is a site-wide redesign. And the address of the site has to change as well - so the blog will now be at blog.frenchtoastgirl.com, and it has to happen by May 1.

Sigh.

My son loves food, my daughters love amigurumi, and we all love to eat. What started out as a doodle turned into a coloring page. I can honestly say that not all kids eat all of these foods, but I would say they eat all but 3 (different for each kid... Peter's not fond of beets, Sophie doesn't do tomatoes, Angela won't touch mushrooms). And of course, all of them work well with (or in) dip in one form or another!

There is a precedent for faces on fruit at our house.... remember this?



That pear still cracks me up.

This is Ruby Bridges. One of my children brought home a worksheet about her from school, and I realized that I already knew her story, and if you're an artist, you may recognize her too. Norman Rockwell painted her walk to school, escorted by federal marshals, in 1964 as "The Problem We All Live With."

It really hit me in the gut reading about her again, and probably even more now that my kids are her age - how incredibly brave she was to go to school in the face of all that opposition, and just as a little six year old. I don't know how her parents managed to let her leave the house every day! This is the part of the worksheet that really got me:

"Many white parents took their children out of school. I was the only child in my class. My teacher, Mrs. Henry, was my best friend."

That just kills me. The incredible thing is that years later, she went back to the same school and volunteered there. Forty years later, she and her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Henry, now speak to other parents, educators, and students. I find Ruby and her bravery so inspiring.

Who is inspiring you today?

There are only a few days left to get to the Westfield Memorial Library and see some fairies up close and personal! I'll be taking down all the artwork this weekend to let some other lucky artist hang her work up.

For those of you not in the area, the lovely people at the library graciously recorded a short movie so you can pretend you're there, having a walkthrough. Grab a book and settle in a comfy chair for the full effect.

Continuing the reveal of finished Christmas paintings, Angela's giraffe and baby. Eating leaves, as per her art direction, she was very firm on that.





I've enjoyed painting giraffes in the past... check out this one and this one (both on paper bags, for some reason).

(Throwing this into the Illustration Friday queue as well for "Wilderness". Hi i-Fri-ers!)

Four years ago, (and I can't believe it's been that long) I posted the companion piece to this CD cover as my Illustration Friday entry for "Cold". I like how they work together:



My husband is an amazing piano teacher, and I sing, so as you can imagine there are loads of opportunities for music and art to meet at our house. These are the covers of the music books we've done together... inside they're coloring books as well as having sheet music to play.



It's also occurred to me that for a girl who regularly posts about all different kinds of music and sometimes provides links to said music, I can't believe I've never had a label called "music" before! So this is the first. It's about time!

Some scoffed and called the group "unbalanced" for their preference of wearing silly hats. I say, who are we to judge?

Most of 2004 was a blur to me. I had a one-year old who had recently undergone surgery, and then had preemie twins who were born 10 weeks early and came home with heart/lung monitors. I had a day job. And, unsurprisingly, a large case of post-partum depression. I had days where the only way I got through them was the fact that I knew that later on, when the dishes were in the dishwasher and everyone was in bed for a while, that my paints were waiting for me. I seriously have huge dark patches in my memory about that time. But I remember the freedom in those paints.

"I learned, again and again, the lesson of creativity: the painting I make today, the drawing I do today, the poem I do today, is meant to save my life today."
~ Judy Collins, Singing Lessons

A doodle for i-Fri's theme of the week, "Skinny." It's been a long time since I've had time - no, made time - to participate. It's good to stretch my brain and make something just because.

Dancing squirrels, a little rambunctious for Illustration Friday this week.

Remember I gave everyone on our gift list the choice of an original painting? Well, Angela requested "Squirrels, dancing." And so she shall have them. I had a sketch where one was upside down on his hands and she was really opposed to it for some reason, so here are her dancing squirrels, all on their feet. They'll need to have shadows underneath them, but other than that, I don't think I want to do too much more to it. In a perfect world, I would have painted the background FIRST, but I'm toying with going back in and adding in a light wash.

Extreme tail close up:



Tomorrow hopefully: painting in progress of a lamb, a cat, and a dog, all wearing boots and carrying umbrellas.

I've been feeling blurry lately, like someone didn't color in the lines properly. And I figured out that when I draw or paint every day, and when I go for a 2-mile walk every morning as well, everything comes into focus and I have loads more energy. So:

More drawing.
More painting.
More walking.
More yoga.

ps ~ This was so much fun to paint. See it bigger here.

This painting is an exercise I did a while ago, messing around with the watercolour colored pencils. I think it's interesting that I tend to go through waves with my painting - at least once a year I get really loose, and then a few months later, get almost crazily detail-heavy. I guess it's the times in between where I hit a balance. I like the loose, I like the tight, and I really, really, really like citrus fruit.

Coffee, glitter, watercolour, and bits of photocopied fairytale. Can you tell which one it is?

All three of my kids take books and a flashlight to bed. Wonder where they got that from (ponders the mama with stacks of books next to her bed, a booklight, and a battery recharger)? Hmmmmmmmm?

(Watercolour, pencil, and coffee)

Unlike previous years, when I've done a "Big" list on my birthday, I had no "Big 36" list this year. I've found that making a laundry list on one day of the year makes me feel obligated and doesn't take into account the fact that I change, darnit. But I do like to have a goal and a purpose and a reason to things. In 2007 I tried a lot of things, and some worked, and some didn't. What I want to do this year is to let my focus go to what is most important to me: my family, my artwork, my self. Once I have down a clear set of priorities I can figure out if other things serve my purpose or just distract me from them. For instance, after the craft fair and NaNoBloPoMo, I realized that more than a month had gone by without painting. And for me, painting is a necessity; I was shocked that I had let so many days and nights go by without it. Sure, I spent time on my site, and on scanning in and making prints, and framing things, but not painting. And that's where my heart lies.

I'm working now through this list: the Simple Living Manifesto. I really think it's going to help me focus and get back to basics. Paul's trying to do it as well, including naming Sunday nights Art Night for him as well (although in his case, it'll be Piano Night.) But I love the idea of the two of us filling the house with creative energy from top (me in the Tower) to bottom (his studio is on the first floor) at the same time, while the kids are asleep. We will also be making some plans on what the focus is for our family, as well as planning some regular date nights.

So here's to a new year. And to letting your imagination soar.

I've been working on this one for ages ... it's Alice and the Unicorn from Through the Looking Glass.



The text reads:

`Well, now that we HAVE seen each other,' said the Unicorn, `if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?'

`Yes, if you like,' said Alice.

Here's a bit of a detail shot:



Done in watercolour, pencils, acrylic, and coffee. I do so like to be thorough. Hmmm... I wonder if anyone else has done an Alice painting for this week?

Faithful readers will know how much I adore the song "Little Things" from Sesame Street. While I have always appreciated the little things in my life, the more Mama-years I have under my belt, the more deeply I realize it. This song has always touched me.

Go listen to the song (and watch the video) here.

From the book of short stories, "Spirits Unwrapped", that I illustrated. There's a lady who... well... has a tendency to turn into a cat. And this illo goes with it:



(If I had had more time, I would have done a rockin' picture of Stevie Wonder instead!)