Subway Series Continues

Life has been very busy lately, and I see it has been over a week since my last post. Even so, I still have to commute to work, so I continue to do my subway and train drawings. Above is my latest drawing, done on the train this morning. I so enjoy doing these drawings, now returning to some of the same people I have drawn in the past. This lady, in fact, I have drawn twice this week, both times knitting the same pink sweater! Check out my Flickr photostream for more pictures.

Artistamp ATC

Earlier in the summer I joined the non_cents group, which is dedicated to all kinds of paper arts. One of the things the group does is Artistamp ATC's. These are regular ATC's (artist trading cards), with a custom made stamp. You can see ones that were done for the July swap (including mine) here: http://flickr.com/photos/renmeleon/1031591142/
I couldn't do the August swap as there is too much going on in my life this month, but one of my new friends from the group had some extra cards from hers, so I am trading with her. Here is my ATC, without the stamp added yet. Heather has said she likes it, for which I am so glad. I hope you do, too!

"Spatien" German Literary Magazine Illustration Contest

My Flickr contact Kerstin Klein, a wonderful artist herself, ran an online illustration contest for the German web publication „spatien,“ a non-commercial magazine for prose and poetry for German readers, in existence since 2005. It is published online every six months.

The contest was described thus:

„What are literary weblogs“ – this is the working title [of a new book]. Why do we want to publish this book? We want to present the phenomenon of literary weblogs – still a niche within the blogosphere – to a wider non-blogging and not blog-reading audience that is up to now mostly interested in traditional ways of literature publication. Additionally we want to (re-)initiate a discussion about online literature, a phenomenon that is not as widely known in Europe as e. g. in the US and offers – especially in the form of the weblog – new and interesting ways of creative writing in a great variety of fashions.

Different authors of literary weblogs will contribute their essays and sample posts for this book for free. In a way this is a community project comparable to open source software developments. The participants participate because it pleases them and because they think what they do might be of value and importance for somebody.

We are men (and women) of the word and cannot illustrate a book like this ourselves. That’s why we are looking for an artist who would be pleased to be part of this community project and has the ideas and skills for interesting illustrations. The general topic could be freely interpreted. It may be a play with associations about web-like structures. It may be variants of untraditional text representations. It could be abstract or ornamental as well.
A series of about 7 to 9 images could also illustrate motives about literature, text, weblogs, writing processes, etc.

Well, check out Kerstin's blog about the contest: http://illustrationcontest.blogspot.com/
In doing so you will find there were only 8 entries, and the editors of the magazine picked my entry!! Wow! I'm not sure yet whether I will be doing additional drawings, or use other subway skecthes I've done, or just what. But I'll keep you posted on what happens next!

Here are the sketches I submitted:



Thank you, Kerstin, for the opportunity!

Flax

Hi there! I apologize for neglecting my blog here this past week, there's so much going on! Anyway, I posted this painting awhile back on Flickr and got the tentative identification that it is flax, so if anyone else can confirm that I would appreciate it. Talk to you all later!

Shoes for Bastille Day!

Quite a few of my Flickr contacts have been drawing shoes lately, and I have been thinking of drawing this pair for quite awhile as they are my current fave pair of shoes (that doesn't mean I wear them alot, it means I like their looks alot!). So I finally broke down and painted them last night, in watercolor. This is what I call a pair of open toe, slingback pumps, slingbacks for short.

After my friend Andrea posted what she calls a pump on Flickr and her blog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80676961@N00/737158218" and http://www.flickr.com/photos/80676961@N00/801116733/ and her blog: http://andreajoseph24.blogspot.com/ we had quite a discussion about what a pump is. There are different definitions in Britain and America, we discovered. So we wrote some comments back and forth about it. It was fun talking about! Hope you enjoy this painting, too!

(Sorry, I've tried making the links hot again, but can't seem to do it, no techno-geek me!:~(

Oh, I just thought I would mention Bastille Day since that's what it is today, and I have some French blood in me!

I've been very busy lately, so haven't made time to blog. However my good friend Mariana tagged me, so I will make time now to list 8 random facts about me. These were the rules:

1-post these rules
2-each person tagged must post 8 random(... hopefully interesting) facts about themselves
3-tags should write a blogpost of these facts
4- at the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5-go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they're tagged.

I'm following through with #s 1-3, but I'll leave 4 & 5 to your imagination . . .

Random facts:
1. My favourite color is green, I am partial to dark greens (like forest green) and light grayish-greens (like sage).
2. I have four lovely children.
3. I like to travel (but don't get to anymore, just up and down the road to my mom's and to the kids' schools. When they're all on their own maybe I'll get to travel again . . .)
4. I love antiques and old houses.
5. My hair color is light brown, now seriously flecked with gray (and coloring my hair is just not me).
6. I like khaki clothes.
7. My house is a mess (I just don't spend any time on it!).
8. I love my Flickr friends!

My favourite Recent Transit Sketch

Of my recent train and subway drawings this is my favourite. I like the soft colors, and the great opportunity here to draw three very different heads of hair. I hope you like it too!