Some Inspiration for Today: Soo Sunny Park: Unwoven Light

Sharon Lovejoy

I just popped over to my friend Sharon's blog. Sharon is a  multi-talented, tour de force. Check out her last entry. 

Finished!

I love the feeling of completing a book. Here is the one I finished today. It is called Princess Posey and the Christmas Magic- which should be in italics, except that button doesn't seem to work right now- I don't know why.

 I went through my little ritual I do after completing a project, which is to clean my office and make way for the next project. This has been a neglected one during this final crunch to get the last book out. I have been thinking about it quite a bit and am ready to seriously dig in tomorrow. 

Here is a stick bug that was climbing up our back door last week or the week before. Look at those little dots it has for eyes and those fabulous little feet. Nature and its endless variations- so amazing. 

It was time...

Over the last few weeks I have been rereading the posts. The beginnings were mostly surf reports and sketches from books I was working on. In those days I was struggling to find enough illustration work to make a consistent living. Now I have almost the opposite problem...I have had so much work over that I only had a few days off in 2012 and this year, I haven't had one off yet. 

You may have noticed, this blog is missing over 1,400 posts, beginning from 2005. A number of months ago, I made the decision to  copy the content and eventually, delete the older posts- almost all of them. 

The reasons I did this range from not wanting to have so much personal information here to wanting to revamp the blog and my website for the next stage of my career.

So far on my plate for this next year are completing the first book that I will have written and illustrated (a BIG deal for me), beginning a new book series, continuing with the Princess Posey series and re-learning French. 

Morning Sketch

The hill I can see from my studio. It's actually a ridge above the highway. Sometime I see goats grazing up there. Many times in the afternoon there are turkey vultures catching wind currents and gliding around the hill. 

School Carnival Drawing

Our little charter school puts on a Carnival every year to raise money and to give the families, faculty and community a chance to come together and have some fun. Last year I made a little piece of art for the posters used to promote the carnival. The image was also put on t-shirts which sold out within hours! I was proud that they brought in a nice bit of money for the school. This year's image will be put onto t-shirts, root beer mugs and posters- fingers crossed for some more good fund raising!

My Agent is Not Only a Fabulous Agent- she's Brilliant Writer an Innovator Also

My agent at Red Fox Literary, Abi Samoun , has written a couple of books that are being published the traditional way, but this one is something different- She and illustrator, Elizabeth Haidle , are creating this crowd source funded book about Nikola Tesla. 

I feel so very lucky to be represented by someone who is a creative force in her own right.

Why We Still Like Fairy Tales

On Being.

Cassini Mission

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

The Poetry of Reality

The Fault of Our Stars

My morning today: woke up, made coffee, fed fish, removed blanket from parakeets' cage, fed parakeets (Coco and Carl), watered garden, listened to npr morning edition while beginning this morning's paintings, took bath. My baths for the past week or so have been long. I put a few drops of lavender oil into the hot water, get a tall glass of water and a cup of coffee, turn on the audio book The Fault of Our Stars and soak. Today I finished the book and I have to say it was brilliant and felt so real an non-contrived. There was a scene in the book where the main characters go to Amsterdam. The description of the setting made me remember how much I love to travel- the other worldliness of it.

 The Fault of Our Stars in a YA novel. I haven't read one of those in ages. The last one I read was friend Jay Asher's 13 Reason's Why (also completely brilliant). Anyhow- I was balling in the tub and after the book was done, I thought-about that part of life- the teenage years- the part where you begin to figure out who you are, or rediscover who you are, or reinvent yourself- what a fragile and amazing time that is...

Steal Like An Artist

3-D Map of our Known Universe

Just to put this into perspective for everyone- each one of those  lights is a galaxy like our Milky Way. In our Milky Way Galaxy we are in a tiny local group of planets- our solar system- when you look at our galaxy we are a barely distinguishable point of light among the millions of other points of light- those other points of light are other solar systems like our local group. In the Milky Way Galaxy alone, there are more stars than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of our little planet. This is just what is known so far- The vastness of the Universe is almost inconceivable ...our little Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across - meaning it takes light 100,000 years to travel that distance...

Neil Gaiman on the Web