The Belly

A co-worker at the water cooler yesterday suddenly blurted out, "Wait--are you expecting?" And yes indeed, this little baby girl's due date is just one month away now. Every time I get out of bed or stand up from a chair, I have to re-learn how my body is moving nowadays; and every time I pass by a mirror, I try to wrap my head around how differently-shaped I am as well.

About a month ago, I started doing quick sketches of myself. You can see that in the first sketch, I am completely flabbergasted and confused by what I look like. As the series continues, I think I've been getting a better grip on these big rounded shapes...

It's an amusing exercise, and since the camera is packed somewhere in the go-to-hospital bags, these sketches might end up being the most convenient way to document these last few weeks!

Mushroom Festival Poster!

Oh my goodness, October is whooshing by so fast. I should probably post how the Mushroom Festival poster turned out, since they are now peppered all over the Eugene and Springfield areas in anticipation of the grand event!

My previous post talked about how I was experimenting with the composition. Having nailed that down, I went into make-it-so-mode. I started off with a fast loose sketch to serve as guidelines...

 Then started settling in on the colors that would go into each area (again, fast and loose).

At this point, I realized that my birds were out of whack! I was so fascinated with the strange morphology and brilliant coloration of the turkey heads that they had become too big for their bodies. It's nice to be able to catch these things before a lot of final detail goes into place. So I went back to my reference photos and started getting serious about those turkey details.

Ah yes. Big birds with tiny pin-heads. Now we are talking.

Now that the pesky heads were figured out, started tackling the turkey-tail mushrooms themselves. The fungi are the stars of the show, after all!

And here we have the final shiny rendering.

Which was then popped into the final event poster! (You can see a nice big version of it on the Mount Pisgah Arboretum website.) Fun!