Today I had an consultation to see if I’m eligible for getting my vision corrected with LASIK. Since I had to get my eyes dilated, I wasn’t able to do anything too fancy for the Making Made project. I just snapped a few photos at the Cumberland Blue Line El stop and then added lots of contrast and saturation.
Since I’m done with my post for tonight already, maybe I can spend the rest of the night deciding whether to get my eyeballs lasered.
A while back, my nephew drew this great little picture of my Dad, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Today, I decided to scan that image in and add color to it using Photoshop, something I had never done before. After I colored it in, I spent a few minutes playing with a few of the Photoshop filters, and found that I really liked the water paper filter for this piece.
Above are three versions of my (or should I say “our”) illustration, two using the water paper filter and one without it, as well as the drawing my nephew made. They’re obviously pretty similar, but I think I like the first one the best (not including the amazing pencil drawing, of course).
Just in case I print this out for certain family members, can you answer the poll below and help me pick the best out of the ones I created?
Finally, thanks, Button, for making a great drawing of Grandpa!
Probably because I’m excited about selling at the upcoming Vintage Bazaar in Chicago, tonight I drew a woman in a green vintage-style dress. I used the book How to Draw Vintage Fashions (currently for sale in my Etsy shop, Rainy Penguin Vintage) to help me with the weird body proportions (apparently a standard in fashion drawing back in the day). I also used it to get inspiration for the dress, although it is mostly my creation.
Note: I spent .2 seconds on her hands so they look like monster claws. Oh well.
Today, Jim and I took a little field trip to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, always a favorite thing to do in the winter. The humidity and warmth helps me pretend that it’s summer for just a few moments. I like it.
I’m pretty sure if I had taken art classes in high school or college, this is the self-portrait I would have made. I’m not sure why I chose to make myself so crazy. Perhaps the Sharpie inhalation from last night is still affecting my brain.
Once again inspired by the book Trubloff: The Mouse Who Wanted to Play the Balalaika, tonight I decided to recreate one of the illustrations from this beautiful book. Instead of using paint like the illustrator did, I thought it would be a fun challenge to convert the concept to a Sharpie marker drawing. I like the result, but I think I’m a little light-headed from the markers. How do Sharpie-users avoid this? Or do they just get used to it?
Check out my previous painting inspired by this book.
Tonight, I kept things simple and worked on a project I’ve been putting off for a while–sticking magnets on the back of 1/2″ tiles. Basically, the idea is to hang white magnet boards that I got from IKEA on the living room wall, and then create patterns and shapes with the tile magnets. After a few hours of work this evening, I think I’m done with the tiles. Can’t wait to hang the boards this weekend and see how it looks. I’ll be sure to post with pictures.
Tonight I made a little watercolor painting of the Chicago skyline. I started by creating a drawing of the city in pencil, then painting it in with watercolor, and then added the sharpie outlines. I think it came out pretty nice and I’m pretty happy with the way the scan of the painting came out!
That said, I got my new scanner to work…sort of. I was never actually able to install the HP software despite trying to get it to work for over three hours last night and another 2 hours tonight. However, I was able to just use some Windows software I already had on my computer. All’s well that ends well, I guess.
This afternoon, my wonderful mother dropped off her extra scanner at my office (thanks, Mom!) and now I have a scanner of my very own! Unfortunately, this same scanner has been driving me insane all night. Since I have Windows 7 and it’s an older scanner, it’s not compatible with my version of Windows. Despite downloading the driver from HP, doing some other update from HP, downloading various Windows updates, reading through countless bulletin board discussions, and restarting my computer about 12 times, I still have no idea how to get this stupid scanner working. I don’t understand why things like this always have to be so complicated and stressful!
On top of the scanner nonsense, I forgot my camera at work so I had to use my rather unsophisticated cell phone to take pictures of the guy I drew. Bummer.
That said, considering what an awful night I’ve had, I think it’s hilarious that I happened to draw a rather gloomy looking man before I even knew how bad things were going to go. Maybe I had a subconscious premonition…
On day 22 of my 366 project, I made bagels for the first time ever using the recipe from Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Despite the fact that I used all-purpose flour instead of high gluten flour, forget to add the sugar, and didn’t let them sit overnight, they still turned out pretty darn good.Turns out bagels are pretty easy to make and are just about as forgiving of mistakes as regular white bread. Yay!
Note: The bagel recipe I used is available on the website The Fresh Loaf.
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Making Made 