Moved!

What a long day! But productive!

I moved all my kids illustrations over to just one site: www.nora-jayne.com. I had to re-save all the images and thumbnails, and create new rollover links for two portfolios. (Not to mention changing all the templates for every page on the site to include the new portfolio.) The preliminary work always takes so long, but once it gets done, putting the pages together is so rewarding.

I had originally thought I should keep my "traditional" kinds of kids illustrations on a separate site from my "twisted" kids illustrations. Somehow, all this time it has never felt quite "right." So I've copied over the twisted kids. The only things I'm going to keep on my graphx.us site will be my editorial illustrations, graphic design and hand lettering work. I haven't taken down the twisted kids from the graphx site yet--and I won't for a while--but only until I can get the word out. I need the space for my new hand lettering images.

Now I have to work on re-branding my twisted kids to conform to the branding I already have started with my traditional kids. More work, but definitely worth it.

Career

Met with my friend, Rose, this afternoon to talk about the direction of our illustration careers and what our next step(s) would be. Of course, we met at Panera. What a productive afternoon! My friend Alice even popped in unexpectedly, neither of us knowing the other would be there. Anyway, Rose and I talked about studying, drawing, blogging, taking museum and gallery field trips, and our April Illustrator's Conference field trip to New York.

I guess you could say I got a little over-stimulated.

Cold cold cold

Pretty cold here tonight. Only 16 degrees and snowy. I'm sure you folks in Anchorage would probably think that would be a heat wave, but for those of us in southwestern PA, that's a wee bit chilly.

We built a fire.

New Year's

Here's my idea of a new year with the potential for lots and lots of drawing and painting and illustrating.

Yikes! Wow! Yuck!

Our new book is out!

The Yikes! book became official today (even though it's been available on the Internet for a few weeks now). It's written by Elizabeth Snoke Harris, and illustrated by Yours Truly. It was great fun to work on. The Art and Creative Directors over at Lark (Robin and Celia) are so easy to work with, it didn't feel like work at all.

Putrid

Trying to teach grids to the graphic design students. I'm not sure why everybody wants to complicate things. A simple layout with white space works great.

This is Halloween, Everybody make a scene

Not as excited about Halloween this year. Went to see "Nightmare Before Christmas 3D" this afternoon, but that didn't even help. I have the DVD (and the VHS), so I've seen it a gazillion times before, but I just thought seeing it in the theater would really get me out of this melancholic haze.

Nope.

Issues

Having some issues with students. I feel like somebody needs to teach them how to be students before I should be expected to teach them how to be graphic designers.

Let's just say not a good day.

Lost and Found

Went running this morning and found two purses and the stuff that was inside scattered through a corn field just off the side of the road. I mean, driver's licenses, social security cards, credit cards, whole wallets. Everything that would be in a purse except for the money. Had to call the state cops, and found out the purses had been stolen a few days ago. I didn't turn things in for any kind of reward or anything, but a little more gratitude (like a "thanks") would have been reward enough for me.

A note to all you future wallet losers:
An unprompted "Thank you" goes a long way.

Up too long

Don't know if this had anything to do with the wine we had last night, but I woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep. Once that happens, then I'm up all day until it's time for bed that night. Finally made it there by 10.

Merlot

Finally figured out tonight that
I don't like Merlot.
I'm not a big wine fan as it is,
but the faces I made tonight
kind of cemented the Merlot
thing for me.

Give me Mountain Dew any day.

Four years, two months

Our anniversary.
Four years and two months.

Memento

Just watched that time-warping movie, "Memento."
Very postmodern. The scenes are all stitched together backwards, and there's lots of writing and polaroids involved.

Just watch it, and you'll understand.

High School Class Reunion

Frazier High School.

I went this time, believe it or not.

This was our school symbol.
They have a cast metal sculpture of this flame
at the front of the building.

Matt's 21st

Today would have been Matt's 21st birthday.
This one's for you, honey.

Love you more
than you'll ever know.

Spinach and feta

O.K. I know this doesn't look good, but we had pizza again tonight for dinner. This time it was spinach and feta at The Boulevard. Excellent.

A Day in the Life

It was another one of those not-enough-sleep kind of nights. So I spent three hours working on a syllabus. Got a run in. Got another postcard designed and ordered. Pizza and pretzels for dinner.

Biking to Confluence

Yesterday's drawing was so sucky, I'm not even going to post it. Trust me on this one. Anyway, we went biking from Ohiopyle to Confluence today. What a beautiful day! Breakfast at Brady's (we Rotted them) and lunch at River's Edge (Rotted them too).

Here's my gloves.

Raining buckets

I guess now we have to pay for the hazy, hot and humid.
Lost electricity twice this week.
Bailing water out of the sump by hand.

Hazy hot and humid

Dog days of summer here.