Bear scat?

I'm thinking this wasn't the neighbor's cat.

We found two similar piles within a few yards of each other in our front yard. The second one was close to a line of empty (except for the leftover dirt) potted plant containers which were lined up along a wall of our small outdoor building. A couple of the containers had been tipped over, and one was broken in half.

I know, I know, this probably isn't what you typically expect to see on a blog, but we weren't sure what neighbor left this for us. We've done some research, and we're thinking black bear. We checked around the property and didn't find any kind of territory markings on the trees, but we've found bark scraped off before. We're thinking he was looking for grubs behind the pots.

The bright circle toward the bottom center is a quarter I put in for size comparison. I think the droppings are pretty impressive, no matter what left them.

And now that I think about it, I haven't seen the neighbor's cat around lately.

Newsletter coming this month

As you may have seen at the top of this blog, I'll be changing over to a professional newsletter generator beginning this month. When I first started sending newsletters, I used the generator that CafePress made available to shop owners, but over the past year or so I've gotten a little fed up with their system. Using their interface was more of a hassle than it was worth, and the end results never looked all that great anyway. So I decided to jump ship.

I've signed up with MailChimp to send future newsletters, and so far the experience has been better than expected. I'm able to control the graphics, the fonts and the layout which I wasn't able to do before, and I have to say, it looks a whole lot better. I'm working on the Spring edition right now, and I'll be sending it out sometime over the next few weeks.

If you would like to subscribe or if you were a subscriber with the CafePress version of the newsletter and need to re-subscribe, use this link. Newsletters go out quarterly, so I won't be inundating your inbox. You always have the option to remove your name from the mailing list at the bottom of each newsletter edition, on the "Newsletter" page of my site or through this link.

nornie.com

I think I forgot to mention it here before, but I try to keep my different art lives separate so as not to frighten the children. I've built a Web site that has the links to all of them though, and it's here: www.nornie.com. If you're old enough and you can handle the shock, you can take a look at what I do when I'm not designing or fine arting. It keeps me out of trouble, mostly.

Even though all my sites are different, I try to keep a similar feel through each one. I use different fonts and different colors, but I've created a grungy background that has found its way through all of them. It helps me get rid of that corporate "I like to follow the rules" kind of feel because I'm not a corporation and I don't like to follow the rules. At least not as far as art goes.

Nornie was the nickname my dad gave me before I was old enough to understand what a nickname was. Apparently I didn't like it, and I guess I told him so. But it stuck and now it's mine. Thanks, Dad.

iFrank in Technicolor

Here's a little guy I just painted this afternoon. I did a version of him earlier that was a take on the iPod commercials and was originally posted on The Rots blog.

Hiking the Laurel Highlands

Went for an absolutely gorgeous walk on the Laurel Highlands Trail today. I love the spot here where the trail runs in and around a maze of massive boulders. The best way to wind your way out the other side is just following the blazes.

It's been above freezing for a couple weeks now (and reached 80 degrees this afternoon!), but the area received so much snowfall in February that the spots between the boulders that don't get much sun are holding onto their last bits of winter.

More illustrations for Jack & Jill

I did a few more spot illustrations for Jack and Jill's March/April issue, and I'll post a couple of them here. The illustrations were part of their Earth Day article that suggested things kids could do to "go green."

First, they encouraged kids to open a window when the weather was warm enough. I had to play with the "wind" a little bit before I was satisfied. It needed to be transparent enough to show the window behind, but opaque enough to be able to see it in the places where the background was white.

They also encouraged kids to throw their trash away in cans rather than littering.

The throwing trash picture wasn't the only spot where I had to draw hands for this issue. I hung out at the small cafe in our local grocery store one morning and just sat and drew different angles of my hand to give the art director and editors a choice to pick from.

They ended up picking #2.

Illustrations for Jack & Jill Magazine

Here are a few more of the illustrations I did for Jack and Jill's March/April issue. These ones were spots that were scattered in and around some "how to go green for Earth Day" suggestions.

This first one encouraged kids to ride their bikes to school. I played with that iconic "school zone" street sign showing kids walking to school by adding a bike rider to the mix.

This one explained the importance of turning off the lights when you leave a room. I worked on some of these while I was on an Amtrak train to Philadelphia with my laptop and a 4"x6" Wacom tablet. The setup worked out surprisingly well.

And this last one suggested bringing your lunch to school in a reusable bag. I just pictured one of those ones with the canvas strap and Velcro closure, and I added a retro 60s flower shape so it could be used by either girls or boys.

New business card design

I've finally redesigned some new business cards for the graphic design offshoot of my freelance work (the white cards below). I had redesigned my Web site over a couple years ago, but until now I've been using the old business cards with all the old fonts and graphics and abrasive attitude (the black card to the right). I guess I thought I could use them up or something. The problem was, I wasn't handing them out at all. They just weren't where I was coming from anymore.

That was dumb.

So I've updated the new cards with my new branding, and I designed the back of the cards to mimic my Web site's navigation and portfolio rollover buttons.

And I'm also finally in the position where I can get the cards printed on recycled paper (and did), which satisfies me a great deal.

Jack and Jill Magazine

Jack and Jill's March/April issue is out, and here is one of the illustrations I did for it.

All the illustrations were for an article about going green for Earth Day (April 22). I painted one big illustration (the one here), and a bunch of smaller ones (I'll post those over the next few days).

Crocuses

Crocuses snuck out of the ground while I was watching the snow melt and flood the yard.

Less than a day after this picture, our local bunnies ate every one of these down to the stem. It looked like a baby lawnmower went through.

"Read" poster illustration

I've only gotten so far as a sketch for my next "Read" illustration, but here it is.

The idea was mostly for the teachers and librarians who are using my previous "Read" illustration in their classrooms and libraries. I wanted to gear this one toward those "reluctant reader" types (boys).

I'll be painting the whole thing in Painter, and uploading it for posters and note cards on Zazzle and CafePress when I'm finished.

Paintings I did 20 years ago

I've posted a few scans of paintings I did around 15 and 20 years ago as a photo album on Facebook. If you've seen the scans of drawings from around that time, you'll know these were all finished before I went back to school for art.

I used to use really tiny brushes at the time, and it took me forever to finish a painting. The first image in the album is 9"x12", and it took me around 58 hours to complete it.

I don't do that anymore.

My illustrations on somebody else's blog!

Isn't it the coolest thing when you run across your work on the Internet in a place where you didn't put it?

I was doing some site submissions to Google when I ran across a blog from last September that shared some of my work, and the blog wasn't mine. It belongs to Jennifer Daniels, a Brooklyn-based graphic designer and illustrator. Take a look at some of her work. Looks like a very talented lady!

On the blog, she says she likes the way I show the sketch of an illustration right alongside the final version of the piece on my Web site. You can see what she's talking about on one of my online sketchbook pages. If you drag your cursor back and forth across the arrows, you can see before-after-before-after. Even I think it's still fun to do.

Drawings I did 20 years ago

I've scanned in photos I found of some old drawings I did a long, long time ago. These are way before I ever went back to school for art, so everything you see in this album was self-taught.

You can tell I was still tight with my lines and basing everything on realism, but you have to get that part down before you should ever try to move on. I didn't know that at the time; I was just feeling my way, and I think art school came along to loosen me up at just the right time.

You can see more current drawings at www.norathompson.us. Click on the "portfolio" link on the left and then "drawings" right below.

Animal tracks in the snow

As you probably know, those of us in the northeast got wolloped three times (so far) this winter with buckets of snow. It's always cool to get up in the morning and see what's been in the yard overnight. Because we try to keep our property as natural as possible, we tend to attract the wildlife that used to call this area home. And the neighborhood's domesticated life seems to find it attractive, too.

This time I took a few shots of some of the tracks our visitors left behind.

A friendly bird made his way the whole way up to our back door stoop. We've seen a bunch of different species at our bird feeder this winter:

• Northern Cardinals
• Black-capped Chickadees
• Bluejays
• Mourning Doves
• Dark-eyed Juncos
• Tufted Titmouses (Titmice?) and
• House Finches

One of our many bunnies who make their summer nests in the bushes in our front yard.

We also have a lot of white-tailed deer wandering through all year long. They like the crabapples and any new tree or plant growth we have going. When we find a sapling we'd like to keep, we have to protect it with a wire fence until it's big enough that the deer won't destroy it.

This is likely our neighbor's cat. He's black and a very funny hunter; he never catches anything. He does the crouching down and wiggling his butt thing and then he pounces. Within a few seconds he emerges from the tall grass and walks away as if he meant to miss.

This one we're still working on. We do have skunks, but they would still be hibernating right now. We've seen a weasle run through the yard once, so we're expecting this was him (or possibly a friend). The track was about the size of a cat's track, but the five toes makes it very distinctive.

We're not too sure about this one.

New business card design

I've been working on a lot of graphic design projects for Adventure Foods (based in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania) including Firefly Chocolates, their shop at Westmoreland Mall in Greensburg. We wanted their business cards to reflect the same look and feel we've already established for this arm of the company, specifically the posters and signage I had designed for previous projects.

These images show the front and back of their new cards.

Dexter in color

I finished Dexter (here's the sketch), and he turned out somewhat close to what I originally had in mind. I was hoping for more dramatic lighting, but that seemed to leave him too dark in the shadows, so I lightened him and the whole scene up a little.

The glowing green and purple colors took some getting used to since most of what I do uses colors that are closer to earth tones than flourescents. But I knew I had to do it, so I put the painting aside for a couple weeks, hoping it would look better later. When I finally came back to it, the color didn't seem as garish as when I had left it.

I like him enough that I'll probably use him for my next postcard promotional mailing in May.

You can click on the image to see him larger.

New photography portfolio images

I've updated my photography portfolio with several more landscape images and photos from Banning No. 3 Mine. Click on "portfolio" and choose "photography." These are all silver gelatin prints, made the old-fashioned way with film, chemicals, paper, dodging and burning.

My portfolio site URL: http://www.norathompson.us

Banning No. 3 Mine operated just outside Van Meter, PA and is off the Yough River bike trail, part of the Great Allegheny Passage. You can read in more detail about the Darr Mine history and explosion at http://patheoldminer.rootsweb.ancestry.com/darr.html

Rough sketch for kid's illustration

I so lied about making you wait. Here's the sketch of Dexter in the setting I came up with for him. He's in just a little bit of trouble, but I think he'll be O.K.

His puppy's name is Poindexter.

New banner design for Etsy shop

Here's a new banner I designed recently for The Dreaming Owl's Etsy shop, along with the matching identity icon. The Dreaming Owl sells handmade mittens, scarves, jewelry, bookmarks and purses, and requested a banner to reflect the shop's personality. We went with this hand drawn and stylized owl and banner.