Pittsburgh Pirates

Oh, and the Pirates traded Nyjer Morgan today.

And what can be done at this point?

If we stop going to games, the team will move from the area. If we keep going to games, that enables management to keep on trading.

Can't the league step in and help?

Even a little?

Somehow?

Does anybody in management understand the concept of building a team?

It's the fans who are paying the bills (buying game tickets, memorabilia, etc.), so shouldn't we have a say in how our money is being spent? Or on who makes the decisions on how to spend our money? Shouldn't we have the right to vote out management if we believe their managing strategies leave something to be desired?

For the last 17 years?

The Pirates are on a pace for a major league-record 17th consecutive losing season.

--Associated Press

Images 2009

My acrylic and mixed-media on canvas painting, "The Song Came and Went," was juried into the Images 2009 Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts show at State College.

This would be it.

Changing to all Rotty

After some soul-searching and cutting of losses, I've decided to ditch the marketing of my traditional illustration style in favor of 100% of my twisted illustration style. I still have the traditional portfolio up on my site in case there are any leftovers from past marketing campaigns who still want that style. But for the most part, I haven't had many takers, and the twisted style seems to have gotten legs.

This is the kind of stuff I want to do most. I know I've now eliminated myself from a lot/many/most markets that want more traditional material, but if I'm to stand out of the crowd at all, I have to be true to myself.

This is me.

Hello world.

Possible gorget

So last year about this time, we took a trip to Bar Harbor, Maine, to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary (we were married there at the top of Cadillac Mountain at sunrise). The first time we were there, I had found a piece of slate that I thought was interesting near the beach, and I brought it home with me.

Last year while we were there, we took another trip to the Abbe Museum, and it was there I saw a piece that looked very familiar to the piece I had brought home five years earlier. It was a Native American gorget.

I've already contacted the folks at the Abbe Museum to hear their thoughts. I've also uploaded a few photos I took of the piece I found, and I'm interested in hearing what other people may think of its origins.

Dead Line

Here's one of the latest things I've been working on. It's a five-page graphic novel that follows a stumped graphic novelist as he is faced with a deadline "in five pages." I used graphite (powdered and in pencil form) and Photoshop to get the effects I was looking for. The image posted here is page one.

For those interested in how I'm working it, I had separate postcards made of each page and I'm sending them out to art buyers once a month (for the next five months) with a super-secret invitation-only Web page address on the back of each one. On the site they can download the graphic novel page as a printable pdf.

Fontstruct

So I taught Typography last fall, and for a semester-long project, I had the four-credit students work out a font on the FontShop site, www.fontstruct.com. (If you haven't made it over there yet, it's a great site where you can create your own working typefaces.) One of the student's typefaces was even chosen as a "Featured Download."

Here are links to a few of the final products. I'm very proud...

Kimothy by Kim Franczak
Bloc by Lara Heinz
Hot Mess by Jon Stefaniak
Brickyard by Corey Perkins

Leave them a comment, and let them know what you think!

"Yikes!" featured on Storypockets

Check out the blog for the Children's Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh:

http://storypockets.blogspot.com/2008/09/
local-illustarator-nora-thompson.html

They've given a little "heads up" to our "Yikes! Wow! Yuck!" book.

Thanks, guys.

Em dashes and hyphens and editors—Oh my!

(Sorry in advance if I can't get the punctuation working properly on this blog!)

See, the thing I'm liking about editors—and this is coming from a Typography/Graphic Design instructor—is how they keep using em dashes properly.

I've received two emails from editors over the past two days, and both included the correct use of em dashes. The one I got today used two em-dashes and a hyphen properly in the same sentence! And on top of that, both editors used only one space after every period.

Oh, yeah. They get it.

Call me anal, but I'm thinking those are the people I want working on my books.

March 2008

Doodle-a-day...not so much.

Here's March:

Giraffe polo

Here's the latest.

Just finished the polo illustration getting ready for the conference next month. I'm hoping to get at least one more finished by then. It kind of looks like I'm obsessed with giraffes right now.

Not sure and too busy to weigh the consequences.

February 2008

My "Doodle a Day" pocket calendar has slowed a bit. I'll catch up eventually. Here's February:

Shop around

Well, I finally got a CafePress storefront put together with lots of stuff to show off all these kid's illos. Here it is:

www.cafepress.com/nora_thompson

Lots of clothes, of course, for big and traditionally-sized kids, a tote bag, teddy bear, pet accessories, journal, mouse pad, mugs, cards, stickers, magnets--whew! I culled the images from both my traditional and twisted styles, and tried especially hard to match up the images with the product I placed them on. Not an easy task!

My favorite? Hmmm. That would probably have to be the Jeeraffe journal (pictured above). I think he fits perfectly in the space.

Take a peek or a long look around, and don't forget, holidays are just around the corner...

Wall Arch

I was pretty startled to hear the news about the falling of Wall Arch at Arches National Park in Utah. Here's the National Park Service article. We made a trip out there two years ago, and that particular arch was one I remember well because of its proximity to the hiking trail. A stone wall blocked one side and the Wall Arch spanned along the opposite wall with the trail sandwiched between. The structure seemed very delicate at the time, but I got that same impression with most of the arches we saw there. It was a humbling feeling knowing those stones could topple on our heads at any moment.

I'm glad we took so many pictures.
(Arches National Park: Wall Arch 14 June 2006)

Total redesign!

Just wanted everyone to know I've totally redesigned both my graphic design/editorial illustration site: www.graphx.us and my fine art site: www.norathompson.us. I was hoping to make both of them a little more classy than they had been, so I created the pages in Flash and dropped them in a main page I created in Dreamweaver.

And, although it's been up for a little while already, I guess this would be the official announcement of my fine artwork online. I use many mediums including oil, acrylic, graphite (powdered and in pencil form), charcoal (powdered, vine and compressed), conte crayon and many natural materials, to name a few. I have also included several of my silver gelatin photographic prints on the site as well as previous show listings, my artist's statement and bio.

I'm hoping for feedback, especially if anyone encounters problems in the technical area.

And thanks to everyone who has already fed back!

Giraffe polo

Here's a sketch I did between teaching classes yesterday. I had the thumbnail for this drawn over a year ago, but was afraid it wouldn't work and never pursued the idea. Looking for more portfolio pieces for the fall SCBWI conference made me revisit some old sketchbook ideas, and after I came across this one again I decided to give it a shot.

Images 2008

Over at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts at State College, I had a painting accepted into their annual exhibit, this year called, "Images 2008." The painting is titled, "Scream Without Raising Your Voice," an acrylic and mixed media on canvas.

The show ran June 11-July 13.

New York at Night

When we arrived in NY in April, it was late on a Sunday evening.
We took a cab straight from Penn Station to our hotel,
and these were my first impressions of the city.

2008 Westmoreland Art Nationals

I had a Polaroid emulsion transfer accepted into this year's Westmoreland Art Nationals. It's actually four transfers together on one piece of watercolor paper. I didn't do many of these; at the time I was just experimenting with the process and had access to a Daylab Copy System. I had done direct Polaroid image transfers a few years back using film and photos straight out of my dad's old Polaroid that he had brought back from Korea when he was stationed there in the army (1959-ish). But this time I wanted to use copies of 35mm photos that I had already taken.

This is the piece that was accepted. It's called "Stephie's Hands." The show ran May 31 through June 13.

The Golden Penn

The nice people who write and edit the Western Pennsylvania Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators quarterly newsletter (called The Golden Penn) have chosen my artwork to fill the current issue. Sorry, no link directly to the newsletter, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it (you kind of have to pay for it, so they're not going to put it online). But I do have a link to their/our Web site: http://www.wpascbwi.com. And from there, here's the link to my page: http://www.wpascbwi.com/thompson_nora/thompsonn.htm. They used some of the ones with the "crazy" eyeballs (The Rots) that were mostly spring-related.

Thanks to ChrisAnn Goossen for helping me out on this one.

Ohiopyle Weddings

I've finished my first entirely Flash Web site for Ohiopyle Weddings. I still have way too many things I want to do, but don't know the ActionScript to do them, and don't know the correct terminology to be able to search for the scripting on the Internet. Still, it's functional and basically attractive, and best of all, approved by the clients!