Mix It Up Day

Tiff asked me to make a sign for her classroom.  The theme was "Mix It Up Day" and it will be posted outside her door to let the kids know that they will be rotating classrooms for part of the day.  None of the kids really want to do this so the sign needs to be fun and colorful. 

No problem.  I like to have fun and to make fun.  And how can I resist a great theme like "Mix It Up?"  So I drew these guys:

Is it a chig?  Or a picken?

Then I drew some letters and printed it out.  I've had a hankering to use good ol' Crayola crayons on a drawing for a while now.  So I colored the sign with crayons and glued it to a piece of board.  Tah dah:

Actually, I made three of them.  The other rooms need signs too.

What is It?

A few days back I started making something out of old scraps of dyed canvas that I had.  Leftovers from making so many adorable monsters.  So I decided to make ... an abstract art piece.

Note the interplay of the natural element (grass) and the rigid shapes, almost like city blocks.  Thus the viewer is invited to consider what the grass really means, nature being forced into behaving.  And so... the lawn.

You may have guessed that it's not really a pretentious art installation.  It's actually a six-sided soft chair for Tiff's 5th grade classroom.  This square is my favorite:

Part way through the sewing process I decided see how it fits.

Honestly, not so great.  So instead of wearing it I stuffed the sucker with styrofoam packing peanuts.  Then I jumped up and down on it to squish down the peanuts, then stuffed in some more peanuts.  Then I smashed and stuffed some more.  And then I sewed it all up and sent it to school with Tiff.

Then the kids found it.

I think they like it.  Note the last kid's good taste in comics.

How I Work

People ask me all the time, "How did you come up this?" when referring to my illustrations and other creative things.  It's sort of hard to explain because I don't always end up with what I started out to find.  The following is a demonstration in my stream of consciousness creative process.

The Assignment:  Tiffany needed me to make her some kind of notice board where she could post supplies she needs for her classroom this year.  Because I had done the rest of the room in monsters I figured that I should continue with the theme.  So I set out to create a "donations monster."

Here is the end result of my process:

Now let me walk you through it.  First I think, "the monster needs to hold lot's of little notes."

So, yeah, that's how I think.  I just follow ideas around until they take me somewhere.  If I work long enough I get something good.  This is how it turned out for Tiff's class:

I'm pleased with it.

Sunday Project

So I try to not work very much on Sundays. It's the day of rest you know. Sundays after church is the time when I usually do silly things that I don't have time for on other days, like that red, felt plushie toy from a few weeks ago.

So my wife Tiffany has recently become wise to how I like to spend my Sunday afternoons. Today she made a request, to make her a really cool box for an upcoming Valentine's Day party in her 6th Grade classroom.

So I did this:

Her kids are going to be so jealous. (Sorry about the backwards text. Photo Booth takes mirrored pictures and I was too lazy to throw them into Photoshop.)