Thumbnails

Butterfly Sketches - 2/2012 Not to come off as creepy or Damien Hirst-like, I am currently on the market for dead butterflies. I believe the official term is specimens , but from what I've been shopping, I'll be receiving dried corpses so... same difference! I'm hunting these little buggers down for my next personal illustration project, which has been inspired by my recent trip to RI SD's  Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab , for a live animal study session. Amongst the live animals were many not-so-live animals, including a couple cases of mounted butterflies. My illustration project is simple: I want to make faux mounted butterfly illustrations using my cut-paper technique. I want to make scientific renderings rather than generic forms, so I need to be able to study the real things. Since I am no butterfly expert, (though that does sound pretty sweet to me now!) I am plotting a trip to Cambridge to visit the Museum of Natural History . If they allow me to sketch, sket

Well, I'm behind on what I would have thought to be a quick re-start to my "Thumbnails" blog. I've been trying to get the old illustration-y stuff going, but we've run into a minor issue: Sam (still) hasn't purchased a scanner yet {blush}! So how did I do this in the past, you ask? I do own a scanner... it's about |  -- yay --  | big. At nearly a decade old, its not exactly what I would call reliable in the fields of quality-scan and software. The software (probably) pre-dates Mac and PC compatibility, so I wouldn't even dream of looking for disk. Also, it's attached to an old laptop RIDDLED with viruses and malware, so to be blunt: it is dead to me. I think I could tolerate the scale of the flatbed, if it were at least able to scan over 500 dpi. Most recently, to finish my portfolio I scanned all my artwork in from work, of which I felt guilty through the whole process. Sam's big fat conscience doesn't want the "Day Job" and

I'm currently in the starts to remodel my blog. Just to give you an idea as to what's going on, you'll see a collection of new PAGES, which will allow users to take a peek at the "happenings" in my illustration world. Some new big features will be added to the site. Some of these include: "Story Time" tab is "HOME" or the main Blog page. This will be my regular journal. I plan to allot at least one or two posts per week, but to start out with, I'll probably be posting quite a bit. "Sketchbook" is... yes a spot to show off some of my doodles. I promise I won't be as obsessive about this, as when I held the "Thumbnails Sketchbook" blog post. It's not a "Doodle-a-Day"; I plan to post to this page maybe once or twice a week, just to share what I'm working on. "Playground" is where I plan to have some Downloads for sharing. They're essentially paper cut-outs, toys and coloring sheets fo