Not a Dog

What is in my backyard?  Not a dog.  Because so far, we haven't found the perfect one.

Super!

It took me a while to settle on something for Heidi's theme, "What's your mood."  It hit me this weekend as my three year old switched from his Superman costume to Batman and asked me to "ride Batpods" together in the parking lot.  And with that request, I went from whatever mood I was in to feeling super.  Up, Up and Away!

  

What Inspires Patrick?

My sketch this round is an attempt to depict just how powerfully inspiring my wife is.

I tried to show this through having a plain old letter "P" morph into something more beautiful.  You can see that the B part of the letter is helping to make the "P" part more creative. The idea was that the art and creativity of B "decorates" my life and infects me and changes me and ultimately inspires me.

I tried my hand at the process my wife uses to make her cards.  I hand drew the B, then traced it in Adobe illustrator, then used "live paint" to apply the colors.

Patrick's Hamster Wheel of Life

Sandy's sketchbook  "Hamster Wheel of Life" was passed to me right during a period of time where there was just no possible way I was going to complete the sketch - I was too busy.  So, I passed the book on and am just now getting back to it.  I had a crazy 5 weekends in a row where I was not home in Singapore and in that time I had a lot of fun and accomplished many things, but rest, relaxation and sketchbooks were not among them.  We did LegoLand and a trip to Phuket as a family before I set off for an R&D trip, then I had a few days in Singapore before heading to KL to co-lead a Google Apps BootCamp, present a few sessions and a closing keynote for the Google Summit.  I capped that string off with a few days of work then a trip to Hong Kong Disney.  Phew.  A slow Saturday of sketchbooking is my reward.

I tried to capture the idea that all the events and fun were keeping me moving while at the same time grinding me up.

Outliers at our house are the NORMAL ones.

Lego mini figs are a big deal at our house.  But I'm not sure why. We get really excited about recognizable characters such as Cowgirls or Mummies, but within minutes they seem to mutate into decapitated unrecognizable aliens.  Pristine mini figs in their unaltered factory state are the true outliers in our house, and they are usually only found in forgotten dark corners or under couch cushions.  

#learning2 Sketch

I learned a lot this weekend at the #learning2 conference.  I had an amazing opportunity to be in the presence of so many creative educators that good things were bound to rub off on me (and fittingly for Kelly's theme, it was absolutely NOT a waste of time).  I was fortunate to attend a 1 hour session on "visual note-taking" where the unbelievably talented Nicki Hambleton (@itsallaboutart) got us going taking notes on an iPad with Adobe Ideas.  The section on "A Whole New Mind" in my sketch is what I completed during her session, and the rest of the stuff on the page is some doodling I did afterwards, plus some photos taken along the way (thanks, +Jay Atwood +Nicki Hambleton @klbeasley )

I've been inspired.  I'm purchasing a stylus and there'll be no turning back for me!

Exploring Colors on ColourLovers

Heather's book is about "exploration", and her previous entry depicts her exploration of shapes and colors within a grid on the page.  Keeping with my own goal of learning something new with each sketch, and being inspired by her own exploration I decided to explore color palettes in ColourLovers.  I know there are reasons why some colors go together and some don't - but the problem is that I don't know what those reasons are. So instead of learning about colors, I just headed over to ColourLovers and browsed for palates that were put together by other people.  I then applied them to my YouTube channel avatar to see what I liked best.  Pages on my mac allowed me to import the palate then quickly swap out colors using the color inspector.  I think I like the muted grey one the best.  Thanks, Heather for the inspiration.

In The Distance...

My Theme:
It is where the moon is, it is where that train whistle is coming from, it is the time when we get to take the trip to Hong Kong Disney, and it is where Gramma and Grampa live - all of these things are in the distance.  We use this phrase a lot with our little O.G.G.  It helps.   All these things exist.  They are things that we will experience up close again, even if not this second.

Sketch 1:
In the distance, we plan to experience what we are now calling our "Year of Adventure."  We will take the year to follow our passions, to hike, to kayak, to learn (but not from a textbook).  We will travel the US going from city to city, studying their histories and drinking their beers.  We'll spend entire days biking and entire days reading.  We'll practice our Spanish and our Ukulele.  We'll play, we'll eat well and we will savour each day...in the distance.

Learned:
I used illustrator and Photoshop.  I learned about clipping masks and putting effects onto those clipping masks.