John & Belle Have A Blog

Squid and Owl Are On Hiatus

Yes, it's sad. Final page, until I create more:

The odd thing is that there are supposed to be words against a white background. But they aren't showing unless you click to see full size. No, I can't explain it either.

In other news, Mei Mei drew this:

 

She is a happy child, basically. And very infuenced by Zoë's eye-stylings.

 

Me? I'm enjoying my relaxing break from illustration by scanning in some old stuff from the files. (Click to view the whole Flickr set. As I say over there: it has a terrific sort of 'life of the party' wearisomeness.)

12 Board Book - Last Page

This is the final page of my little board book:

I think S&O are going to have to go on mild hiatus after this. I am going to go to fall back to weekly postings, rather than weekdayly. Due to the fact that I'm out of pages and out of time to make more for the moment. But I am planning to keep adding to my Flickr collection on other fronts. Today, for example, I stuck up some nice old SF covers. This nice old Huxley, for example:

11 Squid swims deep, deep, deep ...

Next page:

This one is nice.

My new iMac is awesome. I was so tired of reading all the names of everyone on the Photoshop development team. Now I don't even have time to read that first guy's name. What is his name? It's an Indian name.

10 Owl flies home to rest ...

Next page:

I am setting up my lovely new iMac, so who's compaining? But there were problems using the Migration Assistant, and so I had to do a lot of stuff manually. And you know what's messed up: fonts, that's what. I vow that this time I am going to get my fonts organized and keep them that way.

9 A friend is someone ...

Next page:

One image only tonight. Busybusy. And you know what? I. Got. A. New. Computer. I'mgoingtosetituprightnow!

7 Like how water's good to get you wet

Next pages:

An exhausting day today. Just looking at Squid and Owl is making me sleepy.

Glory!

Hey lookee! I got a metafilter link for Squid and Owl. And you know what's funny? Just about an hour before I got that link, I set up - for the first time - this site. Because I sort of need a homepage for my design stuff besides this blog, and besides my official academic CV page. So I get to christen my new page by cracking a bottle of frothy bubbly geek traffic.

Anyway, mostly I'm glad to get some attention for the Squid and Owl stuff. It's nice - oh sure - chatting with the cozy 6 or 7 of you who still drop by J&B regularly. But glory and fame is nice, too.

5 - Meeting someone new ...

Next pages:

Owl and Squid don't look quite right in the second one. But I like the crepe paper overlays to make their bodies. Owl has sort of Groucho Marx eyebrows in the yarn version.

I took Zoë to guitar lessons today. (We've been going for a while but haven't really been very disciplined about practicing, frankly. We aren't very good yet.) And at one point she emitted the most astonishing sneeze out of nowhere, halfway through "Twinkle Twinkle". It echoed through the little practice chamber. Like unto a panda baby. (Fortunately it was a dry sneeze or lord knows how we would ever have cleaned up the walls.) 

So on the way home we wrote a song: Twinkle twinkle great big sneeze/Coming out just when you please/Blowing like a great big breeze/Knocking down all of the trees ...

3 Squid swims up to reach - plus 'Sorry Violet!'

Next pages:

It's been a while since we had any actual kid art to brighten the place. You see, Belle is sick (what a surprise! poor pale green mommy with nobody inside, as we say around the place.) Zoe and Mei Mei are working their way out of the jetlag stage but there are occasional relapses. We wander around the house, bumping into things like adorable zombies in our underwear. It's a lifestyle choice that carries certain hazards:

Owl Flies From His Tree

Next two pages. I showed Violet (she's at the upper end of the age group at which this particular work is aimed). She says 'it's good'.

Sorry, I can see that the blog size is going to cut off these images if I go for one of the larger Flickr sizes, so I'll go with small. I'm thinking of getting these printed up quite small - maybe 4" by 4".