rebecca turner

no news is good news

2011-10-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

I think I am going to relegate this blog entirely to cute stuff my kid says. Because it's way more interesting then all this crafty junk. Actually I am moving my business/illustration stuff elsewhere, but now for the funny quotation.

We were driving home from church when Clara says from the back seat, "I not ugly. no. I not ugly." We laugh, "you're not ugly Clara?" "NO," she says, "I not ugly like Papa."

From anyone else that would've been pretty rude, but coming from this impish two year old, it was pretty funny. No hard feelings. Just the other day she said, "papa is best my friend." which puts him in a elite group consisting of me, the neighbor, her stuffed bear and a spoon.

Uncle Keith and Clara in Washington

And here is the little worm with the fakest smile ever. Or at least that's what happened when we told her to smile.

I have the best genes

2011-08-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

After raising bunches of kids and channeling her creative energies into amazing birthday cakes and prom dresses (thanks mom) for many years, my mother has dove back into the fine art world. She's been studying and painting pretty intensively the past few years and this year she's been entering contests and really making a splash. She's won some awards already alongside well established artists and no wonder really because she's, well, amazing.

I helped her out by making a website to showcase her latest work, which you can find here at vickiwalkerart.com. Check it out. And if you have lots of money, you should consider commissioning a work of art because you'll probably get a steal compared to her prices in ten years.

Watch as I master blogger

2011-08-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out how to post bigger pictures from Flickr on here. So here goes. If this works you will see the following pictures (and a follow up from last post):

a. A shirt I sewed for myself, from Simplicity pattern 2856 or something like that. I just went and looked at the pattern and forgot the number on the way back to the computer. It was an easy sew, but the neckline was pretty low, so if I were to make it again I would bring it in an inch or so. Great fit otherwise. And I especially love this fabric I got at the thrift store. Some sort of lovely linen blend with a great pattern. I wish I could get more of it actually.

b. My tomato garden. It's about a 5' square patch of solid tomato. Like a tomato plant cube that is spilling over into the herbs and melons. Don't know what I'm going to do with all those tomatoes when they get ripe, but I'm sure it will be delicious. If only I could get Clara to eat some too. And my yogurt turned out great by the way! I already made another batch and frozen yogurt twice and ate it all (with some help from Clara) I'm also about five pounds heavier since last week, I'm addicted. If I had to choose one food, right now, to live on and only that, it would be frozen yogurt.

c. An illustration I did a long time ago, which I have been printing out over and over again to try and figure out my $%#^@ photoshop printing problem. Everything prints out dark from Photoshop! but if I place the same file into an illustrator document and print it out, it's perfect. I can't figure it out. I've been learning all sorts of things I never wanted to know about color profiling mumbo jumbo and it's not helped one bit. OK, going to push the publish button now and see how it looks.

evening musings

2011-07-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

I had a good evening tonight. After the little one was in bed, I sewed myself a fancy dress and made yogurt. Feels so good to make. We'll see if the yogurt turned out tomorrow morning. This is my first time making yogurt from scratch, although that's pretty much the only kind I ever experienced growing up. I spent a good a portion of my week also dry canning various beans, wheats, and dry milk in the dining room for our food storage. It was also surprisingly satisfying, I felt very Little Red Hen. Even though I didn't actually grow any wheat myself, I am making yogurt from dry milk. I'm still a hen.

I did harvest three cucumbers from my garden today though. Makes me feel less like a complete failure as a gardener. My zucchini plant is about dead. How do you kill zucchini? I don't even know how it happened, but I know it takes something special to fail at zucchini growing.

e-books for kids

2011-05-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting post by Scott McLeod on the transition of children's books from print to digital. I have mixed feelings about it. I love sitting with Clara and reading a book, but the convenience of the digital form could be super nice. And I think digital books really are the future, so why not learn how to read from an e-book? At the same time, it's just not the same as having beautiful illustrations and words in your hands. I watched a few examples of ebooks for children and most were filled with weird, distracting animation, like you touch part of the picture and it gets big and floats away. I liked this one though, I don't think the animations detract from the fabulous illustrations, and I love Helena Bonham Carter's narration. I can't resist a good British accent.

Winter: Not Over Yet

2011-02-21T11:28:00.001-08:00

Last week temperatures reached the 60s, most of the snow melted and revealed grass I haven't seen since last fall. So of course we went crazy: broke out the shorts, went for walks and bike rides, started planning a garden, and then winter decided to blizzard on us again today. So I'm back to hibernating indoors, sipping hot chocolate and wearing comfy sweat pants all day. And the usual cleaning and drawing and crafting comfy sweater pillows. Which really isn't so bad. Sweaters were on sale at Goodwill for $1, so I picked up a few soft wool ones and made a pillow cover for some inserts I got a while ago from Ikea. I have a few more in the works and I really like how they're turning out. I cut them up and sewed the pieces together because my pillows are rather large, but if you wanted a small pillow, I think a large cable knit sweater would work well for one, just sew it into a square small. Viola! Easy peasy, snuggly wuggly.

Busy Bees

2011-02-15T10:07:00.001-08:00

Clara is such a busy bee these days. She's right there, everywhere I go, ready to do whatever I'm doing. Sweep? She's a pro-even with broom twice her size. Cook? she's a natural pan-stirrer, spatula-licker. Paint? Out of her way. No one has to show her how. I let her experiment in watercolor and colored pastel the other day and I'm pleased to present Clara's first pieces of artwork:

Clara has this look of complete concentration when put to a task. I think the poor girl inherited it from me. I've always found my mouth hanging open when I'm focusing on something. Very unladylike. But cute on a one year old.

I started on this giant painting Saturday while Clara was napping. It's huge. About 4' x 5' I think. It's been hanging around for a while now, taunting me, because I've been too chicken to commit to any one design for something this huge. But I just decided to pick up me paintbrush and let loose. It was super fun to paint large. I can't wait to get back to my painting. I'll keep you posted on the progress. It'll probably look a lot different from this in the end.

Oh I sent my first fabric collection off to a manufacturer. I told myself there's no way anyone is going to accept it, so I won't waste any time thinking nervously about how it's being received. I've already started on two more collections, very extremely different than this first one and some other design work. Probably Clara gets her ADDish busy beeness from me too.

brian wildsmith

2011-02-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

I just happened across this illustrator and I love love love his work. How could you not really?

found via this photostream on flickr

just being crafty

2010-12-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

My how times flies. I'm going to share some things I've been working on. Just for the record. I do accomplish things sometimes.

This is a baby blanket that I made for Clara. Started a month before her due date and finished it a little over a year later. I blame the zig zag stitch on my sewing machine for giving out halfway through. It was fun to do though. I basically drew a picture with fabric. I don't even know if this hodge podge counts as a quilt, but it is warm and snuggly so I think so.

And here I painted our fireplace wall with a loud and somewhat garish pattern. This was also fun to do, once I figured out how to get the design traced onto the wall. That took the most time and made me regret starting this project the most number of times. Anyway, I like it now. Although there has been some disagreement in our household about whether this embellishment will make our home harder or easier to sell if it's still there in a few years. Care to weigh in? (Yes we still need to trim out the fireplace and add a mantel.)

I've been doing lots of work getting a portfolio together to send out, hopefully by the end of the year. And I have a new website and shop in the works for said new work. So I have been busy.

Lastly my Thanksgiving decorations. In the midst of trying to ready the house to host Cameron's family, I neglected the Thanksgiving decorations to the night before. I know not all houses need additional decoration, but our slightly jenky new house in a perpetual state of remodel and decorating needed something to make up for the lack of baseboards.

I saw this idea somewhere on the blogosphere, can't remember exactly where now, but I just cut out some Thanksgiving related words and strung them above the table. I think it turned out kinda cool and subtle and meaningful. I think I might leave them up for a while. The best part is that the lights and letters cast huge shadows on the wall, like THANKS and FOOD, etc. How magical.

Has it really been a whole year?

2010-10-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

Clara turned one last Sunday. Weird. She really is so grown up now. She wears jeans and walks around like she owns the place, pulling things off shelves and out of drawers, yanking cords out of the walls and prying safety plugs out of the outlets. She knows the words 'dog' and 'ball' and she says them a lot along with a lot of other noise. She's very vocal and strongly opinionated about what she wants to eat, drink, look at, etc. She's of the very strong mind that children should never have to go to bed and they shouldn't ever be forced to sit in a shopping cart when they could be running around causing destruction. She's obsessed with books, I can't turn around without finding Clara shoving a book into my hand or climbing onto my lap to be read to. She's got nearly six teeth now and likes to brush them/chew on a toothbrush regularly. She's completely in love with her mama and I love it. Because I'm crazy about the girl too. Here's a video with a few moments from her birth day:

Enjoying Summer

2010-08-24T14:12:00.001-07:00

We're in the midst of our 5 week long trek to the West Coast. We've stopped in Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and we're now in California. We spent a week visiting my family at a family reunion in Birch Bay. I'm sharing some pictures my sister took while we were playing on the beach there. We made a giant monster inhabited sand castle and Clara had a blast crawling, digging, and eating the sand. If you want to see all the pictures Caren took they're here. She has amazing skills with the camera.

And here is Clara enjoying her first NoSugarAdded Fudgsicle. We're at Cameron's parent's house in Paradise California while Cameron does some research/schmoozing with other scientists here in California and then we drive down to San Diego on Friday until next Thurs, when we will finally make our way back to our home sweet home in Indiana. Until then we will be eating lots of popsicles and swimming in as many bodies of water as we can find.

Babies 'R Silly

2010-07-14T19:54:00.001-07:00

Here are some new designs I've done recently. Making patterns is fun, but still hard as I'm still figuring it out. Sometimes I have to think very hard about how to make the repeat work. And sometimes it still doesn't work. So that just goes to show what a waste thinking hard is. If I get tired of thinking I just look over to see what Clara is doing to make me laugh. Her latest obsession is ping pong balls, in her mouth. A ping pong ball is the perfect fit for her mouth, except she can't close it, so it stretches her face out, you just have to see it, I can't even begin to describe how hilarious it looks. I must find the camera.

Say Goodbye to Metal Mouth Brace Face and Vote!

2010-07-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

Say good bye:
I'm getting these bad boys off tomorrow morning. Maybe you didn't even realize I had orthodontics for the past year and half. I've mostly tried to stick to the demure closed mouth smile in pictures for posterity. But there you have it. I'm a little amazed in this day of such advanced technology we still straighten teeth by filling one's mouth with metal paraphernalia, it seems almost like a form of medieval torture at times. But anyway, despite my complaints, I am very glad to have gotten them. Now I just need to keep the old tongue thrust to a minimum so it doesn't wreck havoc on my teeth again.

Unrelatedly, I entered a design in Spoonflower's pattern contest. Spoonflower is a pretty cool online company where you can print your own designs on fabric. Anyway, you should vote for mine because you know me. And I think I did a beautiful job although I did think a couple other designs were better than mine. But you should still vote for mine because you know me. Just go here. I don't think you even need to give them your information or register or anything to vote.

The theme was "travel" so my design is called "roadtrip." Don't forget to look for Bigfoot as you cross the Rockies.

America...

2010-07-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be fitting today to share some artwork that I found under the pew at church. I hadn't heard these sayings before, but apparently they've been around awhile. It was new to me though and I thought this + the artwork was hilariously unexpected.

Happy Anniversary America!

New Work

2010-06-09T09:52:00.001-07:00

I've been taking an extended creative break for the past few weeks as we've been working on getting our kitchen floored tiled. Unless you consider the artistry of setting a slab of porcelain tile in a bed of concrete mortar and getting it all even and stuck down right, then I've been pretty darn artistic as of late. Anyways, been working on some patterns, as I am wanting to add surface design to my list of marketable creative skills, and I thought I would share. These all have a baby theme, as I've been inspired recently:

Mural and More!

2010-05-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

I finished painting the mural in Clara's room! Actually about two months ago, so I'm right on schedule for sharing:Yah! It was fun and really pretty fast. I'm happy with how it turned out. We're still working on replacing baseboards in our house, in case you were wondering. And in case you were also wondering that sweet fat thing on the floor is Clara. We went to a BBQ with the biology department at Notre Dame last week (that included torrential rains and a tornado alert--but that's another story) and a fellow researcher that Cameron knows couldn't stop talking about how tasty Clara looks and how she's like to dunk her fat legs in BBQ sauce and nibble on them. It was funny and also made me feel a little protective of her tender juiciness.
This picture is for Kay and Larry. Since Larry might be the only one who regularly checks this blog. I wanted to share how cute Clara looks in the hat Kay crocheted for her, before I put it away for the summer. I just caught her red-handed reorganizing her sock collection.

this is copyrighted material

2010-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Clara just typed this on my computer:
rggcgyhgbcvbf6yhccccvgcccccccccv c,©tcvcv v bcvffvbcxdcxcx
Isn't that amazing? She can type the copyright symbol. I have no idea how to do that. I think I've got some sort of prodigy on my hands.

here comes the sun! lalalalalaaa

2010-03-17T12:52:00.001-07:00

Ahhh, it's so warm and sunny today. I feel invigorated. Almost enough to finish doing our taxes. Almost. We're getting a nice fat refund this year so it's not as painful as it could be.

Here comes the sun streaming through the window in the studio. Cameron just installed these shelves in the closets so I could put away my art supplies collection. Amazing how much you can accumulate through the years.

5 month chub

2010-03-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

So it was Clara's five month birthday on Wednesday. In honor, I set up a photo studio in my closet and with a little lot of help from Photoshop, we came out with some pictures on par with the JC Penney portrait studio (minus the baseboards in the background and maybe when I didn't get the camera centered and cut off her head or feet-but we're just going to call that avant-garde) without the hassle of driving anywhere. I like Clara better with her clothes off. With clothes on she just looks fat with her cheeks swallowing up the rest of her features, but when you can see all the cute rolls and chubs then she looks like the adorable baby that she is.

Not much of Nothing

2010-02-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

It's Friday and I am having fun not doing much of anything. I've been busy this week with Clara, cleaning and painting. I am painting this (more or less) on Clara's bedroom wall. Cameron asked me why, out of all the millions of things that could be done on our house, I am working on this. Because, I moved across the country when I was 8 months pregnant and lived in tiny temporary one room apartment until now, so finally, I am getting to fulfill my biologically necessary nesting urges. I have been planning my baby's room for months and months and now it's all coming together. Very satisfying.

New News

2010-01-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!
It's off to a good start. I have a new home. Not the 100 year old house that I originally wanted, but a newer bigger house. What it lacks in character it makes up for in size. In this four bedroom mansion, I get a huge room for a studio with windows in three walls. I'm so excited! And I'm so excited to unpack my junk. I can't really show you anything I've been working on lately since the only camera we currently own is part of Cameron's phone, notably absent most of the day. And my scanner is still packed away. But not for long. We have to fix a few things up on this house, but we should be moved in within the next two weeks. Here's a picture of the new home courtesy of the iphone:
I might get around to sharing of the inside one of these days. But for now here's a picture of Clara enjoying her Christmas spoils (do you like the halloween outfit she's wearing?)

late night drawing session

2009-11-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

For my birthday I was going to go to a group drawing session I saw advertised. But then I learned that it had been canceled since they didn't have enough people. So I found a reluctant unidentified male to model for me while we watched a movie that night. It was fun just to scribble away, I haven't used my pastels in such a long time. I know the proportions aren't exactly accurate, but I wasn't measuring, just scribbling.

pumpkin carving time!

2009-11-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

Both baby and daddy fell asleep at 8:30 tonight, about 5 hours ahead of schedule, so I am enjoying an usually quiet evening. Here is a picture of the pumpkins we carved on Halloween. It was a freezing night in South Bend. Which is strange because it's probably about 70 degrees out right now. Oh yes our pumpkins. We asked Clara how we should carve her baby pumpkin and this is the face she gave us. She then held that pose for the next 4 hours so Daddy carved his pumpkin while I soothed the baby and then Daddy took over while I carved mine and Clara's. Then we lit them and went to bed. For a few hours at least.

Update

2009-09-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

Since for some reason I can't sleep past 3-5 am lately, maybe I'll be better at updating the blog. I suppose this is to help me be prepared for a little baby who doesn't have a regular sleep schedule, so I thank you, Gods of Sleep, for the preparation. We really need to name this baby soon. I'm tired of calling her "baby".

Anyway, onto my update. We've had some crazy past couple of months. Cameron got diagnosed with lung cancer and we weren't sure what was going to happen there and if we would still be able to move out to Indiana this year. But thanks be to heaven, all the cancer was removed by the wonderful surgeons at Stanford University and we decided about the beginning of August that we would indeed be moving two weeks later. So I put in my notice at work and we packed up and said goodbye and drove across the country to SOUTH BEND, Indiana.

Cameron jumped in and started his PhD and I've been spending my days looking for a house to buy. I probably would have bought about 3 houses already if Cameron would go along with me. I just want to get out of this dump hole where we are at right now. We decided to take over the lease of this researcher at Notre Dame from an unnamed foreign country until the end of October as she was moving back to her native land and needed someone to take over her lease. So we thought that would be a good option for us (give us time to buy a house), and decided to go for it...sight unseen. BIG MISTAKE. When we first arrived in the apartment, it was filthy, including fresh pee in a kiddie toilet in the bathroom and the stench was overpowering. I had to keep running out on the balcony for fresh air when the dry heaves would overcome me while shampooing the carpets and wiping down every surface with Lysol and bleach. We've pretty much tried every trick you could think up to make the smell bearable since then, including washing walls and ceilings with TSP, leaving open containers of vinegar lying around, boiling cinnamon sticks, and pouring scented backing soda all over the carpet. It's barely noticeable right now. Oh and lastly, we are responsible for the $442 in carpet damages she left us. This is what we call a "learning experience." And we are so much the wiser now.

So that is what I have been up to, squeezing in a little time for drawing here and there and hoping for much more time once the housing situation is resolved. Wish me luck in convincing Cameron we should buy the 100 year old house with 2" red shag carpet in the basement. It has character, I love it.

sunday sketches

2009-07-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

summer gouache

2009-06-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

I bought some new gouache and I've been experimenting with how it works with my pattern designs. I like it. It's watercolory but not so sensitive and unlike acrylic if it dries up you can just add water again. The best of both worlds. I've been making lots of summery flowery designs lately too because the beautiful sunshiny weather made me. We just spent a week in Washington and Idaho hanging with family, which even in June can be risky weatherwise, but (except for the first day) we ended up soaking up the sun and the wonderful green lush scenery of the Pacific Northwest. I brought my watercolors just in case and my niece Allison did a good job of holding still for me so I could do a sketch of her on the boat dock. Adios.

I'm back

2009-04-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't exactly get off to a rip roaring start on this blog. For some reason it's been all that I could do to go to work all day and sleep all night for the past three months, which may or may not have anything to do with a great collaboration of Cameron and mine that will be coming out in October this year. But I've been getting the spring back in my step lately, so here's to hoping I can be more productive now. Since I haven't done anything to share I thought I would share what other people have done that I like. These are two artists/designers the I really enjoy. The first is Tula Pink, a fabric designer. I love how well-designed these fabrics are, they aren't just slipshod things arranged together, have amazing details and repeats and colors. If I were take up quilting, I would make a quilt of this fabric.

These next images are from artist Diana Sudyka. I find her drawing style so interesting, It's not too realistic and it's not too childish. Just right.

2009-02-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Here's some spot illustrations I'm doing for Janna's book. It's mostly going to be lots of these little pictures, simple and fun was the look I was going for. And easy. I just scan 'em in and add color in illustrator. I love computers sometimes, they're just so nice and tidy.

In the Beginning

2009-01-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be posting and writing about all things creative that inspire me, but mostly what I am currently working on, in hopes that I will be motivated to not abandon projects halfway through and maybe I could get some helpful feedback. The helpful kind that tells me honestly whether you like it or not. If my work secretly depresses you or makes you want to throw up, then i want to hear about it. Although if you tell me that I will secretly think there's something wrong with you and maybe suggest you see a doctor. But then maybe there is something wrong with you, in which case, wouldn't you be glad you found out? So once again, don't hold back.

I'm really into reinventing myself at the moment. I've officially changed my name, although I haven't gotten my new social security card back from the government, where is that thing anyway? So I'm no longer going by my maiden name which I have long wanted to get rid of. No offense to my forebearers, I just couldn't ever relate to it. Rebecca Turner has a nice ring to it, so i'm sticking with it. Although I might moonlight as Madeline Elsey (my prior pseudonym) still every once in a while.

Anyway I digress. My point was I'm changing direction with my style and application of art. Here's some sketches for some paintings that I'm working on. I just wanted these to be fun and happy. They're pretty decorative so don't look for too much deeper meaning in them, final result TBA

I'm also working on some textile designs and illustrating a book by the inimitable Janna McFerson, so stay tuned...