Book Cover Initial Mock Up

Our current Sketchbook Skool teacher (for this week) is Jean-Christophe Defline in Paris, who has inspired me with his wonderful adventure comic covers of family vacations, based on his long-time love of Tin-Tin comics (I think his are even better).  His name for them is Flin-flin.  Inadvertently he has given us an exercise for this week that was timely for me, as my novel was put on hold for months to enjoy participating in SBS klasses.  I needed a kick in the pants to inspire me again on my writing project, and this assignment fit the bill.  He has us doing mock-ups of book covers in whatever way we like, which produced some amazing and diverse results amongst the students.  I realized that creating a mock up for my novel's cover would be sort of therapeutic, and help me to feel that it could be real, and actually be published at some point!  This is my initial effort, with much help from my wonderful husband on the printing part.  This was simple, old-fashioned cut and paste.  For a peek at parts of chapters, please check out last year's postings in October and November: http://www.elsbethmcleod.blogspot.com/2013/10/and-now-for-something-completely.html

Our Moclips Adventure

Last week Jim and I had a pleasant little getaway to Moclips, Washington. I had not been there since 1986, when Neil and I had spent a few days at the Ocean Crest Resort for our honeymoon.  Nothing had changed. Much. A new and fancier restaurant, but it did seem the suite we stayed in hadn’t been upgraded since I was there, then.  The bed was new, though, and so comfortable!  It truly made up for the choking episode the first night, when the free-standing, ancient fireplace billowed and filled the rooms with swirling smoke, no matter what we did with the damper.  How hard can a Duraflame log be to light?

The scene had gotten even better through the years...even more heart-stoppingly gorgeous, with the added patina of storm clouds and the thrashing drama of crashing breakers, the foam torn and flung by gusts of wind.  Early morning woke us with the building shaking from thunder, the lightening illuminating our bedroom constantly.  Rain hit the roof deafeningly, seemingly forever. Even so, the late morning brought sunlight and refreshed the still-turbulent waves with a rich blue.  As the unusual tide retreated back down the beach, the wet sand gave the appearance of our walking on the sky beneath our feet, seabirds flocking by us, soaring with their own reflections.

This is the drawing I dashed into my sketchbook in tiny installments through the days before we headed home again in the rain.  Almost entirely done with Derwent Inktense water-soluble color pencil wash, layered on a watercolor Moleskine book, landscape page format.  With a little Staedtler Pigment liner pen for the birds, and the foam was done partly with the Uniball Signo White Gel pen.

Haunted Girl's Room

Our current teacher for our online klassroom is very inspiring!  Mattias Adolfsson is an amazing illustrator and one of this week's assignments is to draw our memory of our first day at school as a child.  Well, my mind drew a blank for that day, though I remember the emotional memory quite well.  Instead, I drew the memory of a situation in second grade, I think, when I was just sure the girl's restroom in our elementary school was haunted.  The idea spread like wildfire, and little girls being what they are, before long we were unable to visit the room alone.  When we did (in groups), there was much screaming and racing back to the classroom.  Soon other classes had the "haunted restroom" bug going on.  It took the principal himself to step in and put an end to such nonsense.