Some of you might already know that Matthew has taken all three kids and headed out to Kansas City for the next two weeks. Part of the reason for the trip was to visit Matthew’s dad and stepmom, and part of it was so that I have two solid weeks to learn how how to animate.
Ha ha ha!
I am trying to learn how to animate because apparently the new thing is for books to have book trailers (like movie trailers) go out before the books are actually published. A little video teaser. Of a book. You can tell I’m getting old because I think this is a weird idea. Our book Ten Thousand Stories is being published by Chronicle Books and will be released in October.
Here’s a book trailer of one of my favorite books:
We couldn’t afford this guy who, by his own admission, does “awesome book trailers,” so instead I am going to have to throw together some hinky thing by myself and see how it goes. If I fail, I fail, but I won’t know until I give it a try. And so, I’m trying.
Though the time alone to focus is great, it basically means that my house is EMPTY. No kids to wake me up in the morning. No Matthew to feed me at appropriate times. So far I’ve only spent about half a day learning animation stuff and the rest of the time cleaning the house, filing old paperwork, wasting a lot of time on Facebook, watching terrible romantic comedies, staying up till four in the morning and eating banana splits for dinner. In spite of all that, I must admit that I miss my family.
So it was lucky that yesterday some old (and young) friends stopped by to say hello and purportedly to get me to sign their copy of Bobby and the Robots.
Mostly, it was an excuse to take a nice walk in the park and then hang out in the studio a bit. Marley and Suki (whose full name is Sakura, the japanese word for cherry blossoms – which makes me so happy!) decided they not only wanted me to sign their book, but they also wanted to return the favor and draw me some pictures.
So, they sat down at the table with some Bobbledy Blobs (and Kato’s art kit) and did some drawing.
They both started off with a portrait of me.
Suki’s version of me is lean, with hairy legs (how on earth did she know?):
Marley’s version of me is round and jolly, with blue cheeks and a blue nose (it was rather brisk out yesterday):
I especially like how I can seem different to different people, even when I’m the same me. That really is what is so wonderful about art – everyone sees things differently, and it comes out in how we draw.
After portraits were done, the girls couldn’t be stopped.
Suki drew me a mouse:
You’ll notice the mouse also has hairy legs. Perhaps that is why I feel such a kinship to it. That and his jolly face. Who couldn’t love a mouse with a face like that?
Marley discovered the scissors in Kato’s art kit, and decided to create a deconstructed work of art.
My favorite bit was the little tiny sliver of paper. “A hair,” she revealed.
I could barely see that hair! I got out a magnifying glass so we could all get a closer look. We looked at the paper “hair” and then thought it would be fun to have a look at some of the pieces of drawn-on paper too. Suki did a thorough investigation.
And Marley reported that the crayon marks looked like dust. Which they do, kind of, when you see them up close.
And that’s another thing I like about art. Depending on how you look at it, it can look like an entirely different thing than how you meant it to look. Like a hair instead of a sliver of paper, or dust instead of a drawing.
So – thank you, Suki and Marley (and, yeah, you grown-ups who tagged along too). Thanks for reminding me how much fun it is to make art and how much fun it is to look at the world in different ways. It was a nice interruption to my newfound bachelorhood, and your creativity has inspired me to get back to work. My days of procrastinating are over—I’ve got to start learning how to do this thing. I’ll let you know how it works out.