La La Lilac

A little overly girly I know, but it's for an art trade :)

Alice and Bella

I would like to introduce you to Alice(on the left) and Bella(on the right) They are identical twins and plan to have many adventures exploring and such. I need some practice drawing characters multiple times in multiple settings and poses and expressions and all that. So there should be lots of Alice and Bella to come.

What should I name their plushies?

New Painting

Another pic of my Hanasu character. The idea is that she's part Tengu (mythical japanese crow people) The tattoo can turn into wings. Yeah, totally yoinked that from Wen Spencer...

Friday Five

Well...this week was all fine and good until 1:00 today. I swear to you, God tries to help me enjoy my weekend to the fullest by giving me the nastiest friday's ever. Can you say "Health Inspector"?

Never mind, just look at the soothing links.

1) Stickers by Kapitza - these are so cute and you can put them on your walls, they peel right off so great for rentals.



2)Um, okay so this is a towel holder...the towel goes in the bum. Strange? Very strange. By Drinkstuff



3) Look look, guess what this trendy little house used to be? Garbage truck. Seriously, check it out



4) Calirezo - Amazing digital portrait artist



5) Urban Gnomes at Bouf. I want one for my nonexistent garden!

Double Vision by Randy Ingermanson Day 4 (or 2 in my world)

Okay, so I did enjoy this book, which is ironic as I didn't ask for it in time, so I had to take it out from the library and don't get to keep it. My mother likes to taunt me with her copy "mine is siiigned".

Anyway, I have three reasons why I was suprised to like this book.

1) I whine about this a lot, so I'll keep it short, but it's always nice to read a christian novel where the story is more important the "the message". You know, an actual plot line, with interesting characters... Anyway, yes, good plot, interesting characters and whatnot.

2) An actual man wrote a book with some actual romance in it. Now I do think it's pushing is a bit to call it a romantic suspense, but still, A for effort. Most men don't seem to see the point in ruining they're really cool books with emotions and whatnot. I would have had him pick the other girl, but I still enjoyed it.

3) The book was about quantum physics and wasn't boring. He even explained some of the quantum physics, still not boring. Excellent work.

So all in all good book. Would I call it Speculative Fiction (should I start calling anything speculative fiction)? Nope. Really not so much at all. Still, I'm glad it was included in the CSFF blog tour, because it got me to read it.

Sorry if this review made no sense, sleep and I have not been getting along lately.

Blog Tour: Double Vision by Randy Ingermanson

Ooops, I totally missed day one, and I don't have much for day two but I promise to write up a decent review by the 22, it's just a bit of a busy week for me. This book is great, I recommend it. And if you know me at all you know that I don't say that unless I actually mean it.

The book: Double Vision
The author: Randy Ingermanson

To read a real review, or some other delightful tidbit, check out the following blogs:
Nissa Annakindt
Jim Black
Grace Bridges
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Frank Creed
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Tessa Edwards
April Erwin
Linda Gilmore
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Leathel Grody
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Christopher Hopper
Jason Joyner
Karen
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Caleb Newell
Nicole
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
Robin Parrish
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Tsaba House Authors
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Daniel I. Weaver

Artistic Bliss

Um, photomanipulation. For something new and exciting. Used a cool tutorial found [here]


Anyway, two things make me very happy today:

1) That tea picture? Overwhelming response. You can see on my sidebar that it is already in my top five favourited images on deviantart (that's what the widget with my pretty art shows). Never have I gotten so many comments and favs in such a short amount of time. Not even close.

2) My Hanasu pic? Image of the day at ImagineFX.com, which is the website for the best fantasy art magazine there is. It's unbelievable to me.

3) (what you said two things? yada yada) I got a nibble from someone interested in comissioning my for kids t-shirts. Which naturally threw me into a blind panic. Still need to responde...need more info.

Friday Five

Gah! Work! Let's not even talk about it today.

1) Amy Butler Designs the prettiest fabric patterns and stationary ever. Makes me want to sew something. I know! Me!



2) kimwestad on Etsy makes such pretty ceramics!



3) Ahaha, Huggable lights by Rei!



4) Flatwire! It goes flat on your wall and you can paint over it. No more wires everywhere. I want some now!



5) Clocky! The alarm clock that runs away and hides if you don't turn it off.

Tea Time

So this is for the monthly theme of "a cup of tea" at the children's illustrators club on deviantart. I asked Craig what he would draw for "tea". And he said this. In quite a lot of detail actually. I told him that he is now my muse.

Vermin

So yesterday at work, the pest control guy came by. We had called him because we have ants all over...and usually there are no ants when it's still snowing every other day (oh you heard, snow this morning!). So the Orkin Man comes in and well...he doesn't speak english oh so well. East Indian. Also he had a very cool hat with lights in the brim...to see vermin in dark corners I assume. I took him over to the most anty area, the concrete bleachers on the pool deck. Assume that everything he says is with a very thick accent, I'm no good with typing accents.

Orkin Man: hmmm hmmm.....yes many ants

Me: Yeah I think they're coming out of that hole.

Orkin Man: It is because of the food. See. Bread crumb!

Me: Yes well, the kids sometimes eat snacks up there.

Orkin Man: Sneks!

Me: yes?

Orkin Man: SNEKS!

Me: um...yes...snacks

Orkin Man: THEY EAT SNEKS UP THERE! (pantomines a long thin object)

Me: What? No! NO! Not SNAKES! They eat food! Like cookies!

Orkin Man: oh. I thought they eat sneks.

Oh dear. Also he believes we have fire ants and took ant samples to figure out what to do. We're pretty sure they're normal ants as there are a) not red and b) not biting the patrons.

Now imagine the fun Supervisor Girl has been having on the phone with him, trying to get him to come back and actually kill the ants.

fat lip

booooo, Craig was passing me the remote yesterday, only he tossed it at me. And yeah, hit me right in the teeth! Split my lip a little. Is still fat today. He feels really bad which is almost worth it.

Usually it's me who does stupid things like that. When we were in school I once threw a small plastic goat at his head (he was being mouthyno doubt) and it hit him in the eye....

Sleep is for wusses

So I stayed up until 3 last night remaking my webpage. Well, 3 is actually 2 to my brain, but still, it's been a while since I did that. I redid the whole page. I kind of hated the old layout about five minutes after I made it. Unfortunatley then I didn't get to sleep until quarter to six. Not so much fun! Needless to say I didn't quite make church this morning...it's 1:08 now and I'm still feeling woozy.

Anyway, check out the new layout and let me know what you think. Craig likes it, he says it's more "techy" and techy is always good to him :P. I think it's a bit more professional looking, I wanted to get it looking really good because I'm planning on doing some emailing to art reps and any art directors that accept emails. Soon. Maybe I'll do some today.

http://hanna-sandvig.com

Edit: I should mention that I had a couple things i was trying to achieve with the design.
1) I was trying to move away from pop-ups, even though I use a pretty good code, some browsers still block them, which is annoying. Also, some people just don't like them.
2) I was trying to avoid having any scrolling anywhere. It's just easier and cleaner, that's why I went for the smaller images with detail shots, as opposed to huge pictures (also cuts down on theft).
3) I wanted to get straight to the gallery. They say that people are lazy so the fewer clicks the better. I always want to do splash pages and whatnot because it's just fun design. But this is a professional page, so less is more.

To do this, I ended up doing kind of chunky coding, with double frames and tables, but I did try to keep it pretty clean, so hopefully it'll still load decently. It loads pretty fast on my computer.

Ha, I had a shower and my brain woke up.

Also, Craig has informed me that he really wants the self stirring mug from my last post. *shakes head*

Friday Five

Gah, this week was a doozy. Many screaming children, many bloody noses, vomit and all the other things that make life worthwile. Also, Cashier Girl and I went outside to wash windows and the door we went out of hasn't been used since last summer. Yeah it was rusted and stuck open! Open. Why? Our boss had to remove the whole lever thing. Also, I fell through a loose grate and got a bloody foot. Hooray for work! Here's five things that cheered me up:

1) Ceramics made to look like bulbs by Meesters & Van der Park:


2) Self stirring mug....you know, in case you have no spoons? By Hammacher Schlemmer


3) Living Glass They make these sheets of clear resin with...whatever you want in them. Very cool design element.



4) Come in/Go Away doormat....ooooh, it's an Ambigram, get it?:


5) Okay this is kinda hideous, but it filled the friday five requirement by making me laugh and thus cheering me up. Teddy Bear Chair by Moss:


Hey, I changed my links colour, and it fixed my layout. Go figure. Don't forget to turn your clocks forward this weekend! Except mom and gramma, who don't believe in that kind of thing.

Happy Monday!

Well today was a Monday, no getting around it. Mondays are always my busiest days as I teach Aquafit and two hours of lessons. Plus getting caught up on cleaning and paperwork. And you know...guarding the pool. But today was special.

This afternoon Lance was guarding when on of our special needs patrons went unconcious in the pool. He had trouble swimming and then just fainted I guess. So Lance pulled him out, unconcious and not breathing as far as he could tell...I got to use the oxygen tank and the ambulance came and the whole nine yards. The guy was awake and talking by the time they left, so that should all be good. Ambulance came in about....2 minutes from us calling which was really great. All hail Hero Lance!

Then, not an hour later another adult special needs patron was in the hot tub when I noticed a yellowy brown.....puddle? Then I saw it was all up his back. Eeeeeew. So the diaper just wasn't enough today. Then we got to empty the pool and scrub it and refill it. And by "we" I don't actually mean me.

Yeah a lot of paperwork today. Didn't get my planned paperwork anywhere near done.

Oooooh monday.

Smile

So I sketched this last weekend and inked and coloured it this weekend. Hooray for the husband working instead of playing WOW...we need two computers!

Anyway, it was gonna be all simple and flat coloured and then....well it's not. But I love it anyway. The song is "Smile" by Lily Allen.

My Neck Hurts.

Friday Five

Well for once my friday was pretty good. Nice, mellow. Distinct lack of screaming children. Aaaaaaaah.

Still, in case you need some cheering up, here are five things to amuse you:

1) Chair that looks like a corset by Aiveen Daly:



2) Tokidoki - illustrator and cute stuff (I want this toy!)



3) Every thought of organizing your books by colour? Chotda did. I would so do this if I had a big bookcase.



4) McCavity, a handmade plushie by SuperHuggies:



5) Anjali, beautiful photography:

4 Years

Yes four years ago today I was getting married...at this very moment actually. Good times. I know that someday this marriage thing might get hard, but so far it's pretty much been fun. Seriously, is it sposed to be so easy? Love love love.