Tasty food in small packages...Happy year of the goat!

For Lunar New Year, 10 of friends got together to make potstickers, sesame balls, and other tasty Chinese treats.  These labour intensive little treats were made with asian influences and an organic hippie twist!  Beautiful and delicious.

Food from my childhood...kind of!  We didn't eat this everyday but sometimes.  To be honest I am not really sure if it was for special occasions or just when we happened to have them.  I do remember watching my mom make these things and didn't really appreciate how much work and fine motor skills it took to assemble these cute little packages.

Happy Year of the Goat!  (no goat was harmed in the making of this blog!)

A one man ode to the DJ

When no one else is willing to step up to the plate, you just have to take matters in your own hands and occupy the dance floor.

Victoria Film Festival 2015 

closing party @ Lucky Bar

Victoria Film Festival Opening and Gala 2015

The Victoria Film Festival opened Friday with "Boychoir" and a 1940's themed gala party with live singers and orchestra, lindy hop and swing, great food and street performances.

Little Yellow Ridinghood

Hit Link to see the stop motion animation Little Yellow Ridinghood

https://vimeo.com/116045529

Swords Up

Didn't expect this on a walk through Mystic Vale!

Clara and the Nutcracker...my first stop motion animation ;)

Click link for Video

https://vimeo.com/114073104

So here it is...my first stop motion animation.  Yesterday I made a collage of Clara and the Nutcracker in hopes of making nice image for a Christmas card. As it turned out, I couldn't commit to the position of Clara and the Nutcracker so I made a series of images.  Later when I flipped through the pictures quickly in Digital Lightroom, the idea of making a stop motion animation became obvious. Using imovie and garage band is quite foreign to me, so there was a steep learning curve.  It would have been easier if I had decided to use a prerecorded segment from the Nutcracker Suite, but I had to go the hard way and make up a little arrangement on the ukulele.  The music is a bit goofy but fun at the same time.  This little clip is short and sweet but actually took me a long time!

Hope you enjoyed the snow on Vancouver Island as much as Bastion and Berta

Cut and Paste New York

New York is this week's theme on the 52 week illustration challenge.  I was in New York when I was 8 and 12.  I remember the huge buildings and being able to walk faster than all of the taxis in town.

Since cut and paste is so fun, here's my NEW YORK illustration, a collage curtesy of 2 copies of the New Yorker magazine discarded by the library.

http://illo52weeks.blogspot.com.au/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/418616991575037/

25 years ago...it came down

I dug out these images of Berlin from 2009, 2011, 2013. Nov 9  25 years ago, a 28 year old wall began to be broken, opening East Germany to the world and the world to East Germany. If it hadn't come down, I can picture many of my Ossi friends still in their flowered wallpapered homes watching Sandmännchen cartoons while snacking on Spreewald gherkins or Knusperflocken...wait...that doesn't sound so bad.

Today, pieces of the wall remind the world that walls can be built but they can also be taken down.

"...and now I have to congratulate you!  We are in wonderment.  The Berlin Wall is destroyed.  It is wonderful.  I congratulate all German people on this event!"

Nov 2013

July 2011

July 2011

July 2011

November 2013
on the east side of Brandenburg Gate

November 2013
on the west side of the Brandenburg Gate

July 2011 
The grass now grows where the wall once split West and East (left and right) at Potsdamer Platz

Meet Klara...the yarn graffiti artist

Meet Klara.  She's a graffiti artist who likes to make her world more friendly and cheerful with yarn.  

Over the past months, I have been working on illustrations for Children's stories. I have experimented with quite a few art forms and I started producing needle felted characters to help me draw or paint characters in different poses and actions.  

Somewhere along the way I realized that I was getting better at making 3-d wool characters and preferred some of them to the drawings or paintings I was coming up with. I started to photograph scenes using characters and props that I had made, combining 2 of my strengths, 3-d art and photography. In time I realized, photographing needle felted characters and found objects worked like a charm for illustrating certain stories. 

This week, I found a window of 10 minutes where it wasn't raining sideways (common in the fall on an island in the North Pacific) and captured Klara climbing trees and covering them in yarn!  More adventures of Klara and other characters will come soon.