For those of you who have a train to catch, here's a short version of this post: I’m having a summer art sale. There are things up in my Etsy shop. The link is right here:
And so we find ourselves in the middle of another Summer. Here’s a long-overdue, kind of rambling post.
As I type this it’s late afternoon and I’m in my Very Secret & Very Quiet Writing Hideaway. There is a Summer Thunderstorm brewing outside. It’s lovely.
Sitting next two me, here in my Very Secret & Very Quiet Writing Hideaway, is my new-used 10 speed bicycle. It has fenders! It has a rack on the back! It was a gift from my friend-and-mechnic, Justin! I'm planning to strap an old milk crate to the rack so that I can cart various sundries back and forth from my VS&VQWH. Here’s my new-used bike:
(thanks Justin!)
And here’s me in my VS&VQWH:
Clever readers will have guessed (correctly) that I put the timer on my iPod and staged a photo to makes me look like a Serious Writer. That’s part of my plan. You see, if everyone thinks I’m a Serious Writer then I will definitely get these projects I’m working on done. That’s how being a Serious Writer works. (I think.)
Anyway, I will have a lot more to say about my VS&VQWH in an upcoming post. There’s some exciting stuff on the horizon. But for now let’s move on to the mermaids. And for that, we’ll have to travel back to May…
In May I was traveling through Macedonia as part of the U.S. Speaker Abroad Program. I was talking about visual storytelling at schools and universities. I was visiting “American Corners” in different towns and being driven hither and yon by the American Embassy. And I was sneaking out at odd hours to explore the old Turkish Market in Skopje. Here are a few pictures from Macedonia:
All the while I was aware that mermaids were cropping up all across the internet as part of a cleverly-titled art challenge called “Mermay” The challenge, simply, is to draw a mermaid each day in May (I think these monthly challenges got their start with Jake Parker’s “Inktober”). I saw the mermaids and I thought “no way am I doing that.”
But then of course I drew a couple mermaids on a tablecloth and I was off to the races.
I wasn’t able to do a full month’s worth of Mers, but I ended up with a good fifteen. Here are a few of my favorites:
I had a blast drawing these, and posting them over on Instagram. It took me some time to figure out what to do with them, but I finally had them printed as a set of Memory Cards, like my Memory Dragon set from a few years ago.
Memory Mermaid is available over on my Etsy Shop as part of my wee Summer Art Sale. There are also a few prints and some original pages from Mighty Jack.
And now the rain has come and a cool breeze is blowing through the VS&VQWH and I have a story to write.
See you soon.
