windows and balconies

“the possibility”

here’s a new sketch…

… and here’s a final drawing:

“the possibility”

 

and here’s a young lady spending some time by the window so as not to miss her daddy coming home from work:

“is it him?! is it him?!”

 

until next time

and take care

 

 

p.s. i thought i’d add something about the drawing.

i have like half a dozen dream scenarios i keep dreaming from time to time most of my life. most of them nightmares (but not all). like the one where i go visit the town i grew up in and miss the flight back home.  this one is the worst…
the drawing above is a contemplation on one of those dreams. and although it might not seem like it, this dream is one of the good ones…

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no title

http://www.aidaplace.wordpress.com

i drew this the other day

it has no title

it has one working title but it’s in russian and i failed to translate it to hebrew or english.

what do people exclaim before starting a journey? not ‘go ahead’, not ‘forward!’, right? i delved a little in google translator and came up with nothing.

rather surprisingly the drawing seems to have stricken the fancy of my facebook-illustration-group pals (the group is not mine, there are couple of hundreds of other illustrators and wannabes there)

i’m curious what they see in it/how they interpret it.

this time i tried a different approach and new technique.
because my will power is rather absent and because i tend to act all perfectionist in the wrong places, i get cold legs and don’t finish stuff.
but i have to work with what i have right? so i thought about a theme and a mixed technique that would be quick undemanding yet suited to my artistic needs.
it’s an acrylic background with graphite pencil, color pencils and wax caran d’ache water-soluble pastels on top. all in all rather easy and unthreatening, so while working on it i didn’t loose the right mood and the motivation, which is nice.

p.s.  middle eastern wabi sabi….what day is it today? right, sunday:

http://www.aidaplace.wordpress.com

p.p.s. i went out shopping the other day in downtown. i needed a few small things from different local shops. it was tough but i toughed it out.

i said: ‘no, i don’t need a plastic bag, thank you’ maybe 7 times ( and indeed i didn’t need one, i had my backpack with me) the most common reaction to this being the ‘i don’t get it’ look followed by a plastic bag being pushed into my hands.
we are falling a little behind in all this environmental awareness thing. or rather, way way way behind, on so many levels…

well…just a thought.

take care

(and don’t take a plastic bag if you don’t need one.

and you don’t)

UPDATE:   i’ve got the title, it’s  –    ‘off i go’

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mysterious look-alike

new illustration of the alan bradley book completed. mostly.

to be frank most of the time i didn’t enjoy drawing it even. cause i had a dead line and …well, an obligation to do it. i don’t like to be obliged to draw, you know. and was afraid to screw it up.

but i’m pretty happy with the result i must say.

in a couple of days it’s gonna be a part of our illustration class small annual exibition

 

p.s.  lets play a little trivia game called who’s this mysterious Stephen Fry’s 1930’s (approximately)  look-alike, or maybe more than just a look-alike?…..

if you answer it right – you are very very AWESOME.

until next time

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back from the R Zone

so!  finally got the wax pencils i’ve ordered a while ago and made some further progress on the “dinner” drawing

um…..i have nothing else to say about it by this point….except that loads of work are still ahead of me

p. s.  i went about 3000 km out of my oh-so-very-narrow Comfort Zone for a couple weeks to visit my family.

most of my impressions from the R Zone can be easily described with 4 words  – i don’t get it    …peculiarly large amount of signs in public bathrooms on how to behave, especially the ones that call out to respect each other or the ones that advise you not to become a youtube star…..coffeeshop managers walking about their workspace in sweatpants….  weird.

p.p.s  my cat has a problem

– from time to time he comes home looking like this…   no, it’s not my hand there on the left. yes, the gray parts supposed to be white.  what’s the problem to just you know not bathe in the dirt?!  so there’s been some chasing around the flat and some screaming and he’d promised that he’d never do this again….well maybe just one more time, when you’ve just changed the sheets or something…and my dog is like, oh,it’s all my fault! i shouldn’t  have been stealing his food for so long!

i’m thinking some family counseling may be in order! or at least a cat shrink!

(it looks like the cat is kissing the dog on this pic, which is ironic, um, because he doesn’t really and he won’t)

 

until next time,

me

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a rocket or maybe a pencil, or maybe…? and a finished sketch

i’ve transfered the outlines onto a thicker paper already and blocked in the main colors. nothing interesting thought just yet.

on an unrelated note: i’ve read on some blog about someones trip to israel and felt that that the vacating family was led astray a little. not that i want to ruin someones vacation memories or anything. but.

the truth is: israel is really unpretty. like, PAINFULLY unpretty. considering that not that long ago it was just a bunch of rocks and sand it’s amazing off course.
but most of it’s middle and southern parts are just nothing to look at.

so! i saw this japanese movie the other day. didn’t understand most of it. like, the logic behind characters actions for example. googled it and came accross the wabi-sabi concept…..
in this wabi sabi spirit of accepting the imperfection of the world i think i’m gonna document this real side of israel here from time to time.

urban sculptures  – most of the time a bunch of metal junk glued together in a disturbing (freudistic?)  fashion…..

p.s. learned a new word the other day –

teetotal

is it just the russian-israeli-jewish-tatar me or is it hilarious?

my way of remembering it:  tee – sounds like tea, so teetotal is a person only/totally just drinking tea (as opposed to alchohol)

have a good day everyone.

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too many fingers

i made a fabric doll for our friend’s little daughter

aidaplace.wordpress.com

some of the fabric scraps bought new previously for crafting purposes, some recycled from old sweatshirts and such so i guess the outcome is not entirely eco friendly
the doll’s box bed originally from some corporate unnecessary gift from my man’s work. i turned it out and painted it with acrylic. also this time i had been a little resourceful tracing the tiny bear pattern straight from my tablet screen

aidaplace.wordpress.com

and while making the doll i managed to surprise myself with the whole new level of clumsiness. i cut off a small piece of my own finger with tailor scissors (really sharp ones) so! while searching frantically for the piece that fell off instead of maybe going bandaging the finger i thought what would i tell people when they ask. and only came up with this: “i decided i had too many fingers….” (it sounds better in hebrew or russian, i promise) well, not sure it’s all that funny but people are smiling at it (a little too high a price to make someone smile, maybe?)

p.s.  learned a new word the other day

it’s “flabbergasted”

let me try use it in a sentence now…”i was flabbergasted to see i cut a hole in my finger”

did i get it right?

hopefully a drawing post coming up soon….

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family dinner

here’s some new characters and a new drawing in progress

a widower and his daughters are having dinner and a housekeeper brings a dessert they all hate but are to polite to admit it

there’s not too many things in this world i can relate to more than the utter misery of being repeatedly urged to eat by an intrusive host.
the food might be good and if i am lucky not very unhealthy but somehow still i want it to be my own decision.
but alas, i’m pale and thin and not much of an eater. easy target for a certain type of people (ukranian middle aged women mainly) 🙂
but than again i get to really master all the “no thank you” thing…

p.s   just stumbled across Gareth Malone’s programm “the choir”.
the guy is awesome.

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safe and comforting….

this is the first illustration for the children book i’m trying to illustrate.

an 11-year old lies in the local cemetery fantasizing about death. nothing weird about that!   🙂

i loved cemeteries when i was a kid, (always went with my dad during the day hours, nothing creepy really) being there felt safe and comforting

i think i’ll be darkening the angel statue and the front gravestone to add some depth it seems to lack….

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wedding time capsule

i love it when i have a legitimate reason to waste my time preparing a handmade gift.

my man’s friend got married the other day and when he invited us he sort of hinted (with me being known by him as an occasional crafter )
he wouldn’t mind getting a real gift too (like, in addition to the conventional one (money))
so naturally i clinged to this opportunity…. and like i always do got a little carried away. like several dozens of hours carried away. to my excuse, i had no idea what i was doing and figured things out as i went along

this project was a little out of my comfort zone, having too many components and details to sort out. the fact that we just moved to another apartment and had barely unpacked didn’t help much.

the worst part was the writing. my handwriting is pretty awfull. always had been. my man tried to help, surprisingly freaked out quickly too. i was trying to write a little explanation note (i was sure the happy couple was unfamiliar with the concept of time capsules, later on it turned out i was right) on an aged sheet of paper with sephia ink to emphasize the idea of a mesage from the past

i dont know them well but one thing i knew for sure: they are really really in love. so i thought the time capsule thing might work.

it did. they loved it even more than i expected them to.
i loved making it. and then loved watching their faces all lit up with excitement and curiosity

double win for me! 🙂

only the tin box  (originally a box for pasta) and the little letter stickers bought new, everything else i had lying around

happy gift making, people of the world!

couple of drawing posts coming up…

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half-assed progress in drawing and sewing

well, so far i’ve been struggling a lot with the sketches for the illustrations (or may be i should call it storyboard? not sure whats the correct term is)

pretty much feeling stuck and having no interesting ideas for none of them. but even so, the work progresses, i sit like for 40 min with my head between my hands almost not moving at all, and then i come up with something not too terrible after all.

my illustration teacher watches me like this and she goes “just start drawing you know it”ll come to you…”

and i go “you know it doesn’t work that way for me, Yana, i cant draw if i don’t know what to draw”

and she nods and goes “yeah….”

i filled half a sketchbook with unreadable doodles, tried different mediums (picture above) and escaped to sewing a couple of times (pic. below)

about the tilda doll it’s kind of a weird story

my mother called me. we live in different countries so we don’t call each other a lot. we skype. and asked me to make her a tilda doll (which i’ve never done before)

a tilda doll, mum, really? well ok i’m on it then….
so naturally i’ve put aside all my other chores and set to work.

the outcome is not perfect especially regarding the cellulitis legs but hey….

i have nothing witty to end the sentence with actually…should i write yolo? no, somehow it feels not too smart, so i won’t

i filled it with old pillow case filling and it got a little lumpy. all the materials recycled

and about the fabric scraps blanket- i was basicly looking for a project which will help to utilise as much fabric scraps i”ve gathered over the years as possible. i don’t wanna be a hoarder ,you know

p.s. on a random note, watched “away we go”. i think it’s one of the best of it’s genre, great acting, and the best part is that the main characters didn’t get married in the end. so thanks, dave eggers and vendela vida for a slice of an uncheesiness it this cheesy cheesy world.

(too melodramatic? can’t help it ,sorry)

p.p.s.  i got Jim Jarmusch in recommended tags.  why him? why not i don’t know…..david lynch? hmm….

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