Return of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 15

Week 15: Vietnam

Sketch in black Sharpie on art canvas sheet, coloured with crayons. Original photo found via Google Images.

Update:

Thanh the moonbear. Paper collage, watercolour and black Sharpie on "calm" blue flint paper. Photo located on Google images.

Week 15: Vietnam II

Originally, the moonbear looked like this, but the image was deemed too 3D for the Challenge:

Week 15: Vietnam IIa

Thanh the moonbear has calmly caught her lunch. Assemblage art using chopsticks, long grain rice, sultana pieces, cashews and plastic "fish" soy sauce dispensers placed upon "calm" blue flint paper. (Of course, with further research, I discovered that the only fish moonbears might eat are ones they find dead and spent after spawning season.)

52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 31

Still in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, inspired this week by Winnie-the-Pooh and the poetry of AA Milne.

Inspired by AA Milne's poem, "Lines and Squares" which, as a child, I thought was called "Lions and Squares". During a poetry show at teachers' college, we reinterpreted this poem as a game of Hopscotch. So here is my collage of lions and bears - using paper, oil pastel, crayon, white Tulip "puffy dimensional fabric paint" and Scotch Expressions patterned "washi tape". Also featuring chalk lines, parallel lines and written punishment lines. The shapes were all cut freehand.

Week 31: Lines

LINES AND SQUARES
"Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, 'Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all the squares!'" (AA Milne.)

The very cranky bear

Today, our whole school participated in the annual ALIA National Simultaneous Storytime with a reading of Nick Bland's "The very cranky bear".

The hearing support unit used a Youtube presentation in Auslan. It was so well done that, after I'd read the book to the Stage 1 group who'd used the school library as their venue today, we decided to play the Auslan performance as well.

National Simultaneous Storytime is an eagerly-anticipated annual event!

Andorian bear... in da house!

A special thank you to my US email pal, Pete, who went to Las Vegas and prevented himself from spending his last $US 14.99 in the casinos to buy me a highly-coveted stuffed Andorian bear, from the shop at the Star Trek Experience.



When I reminded him of the problems once created by the Star Trek Experience writing "bean bear" on the green customs declaration, Pete jokingly sent me an email, "I wrote 'fabric toy filled with potentially deadly foodstuff and fruitflies' on the customs form...is that OK??" ;)

Funnily enough, a second declaration label, from someone else's package, had attached itself to the bottom of the box: "Baby blanket and PJs"!

The bear turned up today! The postie left the box at my front door, and my fuzzy little friend (the bear, not the postie) was waiting patiently all day in the heat. Had it not been my first day back at work for 2007, he could have been set free much earlier.

It was quite a surprise unpacking him, because all of the pictures of these Andorian bears on the Internet failed to show any sense of scale. I'd assumed he was the same size as other items (see pic above), but he's soooo much bigger! He towers over UFP Beanie Bear, and Alien Bean Andorian, too. He is dwarfed only by the diaper-wearing Andorian baby (made for me by a penpal, Francine, way back in 1983).

Anyway, Andorian Bear looks great! Thanks again, Pete.


UFP Bear realises that the chair he saved for Andorian Bear is way too small...