Robo-birthday!

Yesterday was a very important day. I have been remiss to develop a very critical nerd-life skill, and yesterday that negligence was rectified. Behold, my brand-new robot drawing skills!!! I don't know how I made it this long avoiding such a significant nerd theme. Actually, I do. I thought the cuteness potential for robots was extremely low, so I was not interested. But another important event occurred yesterday—the birthday of my teammate Mark. He's the director of games product development, and the two of us {+ an occasional page or software developer or two} are partners in professional-internet-funtimes-making. Mark is very excellent. I thought the birth of a robot would be a good choice for celebrating Mark's existence, so after some research into the surprisingly diverse options for robot anatomy, cupcake-bot arrived! 'Bot surprised me by coming out pretty cute; I think I like him! I need to reprogram him so he spits out rainbows too, and then we will definitely be BFFs.

Snow-time Part II, the Central Park Edition!

The morning after the blizzard I left for church an hour early so my camera and I could have some quality time on the walk up through central park. And quality time it was!

Took this shot on the way. One of the things that I super-love about snow in the city is that when the sun finally comes out, it takes on a surprisingly reflective quality; when the block has got red buildings, the drifts throw a dramatic and beautiful bright red cast on everything. You can kind of see that happening here, especially if you look at the middle row of windows—this building is not typically that red, but it's across the street from one that is.

Look at that morning light! Get excited people. You don't see that kind of awesome often.

Now the park—I was pleased with how much of the snow was left. I love it on the trees.

I do not really like these trees, but I do really like how the light is hitting them.

Cute little bench-house by the lake

Pretty sure my mom will like this shot. That's why I took it.

I think I like this one a little better though:

happy path walking

baby bridge

mama bridge

Played out but still necessary through-the-bridge shot. :)

A Teddy-Hug Kind of Day

Last week's post over at the wheelhouse was another colored pencil study. I found this one less pleasant than my last because I realized a little too late that the teal paper I was using, while beautiful by itself, interacted with the colored lead in a way that I really did not enjoy. One of my favorite things about art making is watching the colors change, and though I did get the hues near enough to where I wanted them to be in the end, the transitions were pretty painful to watch. I'm guessing what irked me is that I was building my shadow palette off the paper, but there wound up being too much green lurking in the paper —I HATE green in my shadows. HATE IT. Ew, gross. And my highlights. Actually, I'm just not a fan of greenish tone mixing at all; it just doesn't play nice. I had to work extra hard to compensate for it; there are about 6—10 layers of color at all points on this drawing, which is a little more than I usually find I need. Fortunately it's just a taste issue, so I don't need to write this off as fail. But I'll definitely not do that again. Live and learn.

Zombie Birthday!

One of the awesome things about my awesome-boss/design director is that she likes zombies. So when I made our department birthday card for her, I just had to cute-ify the undead. I was pretty excited about the brains—I had no idea the cuteness potential! It makes me want to think up more excuses to draw brains.

Snow Day in the City!

I was out and about early this morning to get some shots of the snow before it all blew off the trees and got slushed up.  

 I typically tend to be particularly interested in detail shots, but the environment as a whole was just so stunning that this time I found myself focusing more on the scene at large.

 At first I was bummed that this guy was standing in my shot. And then I saw how cute his dog was and I forgave him. 

 I love how the snow is resting on the bricks that stick out.

 Frosting on the beautiful ironwork

The Happiest Cube on Earth

A photo tour of my little corner of the professional world!

Welcome to my cube. Isn't it excellent? 

Look at all my happy friends! Starring, stuffed cold viruses, red & white blood cells, Rilakuma pencil holder, glass mushroom, jar of slime, emergency kit of googly eyes, a civil war joke, cartoon monkeys, a sushi sticker set, and, of course, multiple spongebobs.

And let us not forget guardian of the fortress, magical rainbow ninja kitten, {oh how I love magical rainbow ninja kitten!} perched confidently atop my giant stuffed mushroom hat.

Even my coffee cup gets some love.

Did you see the spongebob I made out of an actual sponge?

My favorite wall art, and probably my favorite illustration ever, is this glorious masterpiece by Adrian Johnson:

I love my giant stick pencils. Also pretty much everything else in this picture. :)

See the glass bowls? I made them! 

This may be the cutest eraser collection ever. Contain your jealousy.

One of my favorite office accessories is the paperclip hedgehog. Pretty brilliant. Also my trophy for surviving the 2009 rebrand, and my 5 year old can of whole raw clams {from my favorite show, Making Fiends}. 

Self-defense. {And maybe an ambush or two.} 

By the way, if you're in the market for nerf guns, this little guy's a WINNER.

Munition from an epic battle battle still stuck to my window, and yup, that's a shake shack down there. My cube is the official line-checking vantage point.

which leads me to the best part, THE VIEW.

This must be the best spot in the city to take in a sunset. 

swoooooooooooon.