Day 18: School Lunches of the 1980s

I distinctly remember being offered canned fruit cocktail as part of the school-served lunch, and I always searched for the cup that had the neon-pink cherry in it.  After all, that was the best part!  Nowadays, I don't think you can serve it anymore, but no worries, Del Monte still serves it up, non-perishable in the canned fruits and veggies isle at your local supermarket!

Apparently, it's called Fiesta Fruit Cocktail in other parts of the world.  Woohoo, party in a can! :-P

So, as you can probably guess by now, today's sketch prompt is: fruit cocktail.  However, I was up in Maine when this was the case, and even though this is immediately what I thought of when I saw the heading, and even though I could have easily looked up this picture on my smart phone (yay iPhone!), I didn't draw this.  Why? because I knew I would have agonized not being able to portray those neon pink cherries in all their light syrup-y goodness in an accurate enough way to convey those iconic memories of childhood.  Instead, since I had plenty of Cranberry and Pineapple juice (and Malibu), I decided that I would instead draw the 'adult' version of a fruit cocktail: the Malibu Bay Breeze.

So, yeah....those cabins in Maine had an eclectic array of dishware and such.  This was the most normal looking glass I could find.  Oh, and the lime slice was 'artistic license on my part.  All that's missing is one of those little umbrellas with a neon pink cherry on it :-)

Day 17: Office Space

Today's sketch is a paper clip.  Yup.  A paper clip.  Kinda goes right up there with my first post about a rolling pin...........not very exciting.  Oh, sure, I did the same thing everyone else did with paper clips when I was a kid: a (rainbow) paper clip chain, bent paper clips into wire sculptures, or make-shift pointy objects.....and I hated those ones that are made out of the cheaper material, and come pre-scored, so when you go to bend them, they snap apart. Yeah, those stink.  My crowning achievement in paper clip ingenuity was when I was working as a temp for an oil shipping company.  It wasn't difficult work, just a bunch of data entry and secretarial stuff.  On this job, I was forced to realize that I am a creative individual, and therefore should never be confined to a cube.  Crazy things (like paper clip inventions) will happen.  Case in point:  I had a little stuffed dragon (pocket-sized) that I had been given.  I carried it around in my work bag, for some unknown reason.  It made this large, Jurassic Park-style roar any time it was squashed against something, which broke up the office monotony quite nicely.  Well, one day, in the Adventures of Office Dragon,  I made him a rubber band climbing harness, and he repelled down my filing cabinets. ( I really should dig out that picture I took......)

Around this time, I saw the movie Office Space for the first time in its entirety.  Not enough can be said for the hilarity of the mundane so accurately depicted in that film. (Ok, ok.....getting off my film student soap box now....)  So, to celebrate this classic film, I present to you: my paper clip!

And for those of you who can't get enough, here's some Office Space for you.

Day 16: In a Pickle

Or rather, I might just turn into one!  I actually don't really like pickles all that much.  I hated all pickles until the age of 24, and now I will only eat Garlic Lovers, or those really green crunchy barrel pickles from the deli counter.  But, ever since I was a little kid, I love love love cucumbers.  One of my favorite vegetables (ok, I know it's technically a fruit, but I still call it a veggie), I pretty much eat one a day during the whole summer (cucumbers grow like crazy in this area. I can barely keep up!) 

This year, the hubs and I have seriously scaled down our veggie garden. Mainly because A - our backyard garden was pre-determined in size by long-existing 4-by-4s, and B - last year, we couldn't get to a lot of the veggies before they rotted.  They grew too fast before we could eat them! So instead of the usual 4 or 5 cucumber plants, one each of several types, we have only 2 plants this year, both of the pickling variety, or Kirby.  Even though we only have 2, I still ended up taking 8 of them up to Maine with us!  I ate one every day, with lunch or for a snack, and I still can't keep up, because there were more waiting for me when I got home!

Oh well, too bad, I have to eat *so* many of my favorite veggie. :-P  But, since we don't pickle them (anymore), and I don't really like pickles anyway, when my sketchbook prompt said to draw a pickle, I drew one.....but it's really still a cucumber.

mmmmmmm......cucumber.......................

Day 15: Cabin Fever

I don't have cabin fever, more like cabin hay fever.  I just spent a week in Maine in a cabin.  After 2 days of a water faucet nose (ew), I ended up sleeping on top of the covers with the pillow at the foot of the bed, my face turned towards the wide open window for air.  It wasn't too bad, but my body did not like sleeping cramped in that position for 5 more days.  Anyway, I found it appropriate that since one of the sketch prompts in my sketchbook was to draw a cabin, I should in fact draw a picture of the cabin I stayed in. 

The place we stayed is located in Rangeley, Maine.  It's very pretty, all about nature, and right up my husband's alley.

All of the cabins have names.  Ours was Hummingbird Haven.  It apparently had, at one point, a bunch of hummingbird feeders hanging from the porch roof (although it no longer does) hence the name.  as far as their cabin size goes, this was one of the larger ones, complete with 2 bedrooms, connected by a bathroom with a full-on Bugs Bunny Shower, and a complete set of floors so uneven, you felt like you were sailing on a ship (or drunk, when you haven't drank) every time you walked from one end of the cabin to the other!

But seriously, I'm not complaining.  Aside from my allergy problem, it was a fun place to stay. Lots of kayaking, hiking, and plenty of pictures.

So, since the website its self does not have a picture of our cabin posted, here, in all it's quirky uneven glory and charm, is Hummingbird Haven:

Hmm, since their website doesn't seem to have updated photos, perhaps I should send them some....:-)

Day 14: Pretty 'Flower'

By now, I've got Disney on the brain. Real bad.  As of today, I leave on my first Disney trip on five years in 42 days! *yay!*  So when I cam across the sketch prompt of 'a skunk' in my sketchbook, Flower from Bambi was all I could think of to draw!

Skunks are (obviously) stinky, but if you've ever seen a skunk baby, they're pretty darn cute:

*insert collective 'awww!' here*

A few summers ago, I was staying at my in-laws house, and driving along their country road at night, I almost hit one of these adorable buggers! Needless to say, the little dude was quite perturbed, and promptly sprayed the following car angrily with his stinky-ness (which happened to be my husband's truck.) Disney, in a play of mild irony, has the character of Flower be a skunk, hiding in a flowerbed.  I guess all of the flowers cover up the stink?

Well, either way, baby skunks are cute, and Flower is cute.  My attempt at Flower (with color added):

Day 13: Al Hirschfeld, Take 2

So, from one of my previous posts, you probably know that I love Al Hirschfeld's work.  He was indeed the master of line.  I don't really consider myself good at caricatures.  Truth be told, my husband is better at them.  However, I love Hirschfeld's work, and since he also shared a special relationship with some Disney animation projects, the liking is doubled.  (You can find the video here.  I highly recommend it.)

Since I was working with kids on this one, I had to back up a bit with this project, and give them a crash course in facial proportions.  Once that was done, I told them to pick one feature on their face and exaggerate it.  I chose my eyes, another chose her lips, and another chose his glasses.  Once the drawing were done, they were outlined in Sharpie, and that was followed by a quick demonstration of how to use colored pencils.  All in all, it ended up being a fun little exercise, and produced some cute results.

Here's what the kids produced:

And here's mine:

:-)

Day 12: Pirates of the Caribbean....and Elsewhere

I have not seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie yet, although I want to.  I really loved the first one, but the next two kind of killed it for me (way to have a melodramatic ending, guys.) Anyway, a fun project I've done with kids is making their own Pirate Treasure Maps.  It's a great project for any age, because it incorporates Geography, Literature, and most importantly, Creativity. (Ok, I'll get off my 'teacher' soapbox now.)  But, really, I like making them purely because they're really fun. 

For the map to be rooted in reality, it has to have a Compass, a Map Key, and a Title.  You have to name where your treasure is! I also draw in the Latitude and Longitude lines, and there is an aging process applied. Mostly, it's just drawing, Sharpie, and watercolor paint.  But the results can be pretty awesome.

Here's our inspiration, Antique Maps:

Here's my map, before the aging process:

And here's the map, completed:

I did this project with my kids at camp last week.  They ranges in age from 6 to 12.  Here are the results:

I would call this one: successful :-)