illustration friday

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “double”. I was originally going to make a penguin double (of course I was), but while I was digging through my penguin archive to find the perfect participant, the cheeseburger jumped out and threw some lettuce at me. I couldn’t ignore him, I guess he was feeling a bit thin and wanted to share the beefy love a little more.

I know, I should have added bacon because a cheeseburger without bacon is like a salad without croutons… pizza without pepperoni… a kiss without the pucker (is that possible?). However, I have a few non-meat eating pals and like to try to flaunt my carnivorous attitude away from their direction. Thus I decided I’d hold off on the extra extra meat today.

If this is a little too much burger for you, you can always stick with the original happy cheeseburger.

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “Rescue” and my first thought was my good ol’ trusted friend, the Super hero penguin. Super heros are supposed to protect and rescue us when we’re in need, right?

But what about every day heros? There are tons of penguins all around just waiting to rescue us in a variety of situations…

The fire rescue penguin, police officer penguin, US military penguin and even the pretty obvious, rescue penguin. There are plenty of other careers that involving rescuing every day…

There is also the not so obvious space commander penguin rescuing us from peril in the outter realms of the universe (or just weird space alient penguins) or the not so obvious (and not shown here) psychologist penguin or the bandaid penguin, rescuing us from ourselves and our own alter egos.

I’m sure I could go on for a while as there are unlimited number of situations I’m sure one of us could use a little rescuing.

What can you imagine up as your rescue penguin?

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “expired”. I was thinking an old wrinkly carrot would be fun, but the more wrinkles I added the more I really wanted to stay away from vegetables for a while. So instead, I came up with the good and bad bananas. On the bright side, the seemingly “bad banana” makes the absolute yummiest banana bread ever!

Food is always an analogy for me, so why not in my quick thought doodles… what do you think of with the word “expired”?

Speaking of doodles, I saw a book at Barnes and Nobel tonight – a doodle book. It was a notebook filled with partially finished drawings and sketches, etc. One page I passed was a quick zipper sketch that was half way unzipped with the comment “what’s stuck in the zipper?”. What a cool brainstorming tool! If only we had these fun and quick little thought jogging resources for everything we do.

I haven’t been able to participate in the Illustration Friday weekly challenge in a while. Every topic seems to be drawing a complete blank in my mind (pun intended). But this week, I am happy to report, I have been inspired once again – yay for grinning ideas! This week’s Illustration Friday topic is Welcome and as soon as I read it, a picture came to mind. A big smiley with the word Welcome in the grin.

But as I started doodling out the idea I kept envisioning a hug, I guess I’m feeling a little extra lovey today or gooey and mooshy… couple be the tofu I had for dinner last night. Anyway, I had to stop and ask… what is welcome hugging?

And then it occurred to me…

HAPPINESS

YES!, why not sound a little extra corny and just say it out loud… let’s welcome happiness today. So here is my interpretation of Welcome for the day: Welcome to Happiness.

This also fits in nicely with the this week’s Tuesday Topic as well… “Enjoy the Day”. I’ve been trying to come up with commentary on the topic all week but instead I guess I’ve been getting side tracked enjoying my days. We can call it a case study if I need to sound like I’ve been productive.

I’ve been trying harder to stop and enjoy aspects of my day rather than worry about getting things done. Yes I still work on my to-do list, I’m just trying harder to smile throughout the process. I’m trying to enjoy the work and so results are even more rewarding – it really is a blessing that I’m able to do so much with my time while spending it with people I care about.

Sometimes it seems redundant how often I bring up this facet of life. I regularly bring up appreciating family and friends and all the happiness that comes along with living a happy healthy life. Yet, I really do need to remind myself constantly to step back, breath and remember what is really important. So many times I find myself rushing around trying to finish something, remember something, go somewhere, say something or start something else. This isn’t going to change, I am a “gotta do it” kind of person. But what I can change is the appreciation for the process and the people involved. I have to remind myself to see this and do something about it – regularly.

So for today, I’m going to continue working on enjoying the day and welcoming happiness… Happy Friday!

Brownies anyone?

I created this design months ago for the Illustration Friday “Legendary”. Now “Flying” has come up as a topic and the giggle on the subject of flying penguins has re-entered my mind. So I’m sharing again… what if there were a whole fleet?

My thoughts on penguins and flying
I’m pretty sure the flying was traded in for hockey and belly boarding. There’s so much competition with all those other birds up there riding the wind, I think the penguins simply got smart and decided “might as well do something unique”. Not to mention they really look great in hats… and you can’t wear very many hats and fly, unless, of course, you don’t mind losing your hat.

About this design
This design was created entirely in Photoshop using a Wacom Graphire Bluetooth Tablet and gazillion layers of color. I started out with a bare lines of the penguin, added lines for his outfit, added blocks of color and then continued on to add numerous layers with varying colors and textures. I then flattened the entire penguin image and added the border, text and distressed effect.