garth

It’s a good thing that Thanksgiving is between Halloween and Christmas (at least in the States it is). Acts as a buffer and gives the two extremes a bit of breathing room. The turkey always gets it in the end anyway despite his intentions to make peace.

Hmmm… this might work well for this years’ “Happy Holidays” card.

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7:08:31 AM PM - I keep having these dreams that I went back to my old job, and my old house that I lived in when I was 12. Why do I keep having these?

9:58:38 AM - Just figured out how to wrangle the text boxes in Illustrator. Switching from Freehand to Illustrator has been very painful.

2:54:52 PM - It’s so hard to hear Camille screaming and throwing a fit upstairs and stay detached so that I can work. Poor Jen.

4:15:22 PM - The kids just got home from school and are watching Arthur on PBS while Jen is at a PTA meeting. Aurthur’s a great babysitter until I’m done working.

4:25:55 PM - Arthur’s not doing so great. Camille is at my heals begging me to stop working.

Needless to say, I’m a fan of Twitter, and I add “tweets” all the time. For those of you not familiar with Twitter, I suggest you go HERE to find out what it’s all about, and you’d never really understand it until you try it.

But in a nutshell, its global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? You have a 140 character limit, making sure you don’t write an epistle, rather just a quick note.

While writing several “tweets”, or Twitter entries, the other day, I thought, “Hey, I’m practically writing in a journal for all to see!” (Yeah, I’m a bit dense, but I figured that out all on my own). “What if some journaling software had a widget where I could add small, time-stamped entries to my journal without actually opening up the program, adding an entry, adding a time stamp, but do all that as quickly as I can with Twitter through Twitterrific?” I asked myself (I work alone).

My question didn’t go unanswered! But I had to ask around first. I went to Journler’s site and asked the community there. I was quickly answered by “NovaScotian”, an AppleScript genius. He said that no such widget existed, but until then I could use a quick AppleScript he wrote for Journler. He didn’t have it already, he created it then and there, and tweaked it to my wishes!

So, now all I have to do is click on the AppleScript icon in the menu bar, select Journler, and a little window pops up for me to write my “tweet”, hit enter, and it does all the dirty work for me! All my “tweets” are entered into a daily journal, with a time stamp just like the entries at the beginning of this blog entry.

I would never write the details shown above if I waited to write a normal journal entry. I would have forgotten, or just thought they were too trivial to write, yet now I have a vivid record of what life’s really like around the Bruner household. No worrying about grammar, no trying to schedule in journal time. Just write as it happens, and I have the best journal I’ve ever had.

If you’re interested in doing the same thing, go purchase Journler, and look at this forum topic to get the code and instructions.

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Although scolded every time, juggling the farm animals was a habit Cindy couldn’t kick until her early teens.

Update:

I played with this a little more to give it a warmer hand sketched look. I kinda dig the rougher feel of the cow below. What do you think? What style do you think children’s book publishers would welcome more? Click on the cow to see it up close.

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Almost 10 years ago a friend asked me to draw this illo for her because she was getting married at such an old age (she was probably in her early 40s at the time), and she actually used it on the front of her wedding announcement. I still can’t believe it.

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Not terribly long ago I found a new love. She’s hard at first, but with warm hands and a firm touch, she loosens up and becomes more pliable. Her fleshy tones are a bit unnerving, just begging for a little primer before her true colors shout out.

Super Sculpey, I can’t keep my hands off you. You form so easily and even in the face of ice cold sculpting tools, you bend to my every whim. You never complain about me putting you in your place, and never, ever, do you revert to your original form.

Through the refiner’s fire you emerge as tough and determined as ever to please. Your final act in life is to become what you were destined to become: Art.

Super Sculpey, may you never become brittle in the face of adversity, and may your true form show forever.

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Some daily doodles, and… what’s this? Color?! Wow, I am getting ambitious.

Ball point pen and watercolor.

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I was laying down for a nap with my youngest daughter when she was 3 years old, and she likes to snuggle. We were face to face on the pillow, and right as she was falling asleep she expressed her abhorrence to the smell of my breath and sleepily said, “Daddy, will you shut your face?”.

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You’ve got to check this guy’s work out. He taught an illustration class at a Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU that I attended. Great guy, and superb illustrator. Here’s his blog, and his website.

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Maybe it’s the recent road trip to California with young children that has tainted my thought process. Anyhoo, here’s my submission.Below is another Illustration Friday submission that I just couldn’t finish on time. There’s not much worse than an uninvited visitor asking to stay for just a couple weeks until they get back on their feet. Illustration Friday’s theme: Visitor. I hope to add color soon.I had one more idea that I just sketched up to get the idea across.

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There are so many of these I would like to add color to, but my current schedule just won’t allow it. So you’ll have to endure some b&w goodness. Click on them if you want to see them close up.

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Walt Disney said that Disneyland would never be finished. It was his playground, where he imagined, created anything he wanted, and experimented.

Since my budget is not near ol’ Uncle Walt’s, my playground is my website. Looking drab? Add some illustrations. A new technology called blogging? Gotta have that! What’s that? Flash isn’t search engine friendly? So much for all that learning. It doesn’t work well with Internet Explorer? Curse Microsoft!

So goes the changes around here, and I’m having a lot of fun with it… with a few headaches too.

Welcome to my playground.

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This was a very quick experiment using a sketch a half an inch high. A fun thing for me to sketch, teeny tiny Amoebots. Half robot, half amoeba. And with this guy’s brain, he’s the geekiest of the bunch!

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I can’t believe I’ve let my blog go without an update for so long. I’ve been so busy on stuff that I just kinda got out of the groove. It’s time for an update.

All of the work I’ve done here is for my full-time gig at Insect Lore.

So I guess the best way to tell you what I’ve been up to is to show you.

Here’s a fun one. Six puzzles in one showing the life cycles of butterflies, ladybugs, ants, mealworms (darkling beetles), praying mantises, and silkworms. I did the puzzle artwork, logo designs and packaging design. Here’s what the six puzzles look like:

Then, there’s a mealworm/darkling beetle raising kit in the form of a country farm. Hey, anything to make these ugly bugs a little more endearing. It’s popular for 5th and 6th grade curriculums. I designed the logo and packaging, and the logo on the roof of the barn itself.

Here we have a Butterfly Garden, Insect Lore’s flagship item. They’ve been producing this one since 1969, just in several different forms from a box, down to this super simple pop-up habitat. I just redesigned the logo and packaging.

And, the fun-loving Checker Bugs. Just a cute twist on an old favorite. Jump your opponent and capture ‘em in the bug nets.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of what I’ve done (by far), but a sampling. I’m currently working on a whole slew of new products for 2008, and as soon as those are released, I’ll show those.

I feel so lucky to do what I love for a living, and Insect Lore is really a great company with wonderful people.

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If it’s considered good luck when a ladybug lands on you, then Timmy’s fortune is looking pretty good!

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This is an older illustration, but I just had to cheat this week because of my work load. This little girl was the very first thing I thought of when hearing this week’s theme. She’s made an appearance in several of my illos, and maybe she will again in the future. I hope you like her.

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The Smurfs and Max Headroom, combined in this deliciously 80s illustration.<p>I was a child and a teenager during the 80s, a most impressionable decade for anyone, let alone someone who was trying to find himself.

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I had to rush through this one since I’m heading to Atlanta this week for work. Wish I had more time to devote to it. Anyway, it’s a tribute to Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon.

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