Avenger Brown II

Okay, okay, I know I've been a little obsessed with the Avengers lately...Last one! (For now.)

Here's another Peanuts comic turned into Avengers. Your daily dose of Avengers.

I like that sassy, selfish, narcissistic Iron Man is characterized as sweet little Linus.

In all reality*, Iron Man's personality probably resembles Lucy more than anyone else.

*...And by reality, I mean a fictional world where the Avengers exist.

Avenger Brown Comic

I decided that it would be fun to create a Peanuts/Avengers spoof in an actual comic strip!

So I went online and looked through dozens and dozens of Peanuts comics trying to find a funny one - but here's the thing: Peanuts comic strips aren't ever funny. Right? They're just sort of cute. Barely. So I copied one and put the Avengers in it for fun (the original is below.) Now it features Captain America and Nick Fury instead of Charlie Brown and Lucy. I like the idea of sensitive little Captain America trying to talk to Nick about his feelings...

Avenger Bailey

This is another version of the Avengers, based off the comic strip "Beetle Bailey."

I don't like this version nearly as much as yesterday's, but it was still fun to draw. I like Beetle's Captain America. And I giggled to myself as I made Thor based off the girl character again. I'm telling you, that's what happens when you have long blonde girly hair. Iron Man is probably the weakest link of this group...I just could not figure out what to do with his face. He ended up with awkward posture.

Avenger Brown

Awwww, look at these little guys! Why is it that drawing anyone as a Peanuts character makes them infinitely more endearing?! It makes me want to sit Iron Man down on my lap and give him a hug. Look at his little Linus face! You know what I'm talking about. I love these guys. I have a big dopey grin on my face right this second as I'm typing, because I'm happy just looking at them. I love that Thor is based off of Sally. That's what happens when you have long blond girly hair. He doesn't seem to mind, though....And little Pigpen Hulk makes me smile because I didn't mean to give him such huge feet, but now that it's turned out that way, I'm glad. I decided I haven't given the Avengers nearly enough blog-attention, considering how entertaining that movie was, so they might get a few more well-deserved shout-outs this week.

My Week in Sketches

My week, via sketches:

Last Thursday, some of the kiddos and I were relaxing climbing on a hammock, 

and next thing I knew, the hammock's pillow had exploded. 

The pillow fluff became the hit of the evening and entertained the children for hours.

Once a year, just before summer, I have to take an entire day just to mail 

thousands of little paper tags to various people and groups. 

Lots of daydreaming happened this day, my annual stuff-envelopes-all-day-long day:

I babysat my housemates' children for the evening, which I love. 

We played dentist and Aladdin and danced and I got buried under pillows a lot:

Late-night hangout at a 24-hour diner with some friends that I never get to see. 

We stayed until midnight, and then I had to drive two hours home and work the next day, and it was totally worth it.

My little housemate, Addie, put a sticker on my cheek without me seeing who or what was on the sticker.

This turned into a very fun game of 20 questions, where I tried to figure out what the sticker was.

Then we played like ten more rounds. It's perfect because Addie seems to genuinely enjoy being the clue-giver and I genuinely enjoy guessing.

Mosquito Buffet

This is my life right now. Just a bunch of mosquitoes swarming around me like I'm their dinner.

And I am. I have the bites to prove it. And they just love my elbows, let me tell you...

Crazybeard

After yesterday's Katniss, I wanted to attempt a character that was a little bit more recognizable.

He's not as well-known, but that beard is certainly recognizable.

This is Seneca Crane, another character from the Hunger Games. I mentally refer to him as "Crazybeard" for obvious reasons. He looks like a real creeper with those black eyes. I would not like to run into this guy in a dark alley. Or the Hunger Games arena, for that matter.

CopyKat

I recently discovered an artist by the name of Stanley Chow, and he's amazing!

I keep looking for more and more of his artwork wherever I can find it. 

I love his style of cartoonizing people. Here are my two my favorites:

(Ursula Andress as the first Bond girl, and the Von Trapps from the Sound of Music.)

I don't get how he caricaturizes people so well when they have solid black eyes! I don't get it, and yet I love it. I just had to try a caricature or two myself. I want to be as talented as Stanley Chow. So I tried to think of someone I hadn't seen him draw yet, and I decided to go with Katniss from Hunger Games:

It's not the worst, but it still doesn't look quite look like her. But that's okay. 

I can't expect to be Stanley on the first try. And try again, I shall...

Stencil Falcon

As I've said lately, right now I'm in the process of designing a lot of memorabilia for a fake band called "Steel Falcon". It's for work. (I should put that in quotes because it's so much fun.) It's for "work". Part of my task was to create a Steel Falcon stencil (now that I'm no stranger to stencil-cutting) and this is the final product.

I like that Jesus is peeking out at the top of this picture:

 

The current state of my office's spray paint wall:

This is just about half of my spray paint arsenal:

See the bottom-middle yellow spray paint can? It has a hole in the top of it from where a BEAR BIT INTO IT. I know I'm not much of a vandal, but that should for sure earn me some street cred!

My Week in Sketches

Here's my week!

Last Thursday, sitting on the patio with the girls...the chandelier added some delightful ambiance:

Driving to my parents' house Friday night, I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic but somehow I was in a really good mood. I'm pretty sure I could be heard singing to Coldplay in about a 5-mile radius.

My computer's fan has been overheating for months, so my dad and I decided to fix it.

We took my laptop apart and blew compressed air right through the center of it, 

which was a lot more fun than I was anticipating!

Even doing the dishes, I just love being around my parents:

Playing Boggle with my mom - our favorite game!

(It drives me crazy when I accidentally draw myself holding a pen with my left hand

when I'm right-handed. I like accuracy in my sketches!)

There was a planned power outage at my office on Tuesday, which meant that I got to work from home!

I loved it. My mom called it "Take your mother to work day."

Hanging out in downtown Redlands with my friend Erin...

We got the most amazing ice cream I've ever tasted. It was salted caramel. 

I never would have guessed I'd be that excited to taste sea salt in my ice cream:

Can You Hear Me Now?

I finally saw The Avengers last night! What have I been doing all this time? How had I not seen it yet? I don't know. I can't figure it out. But I've seen it now. All is well. Watching the Hulk run around smashing things made me think of my own temper, and what would be the thing most likely to set me off and turn me into a big, crazy monster...I decided the answer is Verizon customer service. If I could Hulk-smash anyone or anything...I think it would be Verizon. They hold the honor. They also hold the honor of being the only customer service to have me cry on the phone out of frustration. A couple times. They're the worst. I know you think I'm being dramatic. But if Bruce Banner has to call Verizon in the next Avengers movie, you'll totally see what I'm talking about.

The Force Is Strong With This One

I'm not sure if there was ever really potential for this to pan out any better...

I thought it could be funny to draw Darth Vader reenacting the well-known Far Side comic shown below.

Except, since it's Darth Vader, he wouldn't actually be touching the door, he'd be three feet away trying to use the force to get it open. Except I don't think it came out quite that way. It's like he's just leaning on the wall or something. Or patting it. Or possibly he's waving at the door. And I couldn't remember if he wears pants! I could only picture his cloak...I mean, Obi-Wan doesn't wear pants, right? They're both just all cloaky. These are the important topics that I spend my time thinking about...

Bogglove

There's a special place in my heart for a game called Boggle. 

It's one of my mom's and my favorite games to play together. It's our game.

And this weekend, since it was the Mother's-Day-AND-Mom's-birthday-palooza, I've gotten to play several rounds of Boggle with my mom. What I love about it is that we're extremely evenly matched - we often beat each other by one or two points, meaning it was a close game. We even had a few rounds where we looked at the letters, found all the exact same words, and then each earned zero points because we cancelled each other out. For whatever reason, I found this to be extremely adorable, like some kind of sign from the universe that my mom and I are kindred spirits (which we of course are.)

Annie: The Early Years

This weekend was a special one because, as you well may know, it was Mother's Day!

But not only that - today is my mom's birthday! So I thought the appropriate thing to do would be to celebrate 

my mom with a few works of art that feature drawings of her.

For instance, here is a plate that I made in preschool:

I like that my dad has a pink head, and that I spelled his name "Dod".

 Here is a page out of a story I wrote when I was six:

I like the curly-cue nostrils I used to draw on people and that I was detailed enough to draw a barrette in my hair.

And this is a family portrait I drew when I was nine:

It's hard for me to pinpoint my favorite parts of this drawing, but I'll start with my dad giving the "o.k." hand signal, my heart sweatshirt, and the really bad haircut I drew for myself. And I think it's adorable that I'm holding hands with my mom.

I love looking back and seeing my art evolve from when I was little kid, and it makes me thankful that I had a mom who looked at these silly little sketches and thought they were worth saving!

My Week in Sketches

I got to see my parents this weekend! I just adore them.

Any weekend that I get to spend with my mom and dad is a good weekend in my book.

We spent the weekend in Palm Springs at my dad's senior softball tournament.

Who wouldn't want to spend their weekend watching a bunch of senior citizens run around in 100-degree heat?

On Sunday I went to a fancy fundraiser event with my friends.

I kept referring to it as a "gala" because it made me feel fancier.

I just discovered the garage band app for iphones! Where has this been all my life?!

I spent a few hours this week huddled over my phone creating songs. I looooove it.

Game night! We played Settlers and Carcassonne (two of the best board games in existence), and we also played with the "Princess and the Dragon" expansion pack for Carcassonne. It's possibly the nerdiest version of any board game I've ever played, since it adds elements like "magic portals" and fairies and dragons to the gameplay. We really nerded it up.

I'm happy to report that I've spent a lot of time on the tree stump in my backyard that overlooks the canyon behind my house. I've played guitar out there almost every day this week (thanks to my reignited love for music via garage band and last week's Coldplay conert!) and I always leave feeling like life is more meaningful. It also leaves me with more mosquito bites.

Umbrella Party

I'm afraid I don't have any particularly interesting stories about umbrellas, which is unfortunate since they are the topic of today's blog post. I can't remember the last time I really used an umbrella - I think I sort of "outgrew" them around high school...now I just wear rain jackets with hoods instead. And the honest truth is that I prefer the adventure of running through rain, trying not to get soaked, than carrying an umbrella and knowing I won't.

I drew these umbrellas and then played with the colors in photoshop...

I think might like the bottom-left one the best. It's moody.

Octo-mic

Okay, okay, I know it's getting a little repetitive with the music theme each day here...I'll try to get a little more creative tomorrow. But right now, I've just got musical instruments on the brain! This is obviously a microphone, though I don't know how it's standing up on its own. At one point, I was contemplating trying to convey the mic like it was being summoned up by a snake charmer...but I gave up on that because it was too absurd. And then I almost started drawing meatballs on the mic cords like it was a pile of spaghetti...but I thought that would be too tricky and I didn't want to cover everything in sauce - so I just went with cords. But I made lots of cords coming out of the pile, which doesn't really make sense. It's like an octopus-mic. An octo-mic! And I'm cool with that.

Steel Falcon

This is going to be the first and last flute that I ever draw. So many little pieces and knobs and buttons! I spent way too much time on the flute. This is the beginning of a concert poster for a "fake" band that I'm designing. I was trying to channel the vibe of old sixties posters...all I can think of when I look at it is Ron Burgundy playing the jazz flute in "Anchorman." This is totally the kind of poster he would have hanging in his apartment (which smells of rich mahogany.) Anyway, the band is called "Steel Falcon," in case you couldn't read it and you thought they were called "Sceel Jalcon" or something. It'd be understandable. I spent like 20 minutes trying to make that "F" look less like a "J" and I can't do it. Silly smoky-cursive-letters-coming-out-of-a-flute! So tricky.

Raining Drumsticks

For the past couple weeks, especially at work, I've been very focused on street art. I've had huge tasks that involved spray-paint and posters and stencils and various forms of (legal) tagging. It's been a blast. I still have the spray paint under my fingernails to prove it. I've loved getting messy and undertaking big projects that were unlike anything I've ever done before...

But now I'm going to be shifting gears! It's time for me to pull my gaze away from street art for a little while and focus on some of my other tasks at hand - one of which (the one I'm most excited about) involves creating a lot of music memorabilia. Fake music memorabilia, I guess - memorabilia for a pretend-band-that-doesn't-really-exist...I love my weird job where sometimes I get to design concert posters for fake bands. Seriously. I think this is all SO fun. Today I've only got some drumsticks to show for myself, but there are a lot of them! I'm sure you're going to be seeing a lot more musical instruments in the near future.

This was me trying out some different background colors...and a faucet.

My Week in Sketches

Here's a glimpse at my week!

I know I look miserable in this picture, but it wasn't that bad. I was still working on the giant spray paint project that I started last week, and we kept going even when it was raining...I probably shouldn't have drawn this right when I got home, as I was very tired and damp. I didn't even draw me holding the spray paint can correctly!

This is much better. We felt very victorious when the project was complete:

I went for a hike on Saturday and watched the sun go down.

It's been a while since I've actually watched the sun set, and now I want to do it more often.

On Sunday I got to celebrate my friend Laura's birthday with her sweet family:

Coldplay concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Amazing amazing amazing! 

Last night one of my friends was showing us how he can navigate his DVR using only his toes.

We were all simultaneously impressed and weirded out.

To my friends - I'm sorry that I've become that girl 

who chronicles stuff like this and then puts it on the internet.