Bring in the ...

A fish out of water?

It's summer. I'm preoccupied with weather. (You may have noticed.) There have been a couple days where I just want to crawl right inside my water bottle and stay there. Which led to this sketch:

Stay cool!

Escaping with my imagination

It hit 109 degrees in my neighborhood yesterday - I know, I know, there are some places even hotter but you've got to remember I'm a Canadian girl. I am acclimating but not fast enough for those kinds of temperatures!

So here's a different time of year to think about:


Stay cool!!

Live and learn, grasshopper

Here's another sketch I did many moons ago while sitting stranded (yet again) in the Denver airport. Because we were snowed in, there were no grasshoppers in sight. And in spite of growing up surrounded by grasshoppers in Saskatchewan, I realized I didn't know how many legs a grasshopper actually had. Logic said six, like any insect, but did the big ones count or should there be an extra pair on the thorax?


Turns out I was on track. It's amazing what you aren't sure you know sometimes.

And on the subject of grasshopper legs:

*Did you know grasshoppers have ears in their legs? Although it depends what type of grasshopper they are - some types keep them on their abdomen. (You can print a grasshopper anatomy picture to label here.)

*Here's a cool piece of fractal art call "Grasshopper Legs".

*I just finished a fantastic novel called The Brushstroke Legacyby Lauraine Snelling that also involves grasshoppers. But you'll have to read it to find out how.

A dancing hippo

Just a portion of a sketch I did the other day. Ever feel like a hippo in a tutu?

A spider sketch

Just another idea from my sketch book last week. I was reading that some experts think spiders are not aggressive, they are just short-sighted. When lunch might be on the line, it's "bite first - ask questions later."

Do you suppose glasses would help?

A literary frog

I think I'm starting to get a grasp on why children's writing is the right spot for me. It seems that I have an overdeveloped sense of the absurd. The idea's too ridiculous? Ridiculous! Too far-fetched? Fabulous! Let's stretch our imaginations and make silliness sacrosanct.

Why? Because I think when we laugh, we learn too. It's the spoon full of sugar. It's the rainbow in the rain. It's the soft fondant center in the Easter Creme Egg.

So with that thought in mind (and, I'll confess, an Easter Creme Egg as an occasional diversion), I've been having some fun in my sketch pad this week. Here's what happened on Monday:

I call it "Reading Past Bedtime" and it's once again available as a coloring sheet on my website.

But for now...it's late and I have a good book waiting for me. I hope it's a silly one.