I’m feeling abstract today.
April 22, 2019
In 1967, she was thinking: air hostess (for the glamour), nurse and office girl with oodles of charm and personality. In 2019, she is thinking of algorithms, black holes, oncology, Odyssey translations, and true crime. She is still being instructed to improve her hair, her voice, her figure, her walk, but the joy of applying herself is stronger than the drumbeat of criticism. Keep going, sister.
Hand Drawings
April 17, 2019
The push and pull of being vs doing. To me, hands are the ultimate doers, storytellers, get-shit-done human power tools. Not so for the copywriters at Elle magazine in 1967. Boy is it fun and weird leafing through back issues. Women’s magazines are the supreme handbooks on how to be, not do. There are times when that has not been true, but fortunes and priorities change, money shuffles, and the magazines with the biggest mouths are shuttered or redesigned, and we revert back to our old ways. Can you tell which quotes are mine and which are not?
When your students draw you
April 12, 2019
I’m one of those instructors who doesn’t mind if her students draw during class.
From my own experience, drawing makes us MORE focused listeners.
My thanks to #DigitalEdu‘er @followhulki for this spot-on portrait of me.
Check out her Twitter bio & blog for a range of her illos!
She also happens to be an OCAD instructor.
I’ll be teaching Foundations in Digital Communications Strategy and Social Media again this Spring.
Best in Class
April 12, 2019
Anyone who knows me knows I like interviewing people who are best in their fields. I got to do that for the May issue of House & Home magazine. I sat down with Tony Round of blackLAB architects inc. and designer Cameron MacNeil to find out how they positioned, built, and appointed a modern farmhouse to take full advantage of a jaw-dropping view. In this case, a 180-expanse of Georgian Bay from a hilltop. My thanks to owners, Kevin Heeney Toronto Real Estate and Alim Dhanji for their stories of raising two little ones on this amazing property.
Teaming up with Jane’s Walk Toronto
April 7, 2019
Happy Sunday, friends!
I haven’t’ even cracked my Sunday New York Times yet. I hope it’s still in the lobby. Here’s why: I spent the morning turning my drawings into puppets for this video.
I am proud to announce that Pen Jar Productions is an official partner of Jane’s Walk Toronto (May 3-5, 2019). I will be outfitting all 130 Walk Leaders with my Jane Jacobs’s Enamel Pin.
“We walk together to make space for every person to observe, reflect, share, question, and collectively re-imagine our city.” ~ Jane’s Walk Toronto
To find out where the walks are happening (and who is leading them), go to: https://www.facebook.com/janeswalkTO/
Process Junkie
March 25, 2019
While my students were working on their group projects this week, I had a moment to myself. So I drew a daisy, then two …
Back at my desk the next day, I had the beginnings of my Spring/Summer collection for Pen Jar Productions.
The ingredients that went into this recipe were:
• 1 Above Ground Art Supplies Premium Hardbound Sketchbook
• 1 Uniball Vision Pen (Fine). The waterproof ink is key.
• 4 colours: Daniel Smith’s New Gamboe, Hansa Yellow Light (Lemon Yellow works too), Sap Green and Payne’s Grey.
• PhotoShop (I finally understand a fraction of it!)
• 1 HP Scanner (the glass plate is so small. I need to upgrade)
• 1 artboard from Curry’s
• 1 elastic (from a head of broccoli) and two sunny yellow clips to hold the pages down for photographing
• 1 Amazon Basics Portable Photo Studio
I hope you love process as much as I do.
Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro in conversation
March 11, 2019
In my latest comic, “She is the House,” I imagine a conversation between two generations of writers.
Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro discuss the challenges of being a writer when you’re a woman.
It’s been 90 years since Woolf published, A Room of One’s Own, and 51 years since Munro wrote her short story, “The Office.”
I brought them together because the questions they raised about solitude and productivity are still just as pressing.
Things I think about.
