Lydia's entry into the 'SEA' book

The Sea - calm, tranquil, beautiful?  Full of monsters or a monster itself?  A powerful and uncontrollable force of nature.

Lydia's entry into Jeane's pattern book.

I noticed a recurring theme of nature in Jeane's book.  The combination of plants and animals sparked an image of red squirrels scampering through the undergrowth at the bottom of my garden.  I love the way their bodies seem to flow in a repetitive wavy movement.  After playing with the sequence of various frozen body shapes, I chose to repeat one particular pose I thought represents this flow that squirrels seem to have.  I have always been attracted to images in multiples, so have simply repeated this single pose to create a surface pattern.

Mary's recent entries

First Impressions sketchbook. I find I am increasingly playing with word and image combinations.

Illusion book. 

Color(ing) Book.  olio urging books seem to plunge me back to childhood so I took my drawing back there too!

Jeane's entry in Mary's Journey Book

Ahhh,  galloping to Le Grand Rocher.  What a journey!!!  And a fantastic ECIS conference.  Those  who were there might recognize the lone tree in my entry.

Angela's Book / Petr's Entry

Some time ago (2 years maybe) - our kids got a book of fairytales from around the world. Matyas fell in love with one tale – about a liar from Ireland – and had me read it to him on countless evenings. It is a wicked tale indeed.
An emperor promises to wed his daughter to any man who will force him to shout out: “You liar!” A boy from Ireland tells the Emperor a story in which he eventually falls from sky, gets stuck between 2 stones, cuts off his own head and sends it with a message to the Emperor. A fox finds the head on its way, which upsets our liar and so he runs after the fox to cut off his/her tail. Hence the piece…

Throughout and after completion I realized a couple rather unconscious influences:

Fantastic Mr. Fox – an ingenious movie by Wes Anderson. I love Mr. Fox!

The wolves in the walls – one of my top favourite children’s book – written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean.

Fables in general!

I love this blog, reading the posts, seeing your work but your book, Angela, made me realize how insufficient it is in delivering the essence and subtleties of some of the pieces. Your piece is so very gorgeous – the detail and care - hat off!

And your book has got such a great flow!

Angela's entry into Ana's Color(ing) Book

Angela's entry into Jeane's Pattern book

Jeane's entry in Annika's book

After taking a school group to Greece in early October, and doing lots of sketching, I wanted to use some of the drawings I did at the Archaeological Museum in Athens.  The fish and swirly designs come from ancient Minoan pottery. 

Flip-book update: EGADS!

Hello funteam,
So, I've forgotten who began the flip book (which is really pathetic cuz it's super cool and it just left my possession. Jemina, right?) . The flip book lives, and I've shown it to tons of friends and colleagues here in Sweden. All were amazed/ amused!

My entry pertains to:
#1 a response to the ridiculous scene that unfurls in the storyline of the book
#2 because I was like a week late getting my entry done and sent off to Lisa (sorry!)
#3 because I love the word "egads"!

Keep it rolling, hope all's well wit y'all,
Eric

Angela's Entry - Stacey's "Sea" sketchbook

Jemina's Entry into the Coloring Book

Jemina's Entry into the SEA book - Sorry to be posting this so late!

Jeane's Book / Petr's Entry

Jeane's book is a book of patterns. 

Rather than thinking of visual patterns I was intrigued by the idea of recording patterns of behaviour. Despite mulling over various concepts I found it difficult to envision a visual solution to this… and in the end this is my piece - kind of a hybrid between visual and everyday pattern.

1 workweek - 5 days - 5 shirts - 5 patterns - pen drawing & Photoshop

I love all things aged, lost, broken, abandoned. Jeane's book must have had a tough journey to Prague. The envelope came as you see it - along with the sketchbook in a plastic bag. The stamps are remarkable - all featuring a pattern - I only found it fit to add it into Jeane's sketchbook.

Lydia's Entry into Annika's book

As our sketch books progress I am becoming increasingly interested in making connections with previous entries, pulling common elements together.

The initial inspiration for my entry into Annika's book came from a pattern I saw in a cafe.  I wanted to record what I saw in order to refer to it when I got home.  I had a drawing pen with me but nothing to suggest the tone or colour that gave the pattern the effect of an illusion.  My daughter had her make up bag with her so I smudged some eye shadow onto the drawings with a finger tip to add depth.  I liked the way the eye shadow adhered to the paper, giving a subtle suggestion of tone without the dust and subsequent mess of charcoal.  Once back at my desk I used cut paper to achieve a crisp edge and developed a greater appreciation for the a product which is indeed intended to create an aesthetic illusion around the eyes!  I made connections between the found pattern and the curves in Angela's snake, the strong line and angles in the first few entries of the book and the subtle shading of the female face.

Jeane's entry in Eric's book

Working with white paint, frottage, rubber stamps, and various found materials to "impress" Eric.

Illusion entry by Angela

I really liked the strong, design-like imagery in Annika's book, and the overall flow of it. I DID try to continue this flow by playing off of the circles, however, I've regretfully lost the abstract or minimal feel. 

 My "illusion"entry is inspired from summer travels. Specifically, I combined some religious imagery from my two-weeks in Thailand and 11 days in a small village in Southern France.

Inspiration:

Perched overlooking the rolling countryside of Castelnou de Montmirail, this statue of the Virgin Mary has a haunting expression. She looks especially worried or sorrowful, or perhaps it's an expression of pleading, since at one point the village was known as a safe-haven for Catholics. Maybe she stood out to me because her severity contrasted so greatly from the reassuring warmth of the surrounding sunflower fields.

In Thailand, snake-like Naga images proliferate.The many stories behind this deity are fascinating. In statues like this one, Naga uses many heads to shelter Buddha. 

At most Wat entrances, two massive Naga protect either side of the 
staircase, with one formidable head coming out of another at the base of the stairs.

PATTERN entry, love from Sweden

Howdy,

WOODGRAIN CLOUD

so i found some old letraset when away on vacation.... something so nice about pre-digital ways of putting patterns on stuff! in any case, now it has been used to burn some silkscreens, which is how i got this pattern into the book. i thought to place a "signature" collage bit a bit further into the next pages, and also, i've included a bit more of the pattern printed violet onto tracing paper into the envelope, in case anyone wants to collage later on in the sequence.

holla, 

Jeane's entry in Lisa's book

Inspired by the logo used for the European Football Tournament that took place in June and July, and the design embroidered on my daughter's national costume (the purse), I integrated the two into my entry in Lisa's book. National costumes in Norway are an important part of their folklore and every region of the country has very different dress styles, colors, embroidery patterns, and jewelry.

Lydia's entry into Eric's book.

This entry explores the changing impressions I have when arriving at a holiday destination.  Tired after travelling, the negative aspects often appear prominent.  But in the light of a new day, well rested and through glasses that may well be rose tinted in retrospect, the positive features over ride those of the night before.

Ana Maria's Book / Petr's Entry

Since knowing of the theme of Ana Maria's Book I planned on using this "writing/drawing girl" visual from an instructional booklet on writing from late 60s. The challenge was to figure out what she's gonna "work on". I thought of something a little rude initially but changed my mind and decided to use a Batman template coloured in by my younger son along with a cut out from The Super Friends original comics from late 70s.

ECISketchers: Annika's entry to the Coloring Book

my continuance to Annika's coloring book

Jemina's entry into Annika's book...Illusions

I tried and tried to take an image with the pinwheels spinning but I was not fast enough with the shutter button...they do spin though, with the intention of creating the secondary color.

Jeane's entry in Petr's book

What can you find in between a hamburger bun???

Lydia's entry into Lisa's Folklore Book

A bit of English folklore with a touch of Russian flavour.
Maypole dancing dolls snipped from a collection of patterned paper.  The paper was a gift from my daughter for my birthday this month.

Angela's entry into Eric's Impressions book

Impressions of Life

Relationships (doodley characters)

Nature (plant and space imagery)
Spirituality/Faith (touristy photo I took of Notre Dame)

Mortality (skull and MRI)

Music & Literature

and I guess the bits of maps might symbolize our "location" 
where each of us fits in the scheme of things
Sometimes creepy and sinister
Sometimes innocent, goofy and random
tart lemons or sweet lemonade

As I attach words to the images it sounds corny
and self-indulgent, but . . . well,  there you are.   

The skeletal imagery came from MRI scans I had while living in Cairo. 


I wanted to include it, but my 3-page entry felt finished, so I took the cheeky 
liberty of disrupting the calm space between Petr's and Jemina's entries.

Jeane's addition to Lydia's flipbook

Jeane's entry in Jemina's book

I was trying to integrate two ideas into one, so "it depends on how you look at it".  And like the other entries in Jemina's book, you can look at the pages starting at the front, middle or end as well as looking at it sideways, from the front or back, and folded in unconventional ways.

Jemina's entry into Eric's book.

Jeane's Pattern book/Annika's entry

I had been thinking of this pattern book a couple of times before it even arrived to me. I always imagined doing something with my black-and-white pattern photos in it. Opening it, I saw that it already had a very lovely entry with photos and my original idea did not seem so appealing anymore. I found inspiration in african designs for this one instead.

Hey, at least I kept it black-and-white!

Angela, on folklore

In the end I did about 15 hours of research before actually beginning this entry, and learned some neat stuff along the way. 

1. I began with googling folklore and was fascinated by a Bolivian legend about how the armadillo (charango) learned to sing.  http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/the_armadillos_song.html Originally, the body of the instrument was made of an gutted armadillo body! The sound is quite like a ukulele. There are lovely samples of the music online, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQizCn0cp2A though I can no longer find my favorite, recorded live, impromptu at a cafe/bar by a tourist somewhere in Bolivia.   Ok, back to the sketchbook. Sadly, when I sat down to sketch out ideas,  I couldn't follow through and had some sort of creative block. It was too cutsie, so, after several different attempts, I decided to start over 

2. and I found myself researching Dia de los Muertos. I found the brightly painted skulls inspiring and especially liked stuff related to the Godess Mictecacihuatl, like this cameo and this guy's drawing. But once again, pencil to paper resulted in nada, so I began again. 

3. My third and final journey was into animal symbolism and I was fascinated to read all the different symbolic stories related to animals, from Celtic myths to Buddism, it's a treasure trove of inspiration. I've never been a fan of the sugary, over-commercialized butterfly image, but the stories were intriguing, poetic and sometimes contradictory (can represent spiritual evolution/transcendance -or-  an inconsistent, unfaithful partner). So, in the end, I went with this.. .  I think that listening to the audiobook of Alice in Wonderland flavored the resulting style as well.  

:) Thanks everyone!