Shearing Sheep

Sometimes, when I return to my blog after a good travel adventure, I feel overwhelmed. Too much I could share. What the heck do I choose? How do I put anything at all into a blog-sized bite. Other times I feel raring to go with lots of posts and only the question of how many is too many?

 My trip to Western Australia left me wondering how many posts are too many. So at the risk of over-sharing, here's another highlight from my trip: I visited a sheep shearing farm!

One of my favorite books as a kid was Tomie dePaola's Charlie Needs A Cloak, and I felt a bit like I was stepping into a small part of that book at the farm. After all, I saw sheep getting sheared! Just like in the story! (No weavers though).

 

Another cool part of the sheep shearing farm were the dogs.

 I had never heard of the sort of dog that runs on top of sheep! I think it's called a Kelpie.

 We even got to feed a baby lamb.

 

Baaaaa!

WHALES!

Fifteen minutes into our boat ride we saw...

 WHALES!

 Two of them!

Humpbacks.

 They were young whales, or so our guide told us.

So they were curious.

Which could explain why they hung out with our boat for 40-50 minutes,

popping their noses up,

 swimming back and forth under and around the boat,

and sometimes even waving their noses at us when we waved at them (it's true! the guide told us to try it, and it worked! Curious whales sometimes play with people like that, he said).

It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

My son loved it too.

 We also saw two Southern Right Whales involved in, ahem, courting.

They were a bit less interested in our boat though.

We even saw sea lions.

 It was a day I'm certain I'll never forget.

P.S. This was all while still in Western Australia, for those who didn't read my last couple of posts.

An Ice Cream Eating Emu

 Yes, such a thing exists.

And did you know that emus grunt?

Drawing Kangaroos

 My family and I just got back from a trip to Western Australia!

 It's a relatively remote area of the world where there are possibly more kangaroos than people.

 We had a wonderful time there.

And speaking of kangaroos, we saw lots and lots of them.

Some in dusk-lit golden fields.

Some hopping across or next to the road at night like a deer would back home (scary!).

 Some at a wildlife park.

 And even a few joeys who were being raised by a good-natured farm couple who had taken the orphans from their road-killed-mothers' pouches.

Of course I drew quite a few.

 

 But my favorite was watching them jump.

 Boing, boing!

A moment of zen in the clouds

 Today is my birthday!

 I'm off to Western Australia this week to celebrate.

 Meanwhile I thought I'd give a little reverse birthday cheers to anyone out there reading this.

 Here's a few photos, a little moment of zen, from the flight I took last month from L.A. to Seattle.

 When the weather cooperates on that journey, you see mountain, after mountain, after mountain. And it's absolutely beautiful.

I wish for you a mountain-top moment or a head-in-the-clouds good-version-of-dreaminess today.

Cheers to a great day!

Pretty skies

 These photos are from Thailand, taken way back in May.

 I found them while looking for a different picture and they made me smile; I thought I'd post them while I'm home enjoying sunsets in the Pacific Northwest.

No matter how cliche they can be, pretty skies and sunsets are almost always nice.

A cure for frowns

Two words: GIANT SWING.

Weee!!!!

 

Do not jump into safety net.

Fly above it!

Clearing a path for growth

 "All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible." -- William Faulkner

Harsh Critique

Recently I was reading a story I'd written to Oscar (my son, he's 4). When I'd finished he was laughing and saying "Again! again!" which felt pretty great.

Then he stopped laughing and got very serious. His eyebrows crinkled and he paused his finger on his upper lip.

"Mommy," he said, "I'm not sure if this story has a problem."
Honestly, those words were also pretty great to hear.

Cheers to a critique partner in the family!

More color in Penang, this time using the Hipstamatic

 I took these pictures in Penang, Malaysia, using the Hipstamatic photo app on my Iphone.

 Pretty cool for phone pictures.

 My sister's been using an app called Instamatic. Supposedly it lets you change your pictures retroactively for similar results. I'm very curious if I'll be able to use any texture photos taken this way for my illustrations.

Time will tell...

Color in Penang

  So much depends upon one's point of view.

 Life tastes sweet when I aim my lens in the right direction.

Dragon Boat Races

 Last month my family traveled to Penang, Malaysia for a weekend trip to watch some Dragon Boat races.

 It's such an interesting practice. If you are interested in it at all, click here to learn more about the tradition.

 My favorite part of the experience was listening to the drummers beating out the pace of the strokes.

 We couldn't get too close to the boats in the race, but I did manage to see a few docked boats.

The boats have dragon heads and tails. So neat!

Signs from the Universe

The following are some signs I've photographed over the last few months -- little sweet somethings I've stumbled across that feel like signs from a happy God.

 Except this one. This one was put up by a grumpy kill-joy for sure:

More crafty fun: Batik

So, like I've been saying, my sister is crafty -- like me.

 

So I had to take her to the nearby KL Craft Complex to try Batik while she was visiting KL.

We also took my son, Oscar, who loves art projects lately.

Painting with Mommy and Auntie Kelli was a big treat (he made 4 batiks!).

I made a tree of life with a labyrinth in it.

 

The craft complex had a new offering too -- they sewed our batiks into pillows for just a few dollars more.

 I added the ribbon and button onto mine. 

Happiness is making crafty projects with my sister and son.

(Unless maybe those projects involve bike trickshaws...)

School Visits in Malaysia

 I've officially made two school visits while in Malaysia.

 Both were at my son's school; once with 3-to-4-year-olds and once with 5-to-six-year-olds.

 SO MUCH FUN!

 I love, love, love working with kids 

(In a parallel universe somewhere I'm probably an art teacher).

I've held back on doing school visits back home because I'm an unpublished illustrator. But now that I think about this, why does that have to stop me? Artists do school visits. I've been a professional artist for a long time.

 So this has got me thinking and dreaming. I hope I get the chance to make paper with many more classes in the future.

 These pictures are of the board about my visit that the older kids put up for Family Day (didn't want to put the actual close-up pictures without permissions; I figured the board is far enough away for blog picture purposes). Below is the beautiful thank you card they made me.

SCBWI Malaysia

I finally connected with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) in Malaysia!

They put up a booth at the Kuala Lumpur Book Fair that I attended several weeks ago (I went knowing they would be there). The top photo is of the SCBWI booth, the next two are random pictures from the book fair.

I chatted for quite a while there with the wife of a renown Malaysian Illustrator, Yosof Gajah (fun fact: Gajah means elephant in Bahasa Malayu, the Malaysian language). Yosof's wife, Zakiah, is an artist in her own right and offers batik classes. It was lovely to chat with her. Hopefully I'll get to try one of her classes out while I live here.

 

Then, last Monday, the chapter had a special get-together (they are just starting to organize regular meetings and haven't officially started having them yet) to greet Steve Mooser, one of the co-founders of SCBWI!

It was a fun get together and I'm happy to have mingled with some other artists and writers from KL as well as Steve and Sally.

Thanks to Linda T. Lingard, the local Regional Advisor, for organizing.

Cheers to SCBWI!

The School Of Hard Knocks

My sister and her husband have been visiting us the last few weeks.

 They just left yesterday. We had a super fun few weeks together.

When Kelli and I get together we tend to make crafty stuff.

So it isn't surprising that we had a few crafty adventures while she was here.

Like visiting the Royal Selangor Pewter visitor center (touristy? YES!).

We took a tour and watched craftspeople work away at making pewter objects.

Then we participated in something called "Whack and Snack" at the "School for Hard Knocks."

We got to fashion our own pewter bowls by hammering on a flat round sheet of plain pewter.

Too bad I didn't have any pent up anger to hammer out or anything -- this would have been the perfect place to do so.

I pounded my bowl into a nice partial orb and then opted to ornament the bowl with...

A knock knock joke.

Cheesy touristy goodness at it's finest, especially when you get to share the whole experience with your sister!

Oh, and kudos to whoever came up with the idea of decorating the walls with pewter hand prints of all people who work for Royal Selangor. I loved those walls.

FYI: the snack part of "Whack and Snack" involved tea with croissants. Yummy.

The Songkran festival in Bangkok

 Our recent long-weekend trip to Bangkok happened to overlap with Thailand's famous Songkran festival.

 It's a festival to celebrate the Thai new year. 

But it's also a festival where everyone and everybody throws water on each other in the streets for several days on end. 

I think the tradition originated in people trying to symbolically cleanse themselves for the new year.

But it's kind of evolved into a big nation-wide water fight in the streets. 

 

People get drenched, but mostly it's all in good fun.

We avoided the most popular areas to celebrate (figuring it was a bit much for Oscar, our 4-year-old son).

 Instead we joined in on some water play with the neighborhood kids near our hotel (luckily located in a residential area).

 My son had the time of his life.

 He even got the hotel staff in on the act.

 They got me drenched too.

 But I steered clear when they brought out the "powder water." I think it's just dish soap, but ummm... yuk? Does that mean I'm getting old?

 Hey, at least I took one for the team and blocked my whole family from being sprayed with a hose while we rode a tuk-tuk. Of course this meant that I was the one soaked by the hose right before dinner.

Don't these trees look like cheerleaders?

Maybe you don't see it.

Picture a cheerleader holding a pom-pom high.

And here's a cheer -- HOORAH! -- for any who need one.

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and the time that the tide will turn." --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Batik factory visit in the North

Painting detail by Yusoff Abdullah, a Malaysian artist

During my recent trip to Kota Barhu my family and I also visited a batik factory.

I've watched Batik being done before,

and have even tried it myself.

But this was a neat experience because the Batik being made at the factory I visited is the kind that I often see local women wearing.

It's not made for the tourist market, in other words.

It's fun to watch how fast these women paint.

And how fast they draw with the wax tool. I tried that, it's not an easy thing to draw with.

I love these open spaces where the women work, even if it was really hot in there. It was fun to watch my son's surprising interest in the whole process, too.

I gotta say it, I love traveling with a kid.