Materials used: For the doll the face and hands are painted sculpey on a body made of wire and tin foil, the clothing is felt, linen, silk, wool, and thread and the book was made out of paper sewn and glued together. The background images were made from painted watercolour paper cut and glued together on cardboard to give it dimension. Then more cardboard was layered to make it pop off the blue painted backdrop. Then I photographed it outside in natural light and cleaned up the picture in photoshop and added some softening to the edges with the dodge tool to give it more of a dreamy quality to it.

Here’s an earlier full body shot without the book and before I finished the hands.

I’m not finishing her boots since they were giving me trouble and I’m not intending for her feet to be seen in the final photos anyway. Plus it’s way easier to stand her up when I can pin her to the wood like that!

I’ve started posting up the awesome tributes that people have been sending in over at http://picardday.wordpress.com/ Go look at them! Make it so! I’ll be adding more every day for the next week, so keep checking back for more Pic-arts!

I stuck these awesome stickers my pal Lindsay gave me on it. So now they watch me play. The fish probably cheers me on, and the starfish is all “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, PLAY BETTER!!”

The first song I learned was Postcards From Italy by Beirut. Today I taught myself the theme from Adventure Time! I need to make myself a Finn hat to wear when I play it I think. With my fake beard. YEAH!

It didn’t have the best start, as summed up by this sketch comic I drew in my sketchbook. I was pretty annoyed about that guy being incredibly rude to my family and I, but it’s not like you can really talk back to some jerk that has the power to keep you out of the country you’re trying to go to.

I didn’t really take many pictures over the time I was down there, but here are two of Craig. We went to the Sea Bird Sanctuary one day to draw some birds, which was pretty great. After that we went and had lunch at a tiki bar on the boardwalk. All in all the trip was really relaxing and fun. I even picked up a ukulele at a music store around the corner from where we were staying and starting teaching myself how to play! So I’m currently obsessed with that. Anyway, it’s so great to be home. Now I just need to tackle that pile of work I’d been neglecting!

Seriously you guys, TCAF is one of the best shows around. I could write thousands of sentences all ending in exclamations about how much fun it is and what a great time I had last weekend. Too bad I’m a dork and I forgot my camera, so I’ve got to go around snatching pictures other people took to prove the fun that was cram packed into the Toronto Reference Library, like this one from the incredible Joseph Lambert

So here’s to everyone involved in making TCAF possible! Can’t wait for the next one! Now that I am so inspired and filled with creative energy it’s time to get back to work MAKING STUFF!

We’ll have lots of books, prints, art, buttons and other stuff with us, including my new mini Amateur Adventuring: The Tale Of Durrseus.

Look at that gold embossed cover! SO FANCY! I absolutely got glitter everywhere while doing them, giving me the skin of a killer for a day.

Also! Broken Pencil magazine did an interview with me in their newest issue that’s on stands now. They’ve also posted it up on their site and you can read it here!

I’m so excited for TCAF! See you dudes this weekend!

Craig and I saw the Dreamworks movie ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ and really enjoyed it! He did this ink drawing of the character Ruffnut and I decided to try my hand at colouring it.

Craig blogged his linework and thoughts on the movie here!

Some other recent sketches under the cut:

I love drawing this guy, it just makes me laugh.

Some junk I drew over on tegaki, which is basically ms paint in a browser.