Since coming back from Paris, things have been pretty full on in the Floor household. We’ve al taken turns being sick with one bug or another (#nocovid), and I don’t think we’ve had one decent night of sleep between the 20th of November and today. Oh, and our nanny quit. Because we’re horrible people. No kidding, she needed more time for her studies, which is fair, stay in school and all that. It’s been a lot of juggling care and work, and scrubbing barf out and off of things, and we’re all feeling a little worse for wear.

Despite all that, we managed to throw Jacob his first real kids’ party, we celebrated Saint Nicholas with the fam, and the house is looking somewhat festive for the upcoming holidays. I’ve been working away on a London zine, and feeling terribly nostalgic about our time there as I’m drawing our favorite London spots, but I don’t think that will be done before the end of the year as I keep adding more pages (and well, sick kids and no sleep). Either way, it’s a bit of a non-update, but perhaps you’re a parent like me just trying to keep it together during Bug Season, just know you’re not alone.

Hope you’re all holding up ok and life is slowing down for you a bit and you’ve some time to nest and reflect on your year. I’ll be back soon, hopefully with more sleep, less bugs, and a healthy level of mulled wine.

One of my favorite places on earth is actually pretty close to home: de Bussumerheide. Or the Bussum Heath. I can’t really explain why, but the place feels quiet and peaceful to me, in a similar manner to the way the world feels after fresh snow has covered streets and houses. Like time is standing still. The Bussumerheide actually has a very long history, with evidence of people living there, conducting (burial) rituals there, and grazing their cattle. I like to think it’s been a special place to many people throughout history, but I don’t really know. It’s special to us. No matter what the circumstances or weather, every day we’ve spent there has been special. On one of these special days in September, I took my sketchbook with me, and drew a bit. Quick sketches that I then finished at home.

Materials:

• Sketchbooks: small square Seawhite of Brighton travel sketchbook, large A4 Pith sketchbook.

• Pens & Pencils: Molotow acrylic pens, Caran d'Ache Luminance coloured pencils

Music: Spanish Moss by Chris Haugen

Sarah Glidden, author and illustrator of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, has a magnificent blog. I might as well just stop writing there, as it's all you really need to know, but I'll continue because if there's one thing I've learned during my time as a digital marketer is that incentive is key. Concise messaging is also key, but I'm not too big on that one. 

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So here's your incentive. She recently (and by recently I mean a few months ago) posted some images illustrating her panel process. This particular panel features a night scene (so hard), and I'm so appreciative of her sharing her approach to working out panels. As a self-taught artist I often come up with my own very roundabout techniques to imitate results I love in other people's work. Usually these methods aren't particularly economical or consistent and when reading about Glidden's process, I realized that planning the coloring of a panel is half the job. The more I learn about making comics, the more I start to appreciate all the work that goes into them. 

I heartily recommend reading Glidden's post 'Panel Process: a Night Scene' if you're learning about comics or would just like to see how much effort goes into each one of those little frames. I tell you, you'll never look at a comic the same way. 

Ever since I came across her work on Doodler's Anonymous, I've been obsessed with Emma Sylvie Fick's travel journals. Fick is a 22-year-old from Louisiana living in Serbia and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship and sharing her European adventures with us via Tumblr.

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The drawings are stunning, the narration interesting, and above all I love how the moments she chose to draw are just a little different from what you'd typically expect.

Travel isn't about seeing the famous landmarks, or visiting that one particular café - it's about all those little moments in between when you can look around, truly open to everything around you, and capture a sliver of what daily life must look like in that strange new place. She captures these moments beautifully and it feels like you're there with her, even just a little bit.

Visit Emma Sylvie's Tumblr here for a little mini-vacation of the brain. 

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© Emma Sylvie

I love this video about Alex Noriega's work. I started following him back when he was still making the most amazing comics and illustrations, and now he makes beautiful paintings, or 'emotional sculptures' on canvas.

I find this video especially inspiring, not just because his style appeals to me tremendously, but also because it shows that illustration and fine art (painting) are just various ways of visual expression. I've always struggled with the so-called divide between illustration or other applied arts / crafts and fine art, even back when I studied art history. From my own practice, it really didn't feel like abstract painting, making a zine, or designing a poster for someone were very different things - yet we would study only the 'fine' arts bit (I'm aware that this may be different at other universities). It's been great to see how that divide is being broken down bit by bit, even if it leads to people using pretentious terms like 'sequential art' to describe comics and whatnot. We're all artists in my mind, and we've all got a degree to which and a way in which we engage with this side of ourselves. A little bit off topic, but I feel the same way about the division between 'amateur' and 'professional' arts, which I know can be qualified but feels like it's often just used as a qualitative judgement. 

Anyhow - yay! Alex Noriega! 

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© Anna Denise Floor

Times be crazy these days, in the run-up to Christmas and finishing up work before we head off to Israel, but I managed to squeeze in an Etsy crush post for the Oh Marie! blog.

We decorated our Christmas tree last weekend, so I was in an ornamental mood. Read all about it here. It's absolutely fascinating, honestly.

I've only JUST discovered her blog 'French Fries and Waffles', but I'm already hooked on Luchie's (or Lucie Bryon) blog. She's a French gal studying comics in Brussels (aaah, I miss you BXL...) and I think she can just stop studying. 

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Her comics and sketches are crisp and absolutely delicious. She has an English tumblr and a French page with roughly the same work, but for all you Frenchies out there - voilà! She also has a shop that desperately needs restocking (as I very much want to buy a copy of her 'Introversion' comic). 

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Journal page © Anna Denise Floor

Learning new things really is one of my favorite things in life, but it also means my list of things I suck at is longer than most people's. 

Soccer? Disaster. Knitting? Ehm. Humbling? Tennis? A chapter in my life we will not speak of ever again. Walking? An ongoing battle. 

But mostly - learning new things is just great fun and good practice of cultivating your 'beginners mind'. Some things I learned this week: I relearned that I actually love skiing and am pretty unafraid (we even did some little jumps!), even though I'm an absolute beginner of course . I also learned that my husband is a great teacher when I allow him to teach me new things (heh. Not that I'm usually stubborn or anything...) and that ski pants don't have to make your butt look unattractive (I know right, this was totally holding me back as well). I found out (again), that I'm apparently quite attached to my old boring hairdo. Ah. Such important life lessons here. Next up: enlightenment.  BAM! 

Oh oh! 

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Impression of 'me' wearing 'The Knit Kid', for Oh Marie! © Anna Denise Floor

Oh, oh, oh hold on! Before we go there - I wrote/drew a post for the Oh Marie blog, where I discuss and illustrate my Etsy crushes. It'll be a monthly installment, and first up is my ongoing love for The Knit Kid. Read the post here!

Also, if you've never heard of Oh Marie!, go check it out. It's an amazing (free!) online magazine with tons of gorgeous photography, great articles, and DIY magic. Their last issue (#5) was just published and it's once again stunning. Check it out here.

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Image by Li Chen

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Image by Kathy MacLeod

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Image by Marloes de Vries

Every morning before going to work or for hours on weekends (when I'm not being chased around the park in running gear by my husband) I go through my RSS feed (I use Feedly).  I particularly enjoy reading webcomics and some of them are really pretty fantastic, so I thought I'd share. Here are three of my favorites:

 Li Chen's drawings are carefully executed, often done in pencil, but occasionally she'll bust out an amazing semi-animated full color comic like this one. Often fantastical, the blog is an invitation into Li Chen's mind. 

 Kathy MacLeod's drawings have a very nonchalant vibe to them, but she often explores deep human emotions and isn't afraid to visualize issues like anxiety, heartache, and self-doubt in a very non-depressing way, oddly enough.  

Marloes de Vries' drawings I've featured before on this blog, but I really want to again, as they're just so pretty and I love how she's able to capture a mood or a thought in one single image. #Jealous.  

What are some of your favorite webcomics? Please do share in the comments below (I have no life and I already did my running for the day)!