Draw Me A Story!

That's Malcolm at the Los Altos Art Museum.  LAAM brought in Malcolm's series of children's book illustrators from the Cartoon Art Museum.  Yep, he is the founder of the Cartoon Art Museum.  This  traveling collection has been all over the United States already.  The exhibit includes the work of various artists from the last 100 years; illustrators and comic artists show the breadth and techniques of the craft, from idea to art to print, and how processes and techniques have evolved over the past century.  It's a fascinating study of ways to tell a children's story.

Here's Malcolm with three generations, Kirsty, Sarah and Karen, none prouder than his daugher, Kirsty.  :-) It really was a fun day and an impressive collection and exhibit.

 Here is the art work for a book as the illustrator created it.  You can see all the reference colors and notes in the margins that get used for production.

Here is the final book cover.  Cool!

Here's a nice piece on some of Malcolm Whyte's history.  You can see how this exhibit is a good representation from his experience.  Pretty cool!

 Kirsty is featuring one of the artists from upstairs here.  She is a first grade teacher, and wanted to remember this image.  I think she has some ideas on how she may use this in her class.  Wouldn't you love to see this in your first grade classroom?

Sarah and Kirsty enjoying.

 There was a presentation from the curators thanking all the major donors, as well as the artists on-sight.  At the time, I thought this woman had quite a presence, showing an extraordinary amount of attention to the donor-curator love-fest so I took a picture.

 Later, Sarah and I were upstairs, looking at a comic strip, and the more we read it, the more we were laughing and enjoying it.  The comic is about this character reaching in the fridge for jam, and finding there wasn't any left, so she decided to make some, first, by picking cherry-plums from the neighborhood.  Then...there was a mention of a San Carlos park in one of the panels!  We both looked at each other, saying; "Oh!"  I was thinking, we make jam!  We live in San Carlos!  The more we looked and read, we began to realize the young award-winning artist who created this is from San Carlos, and is a 16 years old.  We liked her.

 Just as we were realizing these things, and loving the strip, this young dynamo, Emma came up to us to introduce herself!  This photo is vintage Emma.  She is a bundle of energy, with a contagious personality.  She's already giving back to the community, including teaching at 826 Valentia.  She's going to be fun to follow, and hopefully we will see her around town.  You can see her strip, the Chapel Chronicles on her website.

Mid-conversation she offered to make a sketch for Sarah, even in the midst of all this attention and goings-on.  It was really quite a generous gesture, from quite an inspirational young woman.  Keep your eyes out for Emma T Capps!

Christmas Tree

We are now with Christmas Tree, and the decorating has begun.  And there's the little maple tree outside, whose still in full fall colors.

Christmas time.

I'm trying out a new camera.  This is out the kitchen window.  My pear tree in the foreground, the lavender below that, and see the Meyer lemon behind that.  We get this foggy misty morning more often during winter.  It's regularly pretty dramatic.  Do you like the pendant lights floating in front of the pine?

Here's another photo with the new camera.  I was going for short depth of field.  I really wanted that blurry background but giving it color.  I like the red contrast of the berries against the green.

Trying the zoom here.  Even here is beautiful color.  Anyway, there you have it.

The Swarm

We've been talking about getting a bee hive, and as soon as you say something like that, coincidences start happening.  Our neighbors had a swarm end up in their front yard!  The whole thing is pretty quick.  Essentially, the hive gets overfull.  The queen leaves, a bunch of bees follow, creating a swarm.  As it turns out, this is their most docile time.  They don't have a hive to protect.  So, the hive moved in next door.  Our neighbors have young children, and responsibly, were going to try to eradicate the insects, until, well, Kirsty stepped in.  Save the bees!! She calls our local bee keeper club, and starts calling numbers until a keeper asks a few questions about: Where is it?  is it accessible?  How big is the swarm?  How long has it been there?  After hoping we had the right answers, they are on their way.  This picture is of the swarm, before the guys arrived.

Here's the beekeeper with his self made bee catcher.  Essentially, on the other end of the box is the same hose, connecting to a shop vac.  The keeper 'vacuums' the hive, sucking the bees into the box.  He knows he has the queen, when the remaining bees start swarming his box.  They said this hive was about 2,500-3,000 bees, a relatively small swarm.  He got nearly every one of them!

Farmer's Markets I've been to around San Carlos

We are really enjoying farmer's market shopping, and finding more and more of them around, to the point where we have more days with, than without local farmer's market shopping.  Here's where we're at:

Kaiser Hospital (corner of Maple and just before Jefferson):  Wednesday -  10 am - 2 pm

Palo Alto (corner of University and Emerson)  Wednesday 330pm - 630 pm

San Carlos, Laurel street, starting around Arroyo  - Thursday 4-7pm
Redwood City, just behind Sequoia Station  -  Saturday 8 or 9 to 1 pm

San Mateo Community College  Saturday 8-1pm

Belmont train station:  Sunday 9am - 1pm