picture book

Flamingos enjoying life in the Odditorium

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, artist book, artistic inspirations, book design and layout, books, children's book, fine art, household surrealism, Odditorium, poetry, publications - publishing, sketchbook, visual thinking, words and pictures, writing, writing and illustrating

Frankly, I’m tired. But it’s the I’ve-played-hard good kind of tired. So more pictures and less text in this post and you get a special peek … I’ve been thinking about Kurt Vonnegut’s book If this isn’t nice what is? Here’s an article I enjoyed about this Vonnegut book. Here’s a photo of the book in my library with other Vonnegut titles.

Below is one of the poems I read during breakfast this week in a book called Animal Poems. It’s one of the titles in the Pocket Poetry series by Everyman’s Library. (I love this series! Especially with breakfast!) The poem in the photo is by Wiliam Cowper. I love the last line “The comfort of a reasonable joy.” So I’ve also been thinking how important it is to have regular reasonable enjoyments. I take the phrase “reasonable enjoyments” to mean the simple kind that don’t require lots of money, a travel agent or dressy clothes. Anyway, here’s the poem.

In my last post I talked about the pace of creative life. I’ve still been thinking about the skill of crafting daily rhythms and here’s a link to an inspiring article I read on the topic: https://www.wired.com/story/calendar-tips-post-pandemic-reentry-organization/  Maintaining a daily rhythm has enabled me – to get very tired 🤣 – but also to have nearly everything completely finished two weeks early prior to delivery of all the art and books for my Odditorium exhibit. Being early gives me flexibility to have time to rest as well as to deal with any unexpected issues.

Below are some of my sketchbook pages … and some kitchen gadgets I looked at and thought about as I worked on one of the last paintings for this exhibit.

Here’s a photo my spouse took of me working out how flamingos might carry things.

Below is the finished painting on my easel drying. Below that is a close up of the dry painting. I titled it “Is Not This Nice?” The title fits with my thoughts recently and echos the collage text I found in my falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was fun to find text written by Austen that was similar to what Vonnegut said.

Is Not This Nice? By Clancy – acrylic and collage on board

If the background of my painting reminds you of the ocean….we went there recently and seeing the sea lingered in my mind. The Pacific Ocean isn’t far from our house. I find it soothing to visit.

By now my studio is chock full of boxes of framed art ready for exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs. This is part of how I earned my tiredness.

The other way I’ve been earning my tired is that I’ve been working on the exhibit catalog aka a picture book of my Odditorium exhibit. In addition to that I’ve been working on a kid friendly version of my exhibit catalog. Children need fine art in their lives too in my opinion. When I was a kid I would have loved to see a book talking about looking at fine art. That’s why I took the extra steps to make a children’s book version too. I have sent the kid friendly version to Storyberries.com and they have an exciting plan for the book design! Below is a screenshot of a post they did on Instagram about it!

Here’s a special early peek into the Odditorium – at my exhibit book!!! And a link so you can see the whole book!!! Even in the midst of being tired I’m excited!!

  • Front cover
  • Back cover
Odditorium by Sue Clancy – https://www.blurb.com/b/10698335-odditorium

One of my reasonable enjoyments this week was my spouse’s homemade biscuits for breakfast. The recipe is in my kitchen sketchbook Favorites So Far and you can see more of it here.

More next Monday about the Odditorium exhibit book and the other fun stuff…after I have a bit of rest. Hope you have a good week full of relaxation and reasonable enjoyments.

Alphapets: Y, Z, the book cover and Storyberries

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The Alphapets portrait project this week is brought to you by the letters Y and Z. Here’s my abecedarian poem to go with these letters and artwork :

Yolanda has a good attitude

Zoe says “We’re done! Let’s go get some food!”

Here’s the artwork (somewhere on each piece is an alphabetical letter):

I did portraits of a Bengal cat and a Basset Hound.

In thinking of a “good attitude” I thought of my adopted father, a psychiatrist, and his Bengal cat named Missy. He was fond of pointing out how a cat will adapt easily to things, take things in stride – or have a good attitude – that it’s humans, with our big-brains, that will often resist adapting, and will as a result make things harder on ourselves with a bad attitude.

The Basset Hound finished off this letter sequence because as a child I was best friends with a Basset Hound and loved getting to share an evening meal with the dog.

As I completed the original artwork for my abecedarian poem I also worked on the graphic design of Alphapets by Clancy. That’s part of what makes this an “artist book” – it was conceived and constructed like an art object – by me. My spouse did proofread the text, make some book design suggestions. That, in my mind, is akin to submitting a bunch of artwork to a gallery for exhibit. Here’s a photo of me doing the graphic design hocus pocus.

You can see a bit of my book cover design in the above photo but here, below, is a better view of the front cover of the printed book.

Alphapets by Clancy is now available as both hardback or soft cover printed books. The ebook version has a similar but slightly different cover. All versions can be accessed here: https://www.blurb.com/b/10071862-alphapets-by-clancy

I had dedicated my book “for reading aloud to P and J” – both P and J are under age 5 – so the day I uploaded my book to Blurb.com for printing I told P and J’s grandparents (our friends) about the book. Then I turned off all of my devices to make dinner and read a novel a while before going to bed.

By now I don’t remember why but a few hours later, after dinner, I turned on my smart phone. I had messages just about every way a person can be messaged these days, from Storyberries.com !

Long story short this publisher/distribution house wanted to release my book for free to their readers! I gave my author/artist permissions and now you – or your little ones – can access my book here: https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-alphapets-free-books-online/

Storyberries.com is also doing audio versions of Alphapets by Clancy which are appearing on their podcast channels on Apple, Spotify and Podbean! How fun is that?!

I’d hoped for my book to be read aloud….

Here’s a photo of my friends grandkids looking at Alphapets by Clancy – the twins’ mom was pretty happy too!! Yippee!!

I’m a very happy author/artist!!

You can find the previous set of letters for this project here.

I had such fun riding this ride – I think I’ll do it again! Meet here next Monday?