Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween & Hand Drawn Images in Illustrator



This year, Halloween was a mixed bag. The kids had a grand time trick or treating, but for me, a shadow was cast over the event. Just as I was leaving with the kids to go trick or treating I received a call from my husband telling me that Eleanor had been puking, could not keep any food down and was on her way to the emergency room. My inclination was to send home the extra kids we had with us and scurry to the hospital, but Eleanor did not want that. In the end, it was the best choice. They sat in the waiting room for many hours. Once they finally got in there was more waiting, of course. The doctors ran a battery of assorted tests from CAT scans, blood work, the works, but nothing useful came up. They simply rehydrated her and sent everyone home around 10:30. The kids would have spent their evening in the waiting room. Our absence made things a bit more quite.

I initally struggled with staying the course with trick-or-treating, but that was overshadowed very soon. As we worked our way down the street I noticed that there was a contast buzz of three helicopters circling overhead. Up the way, about four streets up we could see six police cars with their roller lights ablaze. We made our way to the next street over, and again, more police cars. We knew something was up. We learned that there had been a shooting. Originally the rumor was that a guy was shooting at trick-or-treaters, but we later learned that an unhappy tenant shot his landlord. That was a bit freaky so we zoomed over to my mom's house, visited her, and left to go to another neighborhood. I had origianally expected to let the older group of kids go on their own, but in the end we stayed together. I felt safer that way.


In the end the kids were tired and happy. They tell me they got more candy this year than ever before. Ellie estimates that is is about 10 pounds worth. Can you imagine? They both organized their loot, first into piles of like items, then into a prioritized line. The fun thing for them will be to see what kinds of trades and bargains they can make with their friends.

And on an entirely different note...


I've been do a lot of drawings in my Adobe Illustrator classes. I thought it might be fun to share them. The girls is my interpretation of a drawing from a graphic novel, Skim. The hand with the seed pod is from a photo I took when Ethan and I spent the day with Grandma Eleanor at Hudson Gardens.


Saturday ushered in November, a quite, thoughtful response to the crazy sugar coated blaze of October. We will set our clocks back an hour and dawn new desktop wallpaper. Smashing Magazine has put out a lovely collection of 50 designs to choose from. I am not sure which I will dispaly.

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