Shells by the beach

"Shells by the beach" - By Belinda Lindhardt, Pen

During the holiday / christmas period the boys and I spent a bit of time at the beach and collected quite a few shells :) They have been sitting in a bucket and I have looked at them from time to time knowing there was inspiration there. So many wonderful colours and shapes and textures, also an nice happy feeling that comes from going to the beach and summer.

On the weekend, i was setting some shells up for a still life coloured pencil piece and decided to start on this pen drawing while i was there :) I don't have to be as disciplined with these pen drawings as i would with a cp artwork, i can just start drawing and let it evolve.

Good fun :)

Hope you like it :)

Illustration 20-3-09

Watercolour and Pen on Illustration Board by Belinda Lindhardt

This just started evolving into what you see above. I had envised a few things different, but just went with the flow of it just an experimented and a bit of fun.

I have had this piece of illustration board in my cupoard for a while and wanted to give it a try. It held up the watercolour surprisingly well as i tend to be heavy handed with watercolour. The pen was a little harder to work with on this than on the paper i had used in my last peice. I think i would use it again just maybe a little differently.

I think i could keep going on this one if i really wanted but i think its done its dash :) i like the girl i might do her again in another piece.

Just trying to relax on a few things at the moment, until i work out some direction. I have moved my office from my house to my studio, i cant begin to tell you want a difference this had made mentally. Previously, I was always being pulled to getting work done, even if it was just checking emails. Now when i am in the house, its time to do household chores and learning and quality time with my boys. There is now a distinction between work and personal which needed. I still have drawing area in the house to do artwork and illustration early mornings and at night and a computer to browse the internet but i have no software for emails, graphics etc so i physically can't do it when i am down there. I am a better mother and person for it :)

I will be a bit sparse the next few days my youngest is turning 3 on Tuesday have to do a cake and wot not :) How the time is flying by trying to make the most of every moment i can :)

Pen Illustration

Here is the weekend's illustration.
I love doing these i think i will begin to do these more regularly.

Sorry about the lack of posts, i have been around, i am busy, busy with stuff as well as having another session where i am sorting out where i want to go from here. I think sometimes we stretch ourselves too far, sometimes its good just to pull back and work out what is really important and also just to get on with getting a job done.

I sorted and reorganised out my studio last week, i think i need to seperate my work from home life a bit more so i am forcing myself to work up there rather than in my house. I might have been sufferring from a bit of burnout. I love the new studio tho it looks great, will post a pic soon. It was also my 33rd birthday last week, i got spolit by all my boys :) had a great time, a am a very lucky woman. :)

Reward Chart Illustrations

The past few weeks i gave myself a little project, the project combined my two loves doing art and doing something for my kids :)

Getting jobs done and managing behaviour has become a bit of an issue in my household. I have been at my wits end and so in order to have a positive way of dealing with it all i thought i would do up a reward chart. We have done reward charts in the past using stickers as the rewards but i have found the charts seem to have a limited lifespan. The kids get tired with looking at the thing again and again that never changes and its hard to keep track of what stickers they have received for each day / week. My youngest would love to pull all of the stickers off and basically when it comes down to it the charts haven't been very successful.

So rather than totally abandoning the chart idea i thought maybe if i devised something which was a bit different it might just work. My oldest one being 4, I have been thinking about next year getting him ready for school and i wanted a chart which recognized that he actually was required to do specific things each day rather than just random acts he gets rewards for which would also get him in the routine of getting jobs done. I also wanted a way that we can essentially start with a "new" chart each week, rather than seem the same tatty thing with old stickers day in day out.
I noticed at kindy they had a chart for the weather where they had little velcro stickers on the backs of laminated paper which served as the "stickers" and allowed you to reuse them again and again. i thought what a fabulous idea, so here is the little illustration project i have created.

Kids Reward Chart
On the chart I have 7 days of the week (getting him used to seeing the names of the week) i have his picture and his name (so you could have a different chart for different kids), and then i have tasks that he must do each day. If he does a task well or efficently (which is my issue everything takes a loooonnngg slooooow nagging processs) he gets a star. At the end of the day / week we can look at how many stars he has and if he has a certain number of stars then he gets a reward be that taken to a movie or the park or choosing what he wants for dinner or playing with a friend. Then at the end of the week we take all the stars off and start again. This way i am hoping he will recognise that he is accountable for his actions and more importantly he gets rewarded for the good things he does and it will hopefully motivate him to get it done. I have based the illustratons on things i am struggling with him to do which is:

Eat Breakfast
Get Dressed
Brush Teeth
Brush Hair
Put Toys Away
Go to Bed

I also have reading / learning section that he can get an extra star for an extra reward if he does good learning / reading.

I am going to do another one for my other son who is 2. He will not have as many tasks as he is younger. His chart will include lots of toilet pictures as i am training to toliet train him at the moment.

So there you go, what do you think ? I am thinking other mums would like to have something like this? Maybe i should package it and have it for download? its a great craft activity for mum but also can get the kids involved. You can colour it in, get them to help sticking the stickers. :)

Max keep interrupting me as i was doing the illustrations but his reaction was priceless when i actually showed him the finished chart. All he said was "WOW, Wow mum thats great. "