A to Z Reflections

Ok- so I just finished the A to Z challenge- and am happy that I managed to make it to the end.  Not every post was on time or as well written as I would've liked- but I DID start it last minute and I had all the stress of finals at the same time... in any case I finished it!! I have decided that I'm going to do it again next year- however I'm going to do something different and plan ahead and have the posts more ready to go so I can spend more time focusing on school and visiting other participants blog.  With that said I still hope to visit as many of the blogs on the list as I can (for as long as it is up) and am very grateful to everyone who stopped by and left a comment on this one!

I loved the networking and am going to investigate and see if there are more challenges I can join like the A to Z thing- it was nice to have something to post about every day- even if I did get behind....

SO summer has started- I've been done with school for 2 days and so far all I've done is finish unpacking my kids room, built a futon for their room (for the nights that I have to stay up all night holding a sad/sick child- now I have a bed in there so my husband can get better sleep! I feel so smart) and cleaned out the fridge.  The remaining list of household chores is extensive- but I plan on having everything in order by this time next week.

As of today I have 116 days until school starts- I've got a lot to accomplish and very little time to do so. I'm going to post a list of my goals later today- I mostly just wanted to give my 2 cents on the A to Z thing I just finished.

~Alicia

Z is for Paul O Zelinsky

I found Paul Zelinsky recently and accidentally- my kids and I were checking books out of the library and grabbed a Rapunzel book off the shelf.   I'm not sure how we ended up with it- my kids are young (4 and nearly 2) so sometimes books are just grabbed off the shelf and I don't see where they came from and the child doesn't necessarily know why they grabbed it...

ANYWAY

So we read the book and I found that while the art had kind of a primitive feel to it (which is to say that it didn't feel like the artist had any academic training) I still enjoyed it- so I looked at the cover and found my artist for Z!  Now I've looked through more of his art in order to make this post- and have found that Zelinsky is very very good at stylizing- what initially looked a bit primitive- was intentionally done.  I like most of his older illustrations better than his newer ones- I'm not really a fan of a lot of the poorly done art that you will see in children's books these days- and much of his newer stuff seems to be within that style.

anyway- here are some of my favorites:

This first one has a few images from the Rapunzel book that we checked out:

the next two are from some of the other books he's illustrated

And with that I made it to the end of the A to Z challenge!!

~Alicia

Y is for Yarrow Cheney

Yarrow Cheney- another amazing illustrator- if you look at his Portfolio and his Blog you'll notice that he worked on Despicable Me- if you scroll past all of that you'll get to see some of his other work.  It is all pretty amazing and kinda whimsical (I know I use that word a lot but it tends to be pretty appropriate more often than not)

~Alicia

X is for Xia Gui

Xia Gui is an artist from the early 1200s according to Wikipedia he was a landscape painter of the Song Dynasty.  Now I chose him in part because I was having a hard time finding an 'X' and looked far and wide and decided to look at Asian painters.  The other part of the reason I chose him was that I really really like the way he used line and tone to create these beautiful paintings.  I want to do more research on this particular painter because I am very intrgued about what little I have read about him on Wiki (which is a nice reference but hardly an academic)

Anyway- here are the pieces I found:

~Alicia

W i for William Whitaker

Another portraitist- beautiful figures, beautiful paintings.  Once again another one of my art heroes that I hope to be like one day.

Head to his website to check out more of his amazing art: WilliamWhitaker.com

~Alicia

V is for Lois Van Baarle

This girl is absolutely amazing- I could write paragraphs talking about how wonderful her art is.  I'm not going to though- go check out her website: Loish.net to see more examples of her art.  As usual I'm just sharing a few that I really love below.

~Alicia

U is for Adriaen van Utrecht

This painter is rom the Flemish Baroque period and lived about 1599-1652.  He's one of those painters that doesn't get taught a lot (but to be honest- unless you are in a college level art history class no one talks about anyone beyond Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Rapheal...) Adriaen painted incredibly detailed images in oil.  They are absolutely beautiful- I hope to be able to paint as well some day.

~Alicia