Back in the day, if you wanted to be able to identify plants, animals, and insects in the field, you had to either memorize them beforehand, or tote around field guides and learn to use taxonomic keys. Here’s an example from the Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide.
These days, we have apps of all kinds to help us identify just about anything we need to figure out and what a blessing that’s been. A couple of my personal favorites are the Merlin app (for birds) and the iNaturalist app for flora and fauna. Usually, they do pretty well in figuring out what your photo is of or what made a particular sound. Occasionally, however, you wonder if AI (that’s artificial intelligence, not your Uncle Al with issues) is drunk. Here are two recent examples that really cracked me up.
Box turtle?? I mean, insects and reptiles diverge all the way up to phylum!
How exactly is something that looks like a moth or butterfly even remotely like any of those mammals??
Have you ever had a super weird/hilarious ID from one of your apps?
I had spent a good chunk of time in the past couple of years fretting about the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Marvelous Midwest conference that ran this past weekend (April 12-14). When it finally arrived, the weekend flew by.
To the utter surprise of my introverted self, I actually enjoyed the event a lot! First of all, my dear long-time friend (our kids were in the same playgroup when they were tots) and critique partner, Tanya Konerman, is the best travel buddy one can ask for. We talked almost non-stop on the whole 5.5 hour drive there and the same amount of time back home. So, even traveling was a hoot!
Here are some of my fellow volunteers for Indiana SCBWI. We dined that first night at an Ethiopian restaurant a short walk from the hotel. We truly have the best team of volunteers!
At the conference itself, I met up with a ton of people I either only knew from online writing groups or hadn’t seen in several years due to there not being in-person conferences for a while.
This is the planning committee at the costume party. The theme of the conference was “work-in-progress.”
I had a great time being on my very first panel which was likely due to fabulous author-illustrator Zeke Peña and agent-extraordinaire Saritza Hernandez who were super fun and such pros at doing this.
Strangely enough, I even enjoyed giving my presentations on writing graphic novels and writing lyrical nonfiction. Not that I like to teach usually, but I thought I’d prefer doing it via Zoom than in person–nope, I really liked teaching in person. Go figure. Who is this stranger who’s taken over my body??
And then it was time to bid Davenport, Iowa, a fond farewell. Now I can say that I’ve sailed in the footsteps of Mark Twain on the Mississippi River. 😉
Have you ever been to Davenport? What’s your impression of it?
My mom lived through World War II fleeing from village to village to get away from enemy soldiers. Besides constantly not having enough to eat and almost no possessions to speak of while hiding, her own mother also died due to not being able to get medicine for her illness. Those lean and rough times traumatized my mom but they also taught her to be frugal. She was reusing, reducing, and recycling long before the phrase was coined. (On the bad end of that frugality spectrum, she was also a bit of a hoarder). She tried to teach me and my sister to be frugal, too.
My sister is much better about it than I am, but I do my fair share of the 3 Rs. Reusing is great, but there’s even more satisfaction when I can repurpose something. It makes me feel like I should post a life hack on Instagram or Tiktok. I don’t like to hear myself talk or see myself on video though…not that I come up with great ideas frequently. Probably just the opposite.
But here is one I am proud of. My FIL had a rack for the file folders on his desk. When he passed away, we took all those files for the Spousal Unit to sort through.
Meanwhile, in our kitchen, we have about 8-10 cutting boards leaning up against the wall next to the range. Don’t judge us. And sometimes, woods cockroaches would hang out for some alone time back there. You should hear me scream when I pick out a cutting board and the &^%$ing cockroach scurries out from behind like the ugliest alley cat ever. The only bright side to this is that they’re fairly benign woods cockroaches and not the more germ ridden types like German cockroaches (if there is ever a bright side to cockroaches).
So, I took my FIL’s file rack and I used it to slot the cutting boards into, as shown in the above photos. Now the rat-bastard insects have to squat elsewhere away from our food prep surfaces.
Do you have a clever life hack? I’d love to hear what it is!
I took Mike Lowery‘s free Illustrators Portfolio Challenge this spring where the assignment was to create a piece of illustration and turn it into a sticker. I cheated a little and refined a rough sketch I did in his 2023 Getting Paid to Draw class. Hey, I still had to finish and finalize it, so I call it a win.
Not only are chickens highly amusing anyway, but this also celebrates 23 years of chicken ownership for us. Unlike many illustrators or writers who draw and write about chickens, I’ve actually lived with them for over 2 decades.
I have had two different blue phases lately. One is…well…the blues, a.k.a. the blahs. It’s partly mild Seasonal Affective Disorder and partly discouragement over the whole publishing scene/my career.
But, the other blue phase is much more pleasant. We’ve had a surprising number of sunny days in February (which has helped keep the S.A.D. from becoming worse) and few things are as uplifting as crisp, blue skies.
When paired with our gorgeous property, it’s sublime. Makes me want to start singing a Carpenters’ song!
This digital app has a weird name that probably makes non-art folks giggle, but it is a powerful program that’s also affordable (unlike all the Adobe suite stuff).
For those who’ve never used it, you can find a wealth of how-to classes on Skillshare (I love Skillshare for the range of courses they offer, from cooking to knitting to creating art to writing). I’ve taken several Procreate classes with an illustrator named Brooke Glaser there and enjoyed them so much, I ended up taking her Illustrators Launchpad course, too.
These are some of the exercise pieces I did in her class…
And this last piece is a “before” drawing we’re supposed to do of a pet so that we can see how much we improve at the end when we do another drawing of the same pet.
If you’re looking to dive into something fun or creative, I highly recommend getting a Skillshare membership! And if you’re also interested in illustrating in Procreate, you can’t go wrong with Brooke’s courses.
A number of years ago, someone arranged in our homeschool group arranged for a field trip to visit the LImberlost State Historic Site (Geneva, IN), the former home of Gene Stratton-Porter. It was a fun and informative day that lingers in my memory still. So, imagine my happy surprise to learn that Jill Esbaum has written a picture book biography of GSP!
Check out Beth Anderson’s blog interview for a chance to win a copy of Jill’s new book.
I’m also on the look out for nature books and if you are, too, head over to Beth’s blog to find out more about this newest book by Karen Jameson and for a chance to win a copy.
Teresa Robeson 何顥思 