doyou haiku || thoka maer

days we never knew 
we had jitter before us,
softly, silly joy.

National Make a Wish Day

National Reach As High As You Can Day

National Pencil Day

National Find a Rainbow Day

National Pet Day

Thoka Maer is new to the United States and recently started National What Day?, a tumblr of illustrations recognizing the obscure national recognized days we have here. 

doyou haiku|| is a feature series of contemporary artists that I find inspiring. haiku forces me to boil my thoughts down to some essentials and still allow the work to speak for itself.

threes

just playing around with composition. and drawing hair the exact same each time is much like trying to actually style you own hair the same each day: nearly impossible.

(i made these weeks before the 30 day challenge. honestly, i wanted to give myself some time to regroup before posting 2-3x a week again...so i posted dated this for a breather. ahhh!)

another tea routine

since 8/19/2014 i've been setting my used tea bags down in this circle and letting it stain the paper however it wanted. without a set schedule anymore, sometimes i drink a LOT of tea in a day. sometimes i drink none.

i'm not sure what to do with it once it's done...or when it'll be done.
basic questions i still have right now:

• why should anyone care?
• do i make one per month? or one per year? longer? shorter? 
• what part of my life am i documenting? why?
• do i cut the circle out or leave it part of the paper?
• would these make good/ironic coasters?

lady grey, sweet & spicy black, spicy green, apple-nut with beet root.

day 4

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." --Jim Rohn

i held what i REALLY wanted to do* hostage until i did this.

here's a glimpse into how one of these grows. i'm not great with yellows and oranges. not sure why, but this isn't probably the best one to have tried this out with because it probably changes more dramatically when i use darker colors.

*practice embroidery!

day 3: looking fishier

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." 
--Andy Warhol

i suppose i imagine most of these as underwater. this one in particular is pretty fishy.

lastly: unsure about orientation. i told myself one of my rules was to do them vertically for 30 days. now i wonder if i should do 1/2 horizontally? i used damaged paper (which you'll hear all about next week) and cut it down to a size that was the most economical. could have made them square but i didn't want to lose white space.

geollyfish

this drawing actually came after the folded up versions (which weren't what i had hoped)

this whale one has inspired a small interest in exploring what i'd call "tiny animation" later on. for now this dumb little gif will have to do.

so i drew a little whale on one of the templates. because i just felt like it. whales are like drawing spoons. simple shape, deceptively easy to draw. 

surprise surprise, the drawing turned out "cute." folded it up, which worked okay....held it for a bit, spun it around, stood it up. thought about other possibilities...
and now i feel a range of things: 

confusion<-----------------------(i want to eat lunch already)------------------------>nothing 

i should say, that the above range of feelings is pretty much my constant state.  

but this time: confusion because i dont know where this leads me or if i should bother. and nothing because these fold up shapes aren't my design so don't feel proud of them or anything. they're cool though and i appreciate Kate Lilley's free help getting me started on this.