Life is Sweet

Illustration Friday # 28: SWEET, RISD CE graduation, and chickadees

Life is Sweet  ©Cheryl Kirk Noll

You can see the passage of time... here the snowbell flowers are budding.

Spring is my favorite time of year. Classes finish up. Students graduate. Flowers bloom and babies hatch.

This year has been particularly productive for my garden. A cute little birdhouse that my dad gave us at least ten years ago has it's first tenants this year.

The flowers have blossomed. Breath in the fragrance!

A black-capped chickadee couple made Songbird Hollow their home. The birdhouse hangs from a styrax obessia (Fragrant snowbell tree) right outside our back window, so we were thrilled to watch the pair nest-building. On Tuesday, I heard the babies peeping for the first time when their parents arrived with food. Within two weeks, they should be flying away.

It's a life-affirming process to watch.

After the 4 day heat wave, the snowbells are gone, but roses are out!

My job as the adviser for the Children's Book Illustration certificate program at RISD-ce is a thrill for me too. I often meet students when they start the program, and I always have them for at least one class, meet with them for the final portfolio critique, and have the honor of handing out their certificates.

 I'm thankful to my brilliant program coordinator, Francoise McAree, to the CE staff, and to the fine teachers in the program who have led these students along the way.

I'm so proud of this year's 11 graduates. I'm as proud as a mama chickadee, and I can't wait to see where they fly, now that they've left the nest.

l-r sitting: Roya Ma, teacher assistant Susan Novich, Sherry Brodeur, Sarah Luz, l-r standing: Laura Foltz, Jeanette Bradley, Instructor Judith Moffatt, Mary Jackson, Emily Laramee, Meg Sodano, Peter Sentkowski, Anne Wert (missing: Karen Sculos)

To see more about the graduating students and the program, go to the programs informal blog,  Drawing Together .

Illustration Friday # 4: SCATTERED

The prompt word for Illustration Friday this week was "scattered." Leaves, ants, seeds, my brain... so much to choose from with this word. I chose birds.This is my hedge, re-imagined. I always wanted to have a gate it it.

Scattered, © Cheryl Kirk Noll

I figured out how to put a gate in perspective, and put the grass on a curve. The child and birds are painted, everything else is a photo manipulated in Photoshop. I felt that this one one of my more successful attempts at this style.