Creative Storytelling

Miscellaneous

 

This past weekend was full of stories, as I played two storytelling games, Gloom (pictured above) and Once Upon a Time.

Gloom is a card game that is a bit backwards from most games. Rather than winning the game by getting the highest score, you are trying to get the lowest. You start the game with a “family” of 5 members, represented by cards. On your turn, you play cards on your family members that have themes at the top, such as “Perturbed by the Pudding.” The idea is that you make up a story about how a member in your family was “Perturbed by the Pudding.” After a successful story, you can play that card on your family member to gain them a negative score. Other players can make up stories about your family members as well, and give them a positive score. After a family member has a negative score that you are pleased with, you can kill them off. When all of one players family members are dead, the game is won by whomever has the lowest total family score. (For a more official game description, see this link)

This game is so much fun! It’s quirky and the titles of each card give you enough to get you started with a story, and not enough so that each game play can go in a completely different direction.

Once Upon a Time is a card game that facilitates fairy-tale storytelling. You are given two cards with different fairy-tale endings. Those are kept secret from other players. You are also given a stack of cards with different items, ideas, people, etc. on them, such as wicked, princess, castle… The object of the game is that you use the cards in your hand to create a complete story that uses every single card you have and ends with one of your story ending cards. The difficult part is that if you mention something in your story, and another player has a card for that item, they can steal your story and twist it to go towards their ending. So you may be about to wrap up your story and win, and suddenly someone else takes it. By the time you have a card to get it back, the story may be so far away from one of your endings that you are unable to finish it with the cards you have. (For a more official game description, see this link)

I really enjoyed this game as well. It was a lot harder than Gloom because sometimes your cards were all so different, that it was really difficult to weave them all together. Plus, with people constantly taking over your stories, it was hard to get them back to where you needed them to end. But still, a good game. I recommend either one, if you are a lover of creative story telling. Or if just want to challenge yourself in a different creative medium.

Happy New Year!

Artwork

I hope everyone enjoyed their new year celebrations! I’m looking forward to all the exciting things this year will bring.

First, I should talk about the drawing above. For the holidays, my amazing husband got me a Sensu. If you don’t know what that is, let me tell you. It’s a paintbrush/stylus that you can use on your iPad. (Here’s their website: http://www.sensubrush.com.) I’ve been using the APP Procreate to play around with it, and so far, I love it! This is probably my first sketch that I have done that isn’t just a bunch of scribbles trying to figure out how things work. But the scribbles are even fun to create. I am looking forward to using it more!

I also have to let you know that there will be a delay in my painting that I have been working on. (The link to the original post is here: https://melonielavely.com/melonie-lavelys-blog/2012/11/25/new-project.html) We are in the process of trying to sell our house, so many things have been relocated to make the house more showing-friendly. That included my large canvas. I’m not sure when I will be able to get back to it, but I’ll post more as soon as I can.

On a different note, last month was my 10 year anniversary at Creative Graphics! Can you believe it? I have been working at the same company for a decade. (I still can’t believe it.) So much has changed between the time I started there and now…the industry…the company…and me. Sometimes at work, I come across files that I had created from back when I started, and I have to scold my younger self. But after that, I have to pat my older self on the back, because I’ve come such a long way.

johnny_on_bed coffee_cup

Baking!

Miscellaneous

This weekend was our annual baking weekend. My husband and I bake about 9 different treats for some of our friends. We package them up in reusable bags and deliver them. If our friends want to receive treats again next year, they have to return the bags to us by December 1st. If not, they lose their spot for that year, and we choose someone new to take their place. They can always return the bag at a later date to be included in the next year.

In the past, we had put the treats in baggies or plastic wrap and included a sheet explaining what everything was. Last year, we had made a compound butter and wrapped it in wax paper that was twisted at the ends. We heard from a few people that they didn’t notice the explanation sheet and ended up chowing down on the butter by itself. To remedy this, I made tags to put on every thing this year, in addition to the explanation sheet. (Although I did find the butter-eating stories funny because it sounds like something I would do!)

holiday_bag1holiday_bag2

New Project

Artwork

For this post, I’m trying out the SquareSpace iPad APP. So far, it’s pretty nice. I can take a photo and load it up to my blog much faster than with my digital camera. We’ll see over the next few weeks which way I prefer to post. (I type so much faster on a regular keyboard!)

What is this a sketch of? Good question. This is my next project that I am working on for a friend. She has asked me to paint her something and provided me with a large canvas and a gift certificate for supplies. What did she ask me to paint? Nothing! She told me to paint whatever I want. It was so hard to come up with an idea. After a few ideas that were not working, I came up with this. Now you need to use your imagination since this is a very rough sketch. The background is going to be a city skyline and there is a person on the foreground. I don’t want to write too much since this is supposed to be a surprise, and she might read my blog! I plan on keeping updates of my progress periodically though. I guess based on how surprised she is, I will know if she ever reads this or not! Well, except that she’s an actress, so she could always just pretend to be surprised…

Final Project

Artwork

Sadly, my Pet Portrait class has come to an end. Boo! However, I did enjoy the class a lot and got to try out a new medium. Yea!

My favorite part about taking a community education class was that it focused on learning and what you want to get out of the class. I feel that traditional education is too focused on grades and instead of fulfilling yourself, you are learning the teacher and their expectations and adjusting for that. The learning tends to be a by-product, if it happens, and not the focus. (Of course, that could just be me and my desire for good grades. Yikes!)

Anyway. I’m glad that I got to experiment with Gouache and got some nice artwork out of the process. I also feel that I now have the best animal artwork I have ever done. Usually, my animals are out of proportion and their faces tend to look flat. Even though we didn’t spend a lot of time on animal anatomy, the time we did spend was really helpful. Not to mention, Alison’s (class instructor) tips and tricks for how she deals with drawing different areas of different animals. If you have the time, I would highly recommend Painting the Pet Portrait at MCAD.

The portrait below is of my cat Johnny. I agonized over whether I should show the reference photo or not. (If you see the reference photo, it might not be as impressive!) But since it’s a part of the art process and shows how I dealt with the drawing and painting, I thought it was good to see. This was created using acrylic paint on watercolor paper.

Now that my class is over, what will I be up to next?

Johnny_photoref