Mr Blue, can you come down?

Our time at 826 Valencia was filled with many awesome jobs, but my favourite by far was the daily writing workshop, where a class of primary school kids would write a book in two hours, with some help from a typist, an illustrator, a leader, and Mr Blue, the cranky publisher who lived and worked in the attic. Mr Blue, who never ventured out from his office, spent the two hours ranting about children wasting his time, and insisting on ridiculous amounts of writing to be done within ridiculously tight deadlines. It seemed the more Mr Blue insisted that "children simply cannot write stories" the more the kids loved him.

Here is my artistic depiction of an interaction between Mr Blue and a bunch of school children.

Fake Etchings Co.

While taking part in an internship at 826 Valencia in San Francisco, I got to do heaps of drawing (among 500 other cool things). This website was created as part of a fundraising campaign to save the 826 volunteers from extinction. The original plan for the banner was to use copyright free 18th C. etchings of extinct animals, but since we couldn't find any that were appropriate, I drew them instead. It was quite a challenge to create the effect of etching using a black fine liner, but I think it was pretty successful. My favourite bits are the bottom of the dodo's neck, and the hip of the Tasmanian Tiger.