Mushgnome
Just let me know if you find this funny. Even “somewhat” funny is OK. Anyone?
Playing Cards
In 2021 I developed a card game to play with colleagues. After almost 2 years into the pandemic, we barely knew each other. There were also a lot of new faces in the crowd. This game was a nice way to mingle during the first staff party in ages.
It’s a combination of the classic Quartets and Technical Quartets* with some new “Rules of Engagement” and a third engagement option called “climate bombs”. Fun guaranteed!
* The internet has yet to learn what a Technical Quartets is. On the cards there are properties about the subject. Example: “My -person- has the most kids, how much has yours?” Player with the most kids wins both cards.
Luckily I have a superb colleague who’s a designer and she spent a LOT of evenings making these cards. I had another team who pressured colleagues for intimate information that we could put on their cards. I illustrated the “bomb” cards myself.
One of the things they had to do, was to choose a favourite food. I put it on the card in guesstimated (kilo)calories. By the time we played the game, everybody had forgotten what they had chosen. That wasn’t a good design choice, but… the game was a smashing hit! 🙂
My First Professionally used Drawing
I promised a project partner to furnish a drawing to explain the concept we were trying out. They actually used it on their website.
Does this make me a real artist? 🙂
New Year Cards
The ending of 2020 was a weird one, for a myriad of reasons. I made some digital cards and in the end my printer died while gorging on heavy paper, so I just posted them on Meta.
Christmas Cards
Somewhere in November 2014 I decided to make a whole lot of Christmas cards for friends/family. They were actually based on the person(s) they were meant for.
It was also the first time I used “PEEN” as my signature. I will elaborate on the many, many meanings of Peen in another post.
All cards were drawn on 12*12cm cheap blank cards. After a while I came to understand what worked, and what not. One day I will redo the best of them.
Drawing Class
In the middle of the pandemic, school year 2020-2021, I took a drawing class. It was fun. We were even able to draw a few times without masks. Apparently in “normal” times, such a class is even móre fun, with cookies and a happy artist-y vibe. Now even the model had to wear a mask (but nothing else).
I’m really not very good at getting the ratios right. Luckily it were mostly very short poses, matching my attention span. The first one is my favourite, with Inez holding a little Inez statue from another class :-).
Birth Announcement Cards
My 2 little human beings are probably the biggest accomplishments on this website. There’s also a LOT of maintenance required. Teaches me to do a better job of planning a project, especially the TCO.
For both of them, I made the birth announcement cards myself. The first one was actually my first foray into digital art, drawn as vectors with the mouse.
Some 3 years later, the next birth announcement card was a “good” excuse to buy a professional Wacom tablet & CLIP Studio Paint. I elaborated further on the front & back concept. The inside was an actual book. I wanted a ISBN number, but that was deemed “too much” by the mother.
