So, one time while I was taking a bookbinding class at BYU, I got this awesome (read: overly ambitious) idea for an advent calendar-themed book. It involved French folded sections with stories inside for each day of December up through Christmas. That year (2008) I was supposed to give a Christmas present to my brother Aaron. I decided I would make him one of these books. Before I even got going on it, however, I realized that I wouldn't be able to finish it on time, so Aaron essentially got a big fat IOU. When Christmas 2009 rolled around, I managed to make one of these books for my sister Sarah (we have a rotating gift-giving schedule in the family). It took somewhere from 40 to 50 hours to make, and once I finished it, I knew that there was no way on earth that I would be able to get one made for Aaron for the 2009 season. So, with high hopes, I set a tentative due date for Aaron's belated book: December 1st, 2010.
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| Sarah's Christmas book, 2009 |
Well, as we all know, Christmas has already passed and December is nearly over, and it is not a huge surprise that Aaron's book is still not finished. BUT there are very good reasons for this. Let me explain to you why this 100+ hour labor of love is not quite finished yet:
You see, it all started when I rekindled my love for Microsoft Paint. I remember spending lots of hours in junior high drawing pictures on the computer with my friend Jamie Thomas. She was a budding computer animator herself; she once drew an inappropriate but awesome picture of Nick Kane being a butthead (literally) and making me cry (I haven't seen the picture in years and I can't find it, but it will be like finding a long-lost treasure if it ever surfaces on a hard drive somewhere). Anyway, a couple of months ago I drew a few pictures on Jenny's computer and remembered how much I love paint, so obviously it only made sense that somehow I should incorporate this talent into Aaron's Christmas book. I decided that I would illustrate the Twelve Days of Christmas, print it out and make it one of the sections of the book. These would be quick, crappily drawn pictures, I assured myself. I would have it all finished within a few hours...
It all started out innocently enough. As you can see, the partridge in the pear tree is rather crudely drawn:
The two turtle doves were definitely more professional, but they were still pretty basic. It was at this point that I decided my only prayer for doing this in a timely fashion would be to save my pictures, open them in Microsoft Publisher and then use the copy and paste function to create my multiples:
The real time management issues seemed to crop up when I drew the three French hens. By this point, I had realized that I actually was better at drawing on a computer than I was with a pencil and paper. Why draw crappy pictures when I can turn out real works of art?? As you can guess, by the time I got to the twelve drummers drumming, I had logged about 25 or 30 hours of computer time on drawing and formatting the pictures.
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| 3 French Hens |
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| 4 Colly Birds |
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| Sweat runnin' all over my 5 Gold Rings |
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| 6 Geese A-Laying |
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| 7 Swans A-Swimming |
