Artist Prompt Elephant, Mouse, Ginger

The prompt words I picked this week are Ginger, Elephant, and Mouse. These words reminded me that I created a little book a few years ago with similar words. Well, a tiny bit similar, but enough that I thought I’d share it. The book is titled Elephant’s Ants. There is no ginger or a mouse, however, a lot of the hues and tones in the book are ginger colored. Does that count?

Read Here to see my little book and see what else I came up with.

This is directing you to a new blog called Snagging the Muse. Feel free to participate by making a grab bag of likes and loves on little slips of paper and picking two or three to create unusual images by exercising the right side of the brain.

An Answer To My Own Question

Out of my bundle of likes and loves, that I wrote about in the first entry called: Snagging the Muse an artist’s prompt, I decided to pick three pieces of paper from the bag instead of two. This was in an effort to make creating a little more challenging and it worked. Here are my three random picks:  Sweaters, Fountain Pens and Fairytales. Wow – random, huh? Anyway, head over to penzart.com/ to see what I was able to create in just under a week.

While my writing or my fairies may not be the most stunning art, they served the purpose: to get my right brain functioning again and my right hand warmed up.

My next three words are: Salt, espresso, and photography.

New Book on the Horizon

First of all, my Kitty Cat book is done!! It feels so good to finish a project. I’m sending it out hoping to get an agent to see it’s value. I’ll give it six to nine months and then self-publish. Here is the front cover:

The one-minute pitch: This One And That One is a bedtime story meant to ease worried minds and inspire an “aww,” moment at the end, sending little ones off to comfy, safe slumber.

n the meantime, I’m starting another kids book. This the very beginning of the character development. I think his name is Walter. Rough sketches but I thought it would fun to watch the process. He’s a waterfall enthusiast to the point of obsession. My daughter suggests it should be a graphic novel picture book. Wouldn’t that be a comic book? I have the story written, we’ll see how it all evolves.

Prelude to Earth

The place I grew up was heavily wooded. It offered a place to escape, play, build forts and feel free. I had a route that I followed through the woods. In the winter it led to a frozen swamp that I skated on. In the summer I went to an outcropping of huge rocks that tilted towards each other to make a cave. It was one of my many secret retreats. I would always leave something in the cave like a button or ribbon. When I came back the next day it would be gone! Someone, animal or person was taking my cave offerings! Pretty sure it wasn’t a person.

This doesn’t look exactly like my cave but it’s close. Plus I can’t really remember seeing any purple trees in upstate NY. http://sales.penzart.com

Which Medium Will Do

I wrote a sweet little children’s book and am trying to decide what medium and style to use. It would be nice if the backgrounds didn’t overwhelm the main character – a cat. I’ve tried pen and ink and it was just a little too boring for a kids book for this particular story. Colored pencil mixed with graphite has captured my interest lately but I’m not totally convinced. Without knowing the story I can’t really ask for thoughts but I’d thought I’d share what I’ve been working on.

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The Pimple and the Plague

A weird thing has been happening since staying home to avoid the corona virus. In my effort to not angst about the spread, I’ve strangely stopped caring too much about my appearance, maybe just to have one less thing to worry about. This might be partially fueled by the giant pimples I keep getting at the end of my nose. One goes away and another appears. What’s up with that? Who did I wrong in a past life to get end-of-nose-pimples at age 63?

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

It all began on a farm hundreds of years ago miles from town. There was the farmer, his barn and workshop, the chicken coop, and his chickens.

One cloudy day in the summer while feeding the chickens, the farmer looked at the sky and said, “Glad it’s going to rain today, the fields are dry.”

One chicken heard the farmer and was taken with the sound of his voice. She cooed and clucked along as the farmer spoke. Indeed, she loved the sounds of the farmer’s voice so much that from then on, she would travel from the hen house each morning to the farmer’s house just to hear the farmer talk about the weather.

The farmer enjoyed the routine too. Each morning he’d go outside, and wait for the chicken to make her way from the hen house. It was quite a distance, but she made it every day. The farmer would then talk about the weather and the chicken would coo and cluck along.  After the weather report the chicken would make her way back to the hen house where she would go about her daily job of pecking and cleaning.

After so many years of this routine, a very clear path was worn from the hen house to the farmer’s house. When the farmer went to get the eggs each morning, he would also use the chicken’s path, and eventually the path became the main trail leading past the barn to the hen house.

Eventually, other families joined the farmer each bringing their own skills. One family rented the farmer’s workshop to fix wagons, and with time, the wagon repair shop became the busiest part of the farm. The wagons would roll up to the workshop just behind the main house. Once repaired, the wagons pulled passed the front of the farmer’s house and went on their way back to town. Eventually, a path even larger than the chicken’s path was created around the farm house by the wagons. That path soon became the main road running through the property. With wagons going this way and that, it was clearly the wagon’s road that crossed right over the chicken’s path, not the other way around!

So you see, the question “Why did the chicken cross the road?” should never have been asked.  After all, it was the road that crossed the chicken’s path. All this time the chicken has been wrongly flagged. It’s a classic example of prejudicial gender targeting and ethnic profiling! If it had been a rooster’s path, there never would have been a road in the first place. The wagons would have been re-directed by the rooster with a toll collected by the hens. The rooster crowing at the top of his lungs, would then declare himself an expert urban planner and get paid double whatever measly sum the chicken gets paid.

Riddle solved!

Kids Book #3

This book is an easy reader. I really don’t know if they are any good or not but I loved doing it! My stories don’t have a lot of conflict and definitely no violence. They are just for fun. I think my excitement at finishing this one is with the illustrations. I’m beginning to feel a little more competent as an illustrator. It doesn’t come easily for me but here we go!

Amazon has them:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=penny+ross+burk&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

The Swim

Just a thought….

Meet Clever!

I used to make up bedtime stories for my kids.  One story that we all loved was about a a very smart Macaw who adopted a family and then takes them on an adventure to find his home. “Clever” was one of those stories that  survived the test of time (about 25 years since my kids were little). My eldest requested an illustrate version of the story so that she could share it with her children.

Clever is available on Amazon as a softcover real book (remember those?) or as a Digital Download. I hope you enjoy!

Written and illustrated by me!!

 

When Time Flies and A Second Time Around

We did it. We self published two little books that will probably never sell but here they are!!!!

and then

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_15?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=penny+ross+burk&sprefix=Penny+Ross+Burk%2Caps%2C129

Massage or Torture?

If this is massage therapy, I’m a can of tomatoes.
Like any other modern day baby boomer, I’m a lover of massage therapy. I’ve come to appreciate a deep tissue pressure that will soothe my jangled nerves without registering a single bruise to my, um, baby soft skin.
This was not the case.
The guy was smooth, strong (too strong) and obviously hadn’t completed his zen preparations that morning. Perhaps I should have told him that I would support the political rebels in his country. Perhaps it was his way of slowly but surely punishing all Americans, one client at a time. Perhaps he had a rough childhood. I apologized for my existence. I pled for my life. I still came away mangled.

Fear of Buying A New Car

Wait! Read this before you buy your next car! So, you want to buy an environmentally super expensive, fantastic car, like, oh, let’s say a Tesla? The problem is, in the show room it looks pristine and perfect but what happens once you leave that controlled temperature, locked door environment? This is when stress happens, the very beginning of road rage. Well, fear not, I have an idea worthy of a whole new business that will put your anger and anxiety to rest! Pre-distress your vehicle and never fear another fender bender again! Here’s my 30-second elevator speech. Ready?

The Glass Bottle

I love taking an object or a photograph and using it as inspiration to write a short story. This is very much a children’s story.

The bottle looked empty but was sealed with a cork, wax and an old tattered ribbon. When Harmony found it on the beach, it was hidden between rocks where it had been resting for some time. At ten years old she was absolutely delighted with the object that fit so perfectly in her little hand. Her first thought was to show her father the new treasure, so off she trotted over the rocky shore like a billy goat.

Despicable Is Alive And For Real!

This event was akin to telling me that there really is a tooth fairy or Santa Claus. Imagine for a second what that would be like. Surprise and awe come to mind first and then a grin. The kind of smile that makes you look a little dopey and brainless – in a good way. Ya know the sh*t-eating-grin – like your blissfully uninformed.

Well, that’s what I felt like when I met a cartoon that was a real human person. I couldn’t take a picture of him because he would have wondered why or asked questions. Or maybe, I was just too shy to do it which is usually the case.

The Real Woman’s Once-A-Month Spa (Yet another excuse to get away from the house)

Come join us in the exclusive (overpriced) spa made especially for women. We offer gentle support (because you paid us lots of money) with the use of herbal digestives (Lipton’s tea), healing salts from the ocean (potato chips) and potent curatives from the mountains (chocolate) to reconnect to mother earth, our main source of vitality and spirit (necessary oxygen). Women banding together at “that time of the month,” will be a source of comfort (seeing that someone else is worse off than you are), safety (in way too many numbers) and well-being for each other. Along with herbal remedies (Smith Brothers Cough Drops), a soothing touch (sympathy as you pay the bill) and sumptuous (pretentious) atmosphere. Where growth (girth) and regeneration (of the many more cells per pound of gained weight), will be the result. In almost every culture women have been separated from men (they feared us) during our monthly cycle. Let’s continue this (foolish) perceptive tradition (see how they do without us for three or four days) in an extraordinary healing and communal environment.

A Googol of Mensa

Hi, I’m uneducated. Umm, well, I did go to college, several times. I called it “adult kindergarten.” I was an art major most of the time which explains a lot. Finished with an undergrad in Psych. So maybe I’m just naïve, unworldly, sheltered and unabashedly think it’s okay to ask dumb questions.

You need that background before I begin inquiring how much I don’t know about the Mensa organization or its members. I am curious about a lot of things. Like, are they considered a “society” or an “association”? Maybe they are thought of as a “herd” or a “pride” of Mensa folk. I like that a group of zebra are called a “dazzle,”maybe they would consider being called a Dazzle of Mensa? That sounds pretty lofty, kind of special in a spectacular, glittery way, don’t you think?