Summery things...

Okay, first, allow me a brief pregnant-lady rant: so, non-alcoholic beer?  It's not good.  One of my husband's friends had a beer-tasting party last weekend, and I went anyway, and brought some different near-beers so I could taste-test those, and...yeah, they were crap.  I love a good beer, especially in the summer, and these just tasted like weird, bitter, vegetable-soup-flavored sodas.

But then, that was just O'Doul's, St. Pauli NA, and Kaliber (the one that's made by Guinness...still not good, not vegetable-y, but sort of cinnamon-coffee-ish in a bad way).  What's a good non-alcoholic beer that tastes somewhat real, internets?!  I need help.

Other than that, we've been having some nice days, so I've been using my back porch "office" some more...

Scotty is still an awesome back porch coworker.

The warm weather, plus the constant marketing of summer stuff that's already begun (swimsuits, pool toys, beach stuff in Target even though we live about eight hours from any beach) inspired me to do a piece of summer art yesterday:

This was so fun. :) It's done using the same technique as the Easter eggs where I drew the shapes in Illustrator, then brought them over to Photoshop and layered watercolor texture on top.

Here's the shapes without texture, which I also kinda like, although it's plainer:

And here's the "sketch" I initially did in Photoshop with my Wacom.  Very rough, very ugly, but hey, it's part of the process.

I'd also done a pencil thumbnail sketch in a sketchbook, but I was too lazy to scan it in so I just redrew it in Photoshop instead. :P It initially had a bathing suit on the girl, with just a strap slipping off to show her sunburn, but I thought it would look clearer and more striking with no suit on.

And of course, this is now on Pixels and Society6 for print/t-shirt/etc. purposes!  Wouldn't this be a great beach tote bag?  It totally would.