The wedding of Justin and Azadi was a beautiful celebration of love in Phoenix, Arizona,

which was the perfect fusion of Persian and American culture.

We wish Justin and Azar all the best!

After a work marathon (12 days without a break) I had a weekend!  Saturday, Meredith and I and a bunch of friends went to the Big Chill at the Big House (Michigan vs. Michigan State hockey at the Michigan stadium).  It was cold, but we had a blast!  Michigan won 5-0!  GO BLUE!

Sunday, we caught up with some errands and then I got some much needed studio time.  I’m building the main set for the children’s book I’m working on (see the couch in an earlier post) and I decided that I’d take a break from designing the main character to build a prop I’ve been thinking about for a few days.  I sat down and started making a little polar bear rug for in front of the couch.  The photos below show the sculpted polar bear head, the head and the fur I used to cover it, a shot of the finished rug and finally, a detail shot of the face.  Unless it’s a finished piece, I usually only have enough energy to pull out my phone to take photos, so forgive the low-quality.

We had an awesome time photographing Abby, Travis, and Logan! We ran around the city of Ann Arbor and then headed to the Arboretum for some nature shots before the sun set that evening. We’re looking forward to future photo shoots with these charming siblings.

Meredith wrote a fantastic children’s story, which I’ve decided to illustrate (more info on that later).  Most of what I’ve been doing so far is storyboarding the entire thing and planning the characters, but I have started building props and I thought I’d show some of the progress.

I want the story to be set in the victorian era with modern pieces mixed in throughout.  There is one scene in particular that the story will revisit multiple times.  The focus of this scene is a green velvet victorian couch and it’s the first thing I decided to build.

On our way home the other day, we decided to pick up some panera, run by the apartment to pick up the pup and head to park for a picnic dinner.  There’s a park around the corner from our house where there used to be a functioning mill.  We set up shop and ate our sandwiches while Sadie wrapped her leash around the picnic tables so many times that she couldn’t move.  After dinner we took a nice walk to scout out photo locations.  Let’s just say, Sadie threw a wrench in our plan.  We got a few decent shots out of it though!

This week I took Monday and Tuesday off to relax and ended up with a lot of lazy time with the pup.  I sat watching netflix for awhile before taking out the camera and playing around.  Naturally, Sadie became my subject; my wiggly, non-compliant, hyperactive subject.  These were my favorite shots of the day.  Enjoy!