Maker Faire!

Once again it's Maker Faire!  You know it's going to be good when it starts with a Dalek and someone zooming by in a speeding cupcake.

This is immediately followed by a steampunk pirate ship and a land speeder.  Then there's The Crucible, with a badly-drawn anvil (I'm just getting warmed up) and several folks hammering things out, along with the opportunity to hammer your own things or paint small pottery.

I had lunch on the lawn by the giant recycled wolf and watched the steampunk giraffe go by, all of which feels perfectly normal.

Later I find the cupcake parking area, and a peek inside shows that there's a motorized scooter in there.  I am attacked by giant bubbles while exploring this.  I escape the bubbles, almost get run over by someone in a motorized school desk declaring "I'm late for English!" and head to the Home Grown building and make a bee out of pipe cleaners and try several chocolates - I much prefer Ecuadorian over Madagascar.  I nibble on a chocolate-covered cricket while waiting for a session on making drinking chocolate.

Then it's back to the lawn for the other half of my sandwich while a group of kids work on a cardboard wolf.  I lose my bee, but then find him again and decide he's be safest in my pocket.  I stop for part of a tea session, which is interesting, but the bench in uncomfortable and it's freezing the shade, so I head over to the pedal-powered stage where folks on bicycles power the audio equipment and a Brazilian drum band plays.  Then I find the guys doing old-fashioned tintypes with potassium cyanide and beautiful results, and head inside to learn how fireworks are made.

Then it's the Dark Room with lots of glowing things including sculptures, meditation rooms, a giant plush cat the size of a car, a PVC pipe water fountain, and spherical Pac Man.

By this point I'm exhausted and with the wind chill it feels like it's -5 out, so I head home after a full and truly awesome day.

Thank you Maker Faire and see you again next year!

Cinco de Mayo bento

I had bento for Cinco de Mayo, of course, and got a quick drawing of the sushi bar in while I waited. Bento was good, and I like the Lucky Cat watching over things.

I’ve got a backlog of Coffee Shop People!  Each of these is between 8 and 20 minutes of drawing time. This guy had a skydiving sticker on his laptop and a brace on his wrist:

This one kept squirming around:

These two were actually talking to each other:

These two were on completely different planets: One with a paper and pencil and the other with Bluetooth headphones and a laptop. For bonus points, in the background there was a conversation about how the Big Deal about the Tower of London is that it’s like Jurassic Park where they discovered that dinosaurs are really birds and we are all descended from Vikings.  I didn’t quite follow that, but it made for good entertainment:

I like the red and black going on here:

This guy was not bugging out this badly, but I like the look:

This guy was focused but calm (sometimes they are palpably stressed):

And here's a time-lapse of that drawing - you can see that his face went through some edits:

I think this woman was falling asleep:

This woman was reading an actual newspaper.  Eight minutes later she turns around to focus on her phone:

This guy was scowling at his laptop:

There have been a few pen & ink people roaming around as well.  Some of them were on trains or just around town.  A few of them were line-y with a mild sense of scribble:

Some more defined:

And one good old-fashioned Line Person (I do love these):