New website, blog, and social media pages!

I've finally launched my new website! It's got a whole new look, includes tons of new illustration, fine art & design work—and the new format will be much easier for me to make regular updates. Plus, I've integrated my blog with the new site so you can find everything here: 

www.jeaninehenderson.com

Please be sure to bookmark and subscribe to my feed there to continue to get updates on my blog. I'll no longer be posting to this blogspot page.

I'm hoping to tweak a few things about my new site design over the next few months—but do take a look and feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Also, I've recently (or more like finally!)  joined the social media world! :)
I've launched a Facebook page for my illustration work, and you can follow me on Twitter too, @jeaninehender.

In the meantime, I've just gotten 2 big, super exciting jobs that I'm diving into! I'm illustrating covers for a 3-book series for Penguin, and also hand-drawing type & designing an awesome lead title for Sourcebooks. So, I may be a bit sporadic with updates over the next few busy weeks, but can't wait until I'm able to share more details about these projects!

Happy Holidays!

I'm very excited that I had the opportunity to illustrate and design Puffin Books' holiday card. It was a fun little piece that also allowed for some hand-lettering, and will be sent to many of the talent artists and authors who work with Penguin.

I'm off for an amazing holiday adventure to Colorado and Hawaii--so sure to have lots of inspiration to start off a new, productive year! In the meantime,   

Happy holidays to everyone, and all the best for a happy and healthy 2011!

New blog design

I just returned from ICON6 --the Illustration Conference--in Pasadena, CA. It's an event held every 2 years or so in a different city, and always proves to be a fantastically inspiring weekend filled with incredible speakers, workshops, and presentations. This year was no different--I saw and met so many talented and fun people and really got myself re-energized about my work and thinking alot about some new paths to explore.

Step one--updating this blog! I felt like it really needed a little bit of designing--thought I'm not feeling too excited about blogger's new "template" designs. I don't love the limited choices in color and background images/textures, and the fact that I'm unable to upload more of my own imagery. But, maybe it'll just take a bit more figuring out and playing with, or exploring how to create a custom-designed blog. For now--do feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts on this--better, worse?

Somebody Everybody Listens To

I don't often post much about my book cover design work at Penguin, but on of my favorite books that I've worked on just went on sale. It's called Somebody Everybody Listens To, by Suzanne Supplee. It's just such a sweet and inspiring story about a girl chasing her dreams of becoming a musician from her small town to Nashville, and I think I was especially connected to it because I happened to be working on it as I planned my trip to Nashville last year! Anyway--it's great, you should check it out...And, was pretty pysched about with how the cover came out also-

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0525422420/yalit-20

More music art

I've just finished the 2nd part of the promotional package for Michaela Anne--this design will be used for her show posters as well as her promo postcards. She wanted to have a large space at the bottom that can she write in info for each of her shows. I altered the girl a bit from the web banner I'd previously done for her--she ended up wanting to add the shot gun and whiskey bottle because she has a sultry sound, and she didn't want to be represented with too "sweet" of an image. I had tons of fun doing this--I've also included a detail here of the illustration of the girl. I loved doing the handlettering and creating the textures and distressing on this to give it that "old-timey" feel.






Michaela will also use some of these elements on her upcoming website--and once her album is recorded, I'll be working on the album art and design, which I can't wait for!

New book cover

Just finished a YA book cover assignment for Egmont Publishing. This has to be my favorite job I have done so far--mostly becasue it's my dream: I created the concept, design, illustration and hand-lettering! Plus, I got to also design the interior, which allowed for some line art also. I really had so much creative freedom with developing the package as a whole, and I even got to do some marketing materials for it. (Plus, it's a super-cute story!) This will be published in December of this year.

Look for on the shelves

Just wanted to post a few of my favorite recent covers. These will all be pub'd by various Penguin imprints in the next few months.

I got to work for the first time with very talented photographer, Michael Frost (www.michaelfrost.com), on the photo shoot for "Alis". Then I created my own background using found photos and textures and hand-distressed type.

"Jane In Bloom" is one of the best stories I have gotten to work on. It's a very touching, sensitive book about loss and growth. I got pretty emotionally connected to this one, and felt like it was a great chance to make a quiet image powerful through scale, cropping and color.

"Paris Pan Takes the Dare" was such a fantastic project-I was very lucky to work with 2 extremely talented illustrators. An Italian artist, Luisa Montalto (www.luisamontalto.net) and illustrator/hand-letterer Sarah J. Coleman (www.inkymole.com). It was really exciting to see the two artist's work come together to convey my concept. Plus, I happened to meet Sarah at ICON5, (who is so fantastic in person!) just as this project has been commissioned, which made it even more exciting for me to direct.

Ode to the Miser Brothers

Just having a little fun playing around with two of my all-time favorite Christmas characters! Happy holidays everyone!

ZOMBIE QUEEN!

Since Halloween, my favorite holiday, is just a little more than a month away, thought I would share this image. It's one of my YA book covers--which has become a project I got especially personally attached to.

My art director at Penguin assigned this project to me after she attended my "Zombie Prom" Halloween bash last year! And, we hired a fabulous photographer-Manjari Sharma www.manjarisharma.com (who just happens to also be one of my best friends and roommates) She had taken some amazing "prom portraits" at the "Zombie Prom"--so my art director knew she'd be perfect to get this shot.

We had a low budget to work with one this, so in trying to be resourceful, decided--who better to model than moi, of course!

So this project really turned out to be one of my favorites-I got to concept it, design it, art direct the photoshoot, AND be the model!

The book will be pub'd by Puffin Books in May 2009.