Yay 2011!

Happy New Year to all!
I'm a little late catching up with my blogging—2011 has already been off to a very fast-paced, busy start!

I'm full of inspiration and exciting new ideas for this year including some plans to begin to sell some products and prints featuring my art, as well as branch out to some new markets with both my design and illustration work. But—first project in the works: relaunching my website with a brand-new look! Keep an eye out for that soon.

In the meantime, I've been working with some new publishing clients on some book cover projects. I can't share those for awhile, but it's been great to start the year with some new relationships.

I also finished up my sketchbook for the Arthouse Co-op's The Sketchbook Project. The touring national exhibit begins next month at The Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg, with a reception on February 19th. From there, the sketchbook collection will exhibit in 9 different US cities through July of this year, including stops in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and more! Over 28,000 artist participated in this project so definitely keep an eye out for the exhibit in a city near you! (Schedule is on the Arthouse Co-op website)

Here are a few of my last pages from "Great hopes and Massive Failures" (a.k.a. a visual diary of my years as a single woman in New York City's sometimes vicious, sometimes hilarious, dating scene!)  I had a blast with this project, and even found myself inspired to keep some other ongoing theme-based sketchbooks...which I'll share some of soon!

More Sketchbook Project

Just sharing more of my progress with the Sketchbook Project.

My theme is "Great Hopes and Massive Failures" and this title is, for me, an opportunity to tell some of the funny (well, mostly funny!) stories from my past life in the NYC singles/dating world.
I'm really enjoying just getting to experiment a bit with composition & design—and lots of hand-lettering—to tell the stories and represent these characters from my life in interesting ways.

The Fire Eater

 

Just finished a little personal piece, inspired by the sketch I made for this year's Halloween costume: A sideshow/circus fire-eater! 

 AND-it just so happens to fit this week's Illustration Friday theme: BURNING

After having such a blast creating the vintage sideshow-style costumes for Coney Island's Mermaid Parade this past summer, friends and I were inspired to revisit the sideshow theme for Halloween. I decided to make a fire-eater costume....of course with a gory spin on things--I had "real" flaming torches and a disgusting burn on my face!

Before diving into the costume-making, I sketched out my ideas as usual....and couldn't resist revisiting those—now that my Halloween fun is over—to make a nice little illustration. I also realized this makes a nice companion piece to the "Acrobat" image I made for Illustration Friday a few months ago. Looking at these together, I'm also feeling inspired to expand this into more of a series—and potentially apply to notecards, journals, etc. (for sale in my future etsy shop!). I really love this whole vintage-circus theme and feel like I could come up with endless characters.

Here's a glimpse at how my costume looked  :)

Mardi Gras Inspired art for 6x6

Wanted to share some new sketches I'm working on for a submission to Six by Six Gallery's February show. Being so inspired by the rich culture of New Orleans, I've had this theme in my head for quite awhile, and now with Mardi Gras right around the corner and Six by Six Gallery still taking submissions for their monthly shows, it just seemed like the perfect time to dive into this subject matter.

I love Mardi Gras masks and all kinds of costuming-making in general, so got interested in creating a representation of each of the four seasons with a girl in a mask; these are sketches for Summer and Winter. Would love to get to Spring and Fall to submit all 4 to the show as a series, but juggling a few assignments right now so will see how far I get before the Jan 15th deadline....

new in-progress

Working on a new painting to submit to Six by Six gallery's next show. I love working in this small square format, and this one is inspired by my recent trip to Nashville. Here's the sketch...

new sketches

Here's a peek at something new I'm working on. I'm creating a series of drawings, honing in on refining my style to fit markets with a middle-grade girl audience (like book covers!) I was inspired by the Artful Agenda drawings I did earlier this year, and just love creating little pieces like this! I plan to continue to develop these, and more like them, to apply to sellable products (notecards, greeting cards, small prints, etc.) and open up an etsy shop later on this year. These are the first few sketches I've been working on, and will be finished in full color.

sneak peek...

I have my commissioned painting of a monkey walking a pug well in the works (I posted this assignment awhile back). Wanted to post a few pics of it in progress...having alot of fun with it so far, and hope to finish it up soon!

Advertising/product art

I'm working on a new illustration & lettering job for an advertising campaign. The product is an organic fruit drink--so the art includes some spots of funky, fun fruit and decorative lettering. It's super exciting, as this is a bit of a new market for me--and the subject matter is right up my alley! These are a few of the initial sketches, which went over well in general with the client. I have some slight revisions-and can't wait to do these in color!

Blowing Bubbles

It's been awhile since I've posted anything (because shamefully it's been a few weeks since I've gotten back to work!) I recently moved, and just finally getting resettled into my new work space. So, now it's time to wrap my head back around my current projects. This is the one I have in the works right now. It's the 2nd painting for the friend who commissioned the large wedding portrait this summer. For this one, he gave me a "heart theme" but otherwise complete freedom. It's a 24" x 24" piece that he wants to hang in their bathroom. So, I got inspired by "bubbles"-here's the sketch:

I'm feeling really excited about this one! He wants to give it to his wife for Christmas, so I will be finishing it up asap.

Harvard

I just finished a job for Harvard University magazine. It was a really cool assignment, with a great art director. It was a very mature, introspective article about a girl reflecting on her dreams of going to Harvard and her communicating that to new prospective students upon her graduation from the college. I approached the article with a metaphoric/symbolic approach in my 1st set of sketches, which I was pretty excited about.



However, they preferred a more literal, less whimsical approach. So I submitted a 2nd set, these with a more narrative scene--



In the end, I was asked to combine some elements from the 1st and 2nd set of sketches. Here's what the final image came to be:

The Big One

My most recent work was a large painting commissioned by a friend's husband to surprise her. This was super-exciting to me, as I'd never really painted very large scale but always had wanted to try. Also, I was flattered that he liked the work on my website so much he wanted an original, and that it was something I could do for a friend.

He wanted it based on a photo from their Florida-beach wedding. But, I don't do much portrait work, so likenesses are a bit challenging for me, and I didn't want it to come off cheesy. But I had alot of fun working out the composition-I worked full size. This is how it started:

But I wasn't happy with the shapes and layout, so I did a second sketch:



And basically combined elements I liked in both.


I played with the texture/swirly design in the background as a way to tie it together and add something to the empty space, but it made everything look much too busy once I got into adding color, so I took them out.

And, this is the final outcome:

It's interesting to me how much things changed in the course of the painting.

And, there were some challenges overall being the first time I worked this large scale. The logistics of getting the materials, rearranging my small space to work, and packing/shipping such a large box down to Florida--they were definitely all learning experiences!

BUT- my friend totally really loves how it came out. So, he's a happy client! :)
I actually have another commission from the same friend--but I am keeping it a little smaller (24 x 24) and am going to take a more graphic approach, as all he told me he wanted was some kind of "heart-theme). So, I am starting to get some sketches going for that one and hope to be able to finish that one up much more quickly than this one.