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.

Call For Unity poster

Here's the final piece as they used it for the promotional materials for the event:

Call For Unity Art

I just finished up a job for Sacramento News and Review. It was a really cool assignment--creating art to be used for the cover of a program guide and posters/promotional materials for an Interfaith Music Event. It's completely up my alley as far as subject matter-and the Art Director really encouraged alot of creativity with this one.

The annual event has taken place in Sacramento for the last seven years and has a focus on peace and acceptance through sharing music and culture in a diverse community. The image of a bird had become iconic for this event, and so they wanted to somehow include a bird of some sort. They also had a theme this year of "Caring for Creation" So I tried to communicate music and nature, and ended up with this:

They have a headline/logo which will go at the top. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and especially excited to see it with the design and reproduced at a large poster size.

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.

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:

Counting Sheep

Sketched some lettering and this little sheep about a year ago (when I was going through some stuff and feeling like a "little lost sheep" actually) Anyway, always kind of liked it, so finally dug it out of an old sketchbook, did a lino cut of the sheep & printed it on a textured board, scanned it all and have been playing with it, adding texture and color digitally. Here's 2 of them.
I'm realizing with just a couple elements I can make endless little pieces of art and have hours of fun!! So, I think I'll continue with this....maybe make a new sheep every day! (or at least week!) I'm interested also in starting to explore some new venues for my artwork. Maybe packaging/products/licensing, etc. Also playing with the idea of opening an etsy.com shop where I could sell handmade books and notecards, etc.--so I feel like this type of project can be a good segway into that realm....