paint?!

Long time, no blogging! Wow, I don't even want to know when my last post was :/ 

Anyway, thought I would share some new stuff I've tried lately. You are probably aware of the #12monthsofpaint initiative started up by a super talented group of ladies, Jennifer Orkin Lewis, Courtney Cerruti, Meighan O'Toole and Erika Seers. The idea is to create at least one painting a month based on a monthly theme. Knowing that sadly I'm not really a 365 day project type (look how long it took me to do 40 days of lettering O_O  ), but I thought that I actually might follow thru on a one a month type commitment. What I did not expect was how much I would enjoy doing it. Not that I am in any way comfortable with paint, gouache in this instance, but it's a nice break from manipulating pixels.

Since I'm a big fan of people who know how to use it, I thought I would try gouache. I had bought some for an abandoned painted initial cap project (hey, I got up to 'G' anyway!) Two problems, I encountered... I never seem to mix up enough of a color, getting it the right consistency and just general lack of brush skills. Oops, that's 3! Oh yeah, and most importantly, NO COMMAND Z. Anyway, to counter those last 2 issues, I decided to collage it. Nothing like a sharp pair of scissors to clean up some blobby paint, not to mention, I could move stuff around before putting in place. A work around for command Z :D !! When I look back at the process, it's almost like I approached it from a vector POV. The scissors became my pen tool, cropping and masking out the errant marks. I tried to do some dry brush effects, which is kinda like how I use illustrator brushes, layering brush marks and colors. Nothing complex of course, but hopefully enough to give it some added detail and modeling. 

In the end, I was fairly happy with what I did and hope I can learn more and get better. I kinda like putting them on a craft background. For whatever reason, it immediately gives it a more finished look, without having to mess with painting too much in the background...something I need to work on. This month's theme was "blue" and while I didn't really adhere to that as much in the checkers piece, I had fun anyway. Hope to stick to it and improve!

new stuff

hey, now that all the hullabaloo of surtex is over, I can share some of my new stuff I took. Well, I guess it wasn't exactly a state secret before, but, everyone always seems to keep surtex stuff all hush hush, beforehand, so what do I know? Anyhow, here's some of what I took and no, you can never make enough stuff. Check out my site for lots more... (ok, that may be an exaggeration... some more?!)

cinco de mayo surtex silliness

yeah, you know when you have a crap load of stuff that you know you should/need/must be doing and then you get some stupid idea that you just have to see through? Well, that's what happened today. Because sometimes, you just can't resist the stupid. oh and happy cinco de mayo!

And as long as we're talking surtex, here are my other two more "official" flyers...

surtex!

yup, it is on... surtex! I will be going there with the super talented Tammie and Emily, heading up the happy happy art collective booth! Lauren will be showing in booth 559. If you are going, please swing by and say hello at booth 532!

happy valentine's day!

here's one from my line of stupid valentine sentiments... 

"I love you more than acorns on cupcakes." 

You're welcome. Never said I was a copywriter! Happy v-day!

finally at long last… the letter Z!

Well, if you've been following the progress of the happy happy alphabet that I have been contributing to, we finally made it to the finish line! We started this project nearly a year ago, last winter and all six of us have been plugging away at the letters, 2 artists at a time. We decided that for a grand finale, all of us would do the letter Z. You can check them all out over at happy happy! Let's just say, there was more than one zebra involved, but a few fun surprises!

holiday tunes

Have you started listening to Christmas music yet? Well, thanks to my 14 year old son, I have. Yup, I have raised him right. He's been streaming Pandora Christmas stations since the day after halloween, so when Stacey Peasley needed some art for a couple of holiday releases, I was ready. Prediction here… since Target has latched on to Marshmallow World for their holiday commercials, it's going to run through your head for the next 30 plus days. I know I can't get it out of my head...

the dreaded letter X

Anybody that decides to take on an alphabet, knows it's there…lurking at the end, the possibilities far from endless. It's just a crappy letter. Here's the laundry list of possibilities:

1. xylophone - the obvious choice… kid friendly and potentially colorful. Nobody is surprised at that choice.

2. x-ray - gives you a few more possibilities in terms of settings, characters, etc. My friend and fellow happy happy artist, Lauren (Minco) Lowen did a fabulous job with this (yup, she got stuck with this crap letter, too)…check it out here

3. somebody named Xavier - yeah.

4. Xerox machine - this may have worked better for kids back in the 80's.

So there you have it. I may have missed a few obscurities, but as far as the english language goes, that's about it. Sooooo, I decided to loosen up the interpretation of the letter and include words that have an X somewhere in them. Muuuch easier. There's a few not so hidden X's in there, can you find them? 

Check out the entire collaborative gallery of our happy happy alphabet right here!

enough rain already.

The rain just won't give up here in New England the last few days, making it seem like the middle of November, rather than the nice crisp fall days of October. I've always hated the heavy gray skies of next month! On the other hand, I'm starting to burn out on this whole inktober thing, so maybe November isn't such a bad idea ;)

happy happy W and alphabet bloopers

Well if you follow happy happy art collective (and if you don't, why don't you?!?!), you know that we are at long last, nearing the end to our collaborative happy happy alphabet (check out the entire gallery of letters so far right here!). It's been a really fun project, seeing what cleverness my happy buddies come up with week after week. This month, I was assigned the letter "W" and I thought, great, no biggie…should be lots of good possibilities, it's not like "X" (which happens to be my next letter, ughhhh), or so I thought. For my contributions, I've continually tried to do something a little unexpected, i.e. not your typical kid's alphabet letter images, so doing a whale was not in the cards. But maybe it should have! I kinda struggled to come up with something clever and believe it or not, here are some of the things I considered doing. Let's call them bloopers:

1. My first stupid thought was to do Washington. As in George. Standing on a map of…..wait for it…Wisconsin?! hmmmmm. Seemed so cool at first. Moving on, but keeping with the same theme…

2. Washington as a witch. Seasonal, right? errrrrrr, yeah. No.

3. Washington eating watermelon…"Ever wonder if Washington wolfed watermelon with his wooden teeth? ooooookkkkkkkay. Maybe not.

4. A witch eating watermelon. Not a horrible idea, but we have a predetermined palette we have all been using for this alphabet, and with no green at my disposal, I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

5. Something involving waffles. Hey, I like eating them, but drawing them, not so much.

6. A woman wearing a giant white wig, with lots of W words stuck int it. I was intrigued, but wasn't sure how it would immediately look like a wig vs. just a crazy white hairdo? hmmmm… which brought me back to…

7. WASHINGTON WEARING his WHITE WIG!!! With WOODEN teeth!! With a WOODPECKER WHITTLING away at it! And a WORM sticking out!! GENIUS, right?!?!?!? Well, I thought so and actually worked up several sketches. And then, I showed my art director. One look from my 14 year old daughter and aspiring designer, and she said, and I quote, "You have lost your mind." Completely serious and walked away in silence. Crap. Do over.

So this is where I ended up. I took the woodpecker and thought about who he could marry in the wintry woods and who else could be in attendance. I thought about a woodchuck, but I don't think everyone has a visual picture in their heads of what a humanized woodchuck looks like, so I went the worm route. I thought this might be kinda cute considering he might be in the bird's food chain, plus he could be small, letting the happy couple be the stars.

So, there you have it. How I got from point A to point W. Now on to the cursed letter X. I still think I should have gone for Washington… what do you think?

"Cute Characters" for Tigerprint!

I decided to enter the Tigerprint competition for "cute character." I never have much luck at all in these competitions, but this one appealed to me. I mean if I call my stuff shamelessly cute, if not this contest, then what?! Anyway, if nothing else, I have a couple new birthday card ideas for the portfolio, so nothing wasted! Which one do you prefer?