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!

Alice in Wonderland!

I recently had the great honor of illustrating the cover for a re-issue of Alice in Wonderland for Scholastic Book Clubs. This really was a dream job for me, since it combined both illustration and hand lettering, plus it was such an awesome subject. Not only am I a big Alice fan, this year marks the 150th anniversary of its first publication, making it all the more special to have the opportunity to work on.

I don't normally show my process but I thought I'd show my initial thumbnails I submitted. The parameters were pretty open other than that the book would come packaged with a mini pocket watch, so that needed to be featured alongside the white rabbit and Alice, of course. 

The bottom left option was the one that was selected, which was a favorite of mine along with the top left. I was pretty surprised that it was chosen, mainly since I had taken the typographic liberty of line breaking up "wonderland." The revisions were only to flop Alice and make her look older and more tween/teen looking. Basically, I just lengthened her torso, cinched in her waist and slimmed down her face and there you go! 

Because these titles for the book clubs are reproduced at a tiny thumbnail size, it need to be readable at a reduced size, so I went with a dark background to make the title pop. It worked pretty well, since Alice's descent is kind of mysterious anyway. The best part was adding some angry flowers!

storytime magazine

I must say, over the past year, I have been extremely fortunate, having some wonderful opportunities just land in my lap. An illustration job for Storytime Magazine is no exception.  Truthfully, I had never seen this magazine before, mainly due to that fact that it's new and does not get US distribution (hopefully that will change!) It's soooo gorgeous, filled monthly with lovely illustrations from many of my favorite artists, printed on a quality matte stock, and NO ADS! It kind of reminded me of the old Ideals magazines that I remember reading with my Gramma, growing up.... full of full bleed pictures and wonderful stories and poems. Right now, there really is no other periodical like it here in the states that I know of. 

just look at that gorgeous cover illustration by Chiara Nocentini!

I was contacted by them back in January. I was super swamped at the time, but really wanted to do it, and they were kind and flexible enough to accommodate me. I have always wanted to get into editorial, so having my first job in this area being with a kid mag, really made it ideal. The story was so sweet...an ABC poem. It was just so old fashioned and cute, I knew right away that I wanted to give it a retro limited color palette. I had to hide all 26 letters of the alphabet within the 2 main illos (can you find them all?), plus design a simple alphabet that corresponded to the poem. Actually, in the back of the issue, they used to letters to make a board game. Fun! 

If you live in the UK, it's definitely worth subscribing to, whether or not you have kids. I was super honored (and completely surprised) to be included.

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!

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!

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?

happy happy alphabet R!

I was happy that I got assigned the letter R in our ongoing group alphabet project over at happy happy, because, that's right…I got to do a bunny (rabbit…) Kinda made up for the sulkiness that was the letter "I", ha. Don't ask me why I thought of a rickshaw and I seriously have no idea if they are used in Rampur, but it sounded kinda exotic, so, with no further research, I went for it! Of course, someone has to be a passenger, so I thought a snooty, uppity raccoon lady was the perfect answer. Rico reminds me of some character that Indiana Jones might bump into on the streets right before some boulder starts chasing him down. Be sure to check out the rest of the alphabet here!

#tbt… power puff girls return!!!

Little known Jill Howarth Illustration fun fact: I actually did a power puff girls paperback (based on the classic episode, Bubble Trouble!) for Scholastic back when I was starting to try to transition from graphic designer to illustrator! This was back when I was fresh from Hasbro and one of my buddies in the illustration department (I worked in corporate design) had this job thrown at him by his rep and he didn't have the time nor inclination to work on it. I happily accepted not realizing at the time how much work it would really involve. I don't recall how much time I was given, but I wasn't the most accomplished vector artist, but by the time I was done, me and my trusty pen tool had become the best of friends. I wasn't given any parameters besides the obvious… keep 100% true to the brand and characters and tell the story in exactly 32 pages as told on the episode. I already loved the show, so that was a plus. I'm not sure if this is how most picture books go, since I haven't ever done another since, but it was totally up to me how best to edit the story visually on that set number of pages. I drew the characters to the best of my ability, but they still came back with multiple revisions, particularly to those giant eyeballs. I was pregnant with my twins at the time, but I managed to get it done. My only regrets are that they didn't let me do the type, (which ended up being the most heavy handed generic sans serif you can imagine) and they never gave me any credit for being the illustrator. And the cover sucked design-wise, but hey, I got paid! 

So happy that they are bringing this show back. McCracken's stories and characters were smart and the styling, iconic. Can't wait to watch!! Long live Chemical X!