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!

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...

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.

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!

samples, samples samples!

one of the funnest (yes, that's right, I have the vocabulary of a 6 year old..) things for an illustrator is when a package arrives in the mail with your samples! I've had the pleasure of working with Peaceable Kingdom Press over the past year and these are a few of the projects I have completed for them. The colors turned out great (much cleaner than my crappy iPhone camera can show) with die cuts and the pink kitties are actually flocked! 

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!

trying to keep it springy...

...as another foot of snow falls on top of 50 plus inches that have fallen over the last few weeks. Oh and just so you know, shoveling with 2 bickering teenagers is loads of fun!

Anyway, I did this card for Peaceable Kingdom, available as part of a nice boxed set :)

Pixar Times!

I was fortunate to be asked by the uber-talented Jerrod Maruyama to do the December Pixart piece. Since it happens to be the 50th anniversary of Rudolph, I thought it might be fun to do a Toy Story/Up/Rudolph mashup! There were a ton of possibilities here.

If you are a fan of Pixar (and who isn't?), it's a great site to follow to keep up on the latest Pixar news… check it out here! 

FREE merry merry memory game!

As the days get closer keep 'm occupied with a rousing memory game! Download your free printable over at happy happy art collective and merry christmas!

the power of santa... freebie download!

if you've ever been around kids with less than 2 weeks to go before Christmas, you know what I'm talking about. Sheer pandemonium, chaos, Christmas crazies… need I go on? Desperate times call for desperate measures and there is no more powerful parental behavioral tool than the big man himself. Creepy as it may sound, they all know the song..."better watch out, better not cry, better not pout, I'm telling you why…" Use the power of Santa! Hang the chart and keep track of all the good stuff,  reward them with stickers and watch the tree get decorated as your sanity returns! Then leave the chart out for Santa to see while he eats your milk and cookies and maybe he will even leave his autograph! Head on over to happy happy art collective where you can download the files here!

keep track of good deeds with tally marks!

for every 3 tally marks, let 'em have a present or star sticker!

hopefully, by Christmas eve, their tree will look something like this!

Santa's got quite the wardrobe these days...

Today is day 8 of 24 days of free holiday downloads over at happy happy art collective, and who doesn't need a santa paper doll to make your advent complete? Head on over to the HHAC blog to download the big man and his entire wardrobe :)

get your freebie santa fortune teller!

Here's my contribution to happy happy art collective's 24 days of free holiday downloads. 

Head over there to get your freebie and see what Santa has in store for you this Christmas! 

(here's hoping it's not fruitcake…)

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...

christmas gift wrap competition

ok, a post or so ago, I promised that I was laying off contests and also would not become a spoon flower junkie, stumping for weekly votes. This time I really mean it.* I only intended to enter the annual tea towel contest. Seriously. But then I saw the next one was for Christmas gift wrap, based on ornaments. Being the Christmas addict I am, I couldn't resist, so I adapted some ornaments I had from an old card design and here ya go. If you feel so inclined, toss me a vote! And I hereby resolve to stop entering these things! 

*Unless they are really a super cute or fun idea and I can't resist.

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!

PSikhouvanjou!

I recently had the opportunity to work with a shop that I have loved for a very long time, the Dutch site, Psikhouvanjou! It is filled to the brim with the most gorgeous and sweet toys and home decor for kids that I have ever seen…everything from Helen Dardik to Tiago Americo, to beautiful Djeco products and so much more. They were looking to rebrand their site and newsletter with some new fun and fresh characters and I was happy to oblige! I am hoping it will become a long standing relationship. Check them out here!

inktober!

Yep, I've jumped on the inktober bandwagon. Ink has never been my thing, but I'm kinda enjoying it for a change from the pencil to vector routine, a.k.a., rinse dry and repeat! So far I've been using a pentel pocket brush, tomboy brush marker and a rapidograph (#2…look it up kids ;). Not sure if I will get sick of it, but I'm sticking to a halloween/fall theme for as long as I can stand it. How about you? Are you doing it? Please leave a comment so I can follow your progress (if I don't follow you already!). I'm pretty much only going to post on instagram @zippyboro… there's also a link on the right column here. Happy inking!! 

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?