Lilla Rogers MATS bootcamp June assignment

The June assignment for Lilla's bootcamp was to produce a nautically themed wall art piece. Now wall art is not an area I have typically ever felt my stuff was appropriate for. I well remember when I took MATS part A last spring, the wall art week was the week that really freaked me out, mainly because it was supposed to be an abstract collage piece, preferably done non-digitally. We were given two colors based on our horoscope and went from there. I had pink and yellow and ended up submitting this below, which while not abstract, it was at least, a "collage." Frankly, I was just happy to have gotten through the week with something to submit!

This time, the parameters were a bit looser in terms of media, but the mini assignment was to draw ships in bottles and other nautically themed icons. So, I did a bunch of crappy sketches and ultimately ended up using one anyway… the first one I did of the ship. As per usual, I did everything in illustrator, messing around with transparency, brushes and generally grunging it up at the end. I knew I wanted to incorporate some lettering and in trying to come up with a nautical phrase, "sea the world'" popped into my head. I'm sure the phrase itself has probably been used before, but I thought it would lend itself to a kids piece…the direction I knew I would go in. I thought it would be cool to show the curvature of the earth, given the title. The dolphin idea was kinda like having a reindeer pull the sleigh, ha. I almost (really wanted to) add a mermaid sitting on the back of the boat, but thought it would be a bit too much. If it had been a longer poster format, I definitely would have added one waving to him in the ocean, haha. I added the houses on a curve at the bottom to counter the curve at the top and this is where I ended up. In the beginning, I was hoping to give this a vintage travel poster feel, but ultimately, particularly given the square format direction, per the brief, it looks more like a kid's book cover. I'm ok with that, even though it is probably not considered your typical "wall art" piece.

Check out the rest of the boot camp gallery here. This month featured a lot of really strong pieces, enjoy!

happy happy alphabet... M!

I have no idea why I thought of a milkman and a mailman, but it seemed like doing some humans would be a nice change of pace from all the animals that I contributed so far in Happy Happy Art Collective. By the way, CLEARLY I am not a copywriter! But somehow this one turned out with kind of a mid-century children's book feel, and I thought adding the copy was somewhat appropriate. Here below, you can see my rough sketches. I really don't do much more than this before taking a pic (on my phone, no less) and redrawing in illustrator. I hate tracing paper, so I usually keep erasing and redrawing until I come up with the basic gesture and look for the character. Be sure to check out the entire alphabet in our gallery over at happy happy!

a treasured gift

Christmas has come and gone, but I had to share the most fabulous gift I received from my sister. We are both crazy about mid-century Christmas decorations, ephemera, etc. and she happened upon a veritable goldmine of Christmas cuteness on a recent trip to California... the Little Golden Book, "My Christmas Treasury," illustrated in its entirety by one of the most iconic and wonderful children's book illustrators of the mid 20th century, Lowell Hess!! 72 pages of glorious cuteness (plus endpapers and covers ;) ! I must say, I felt like I was holding a celebrity book as I passed through the pages for the first time, seeing so many illos that I knew and loved. As some may know, I have a pretty extensive board of retro Christmas images over on pinterest, and suffice it to say, I had pinned many of these, yet there were so many more that I had never seen. I will be pinning these images and a few more over on that board in time, if you are interested. Apologies for the less than stellar pics here. I did not want to bend the spine too much, so they are all warped to some degree and I did my best to crop out my ugly thumb and fingers. Of course, I must thank little "Steven Henderson" who received and cared for this book from "the Colemans," so many Christmases ago. Published by Simon and Schuster, it is a compilation of 23 songs and carols, both full color and duotone. His sweet styling, adorable faces, graphic quality, composition, and character development, is unmatched. Such a treasure indeed.

You guessed it... 7 maids a milking

from "The Snowshoe Rabbits," by Kathryn Jackson

just look at those graceful reindeer!

His nativity art is beautifully folkloric

from "Christmas in the Country," by Barbara Collyer and John R. Foley

geez... I'd have bought this for the title page alone! Just look at that angel!

great characters!

gotta love the mutton chops on the old fella

Have you ever seen a jollier group of 12 lords a leaping?

took a little break from lettering

This past week, I decided to take a short break from my lettering project and work on something that I had on my to-do list. A while back, I had designed the piece below for a unicef holiday card contest. It did not make the cut, but I had since thought that I could do something more with it and possibly turn it into a pattern collection of sorts. I struggled with making the main pattern hold together, and there is perhaps more detail than what is practical to have in a bolt pattern. I added the flower pots to give it a grid and some visual stability to counter all the randomness of the windows. I generally like to come up with at least coordinates. I really liked the colors in the diamond pattern. Hopefully, all four look like they are meant to go together! 

And now...back to lettering ;)