Lilla Roger's Global Talent Search...

You may have heard all the buzz surrounding Lilla Roger's Global Talent Search contest. Winning it would be like winning the ultimate power ball lottery ticket right after Publisher's Clearing House rings your doorbell. Truthfully, I have never ever bought a lottery ticket, and I rarely, if ever, enter contests. Given the loooooong odds of ever winning, I had paid zero attention to it despite the lucrative prizes... two years of representation, along with licensing deals with some very big names. Even though the registration fee was waived for all MATS students, I still hadn't given it any thought, until I read the brief. Paperchase. Vintage playgrounds subject matter. Incorporate lettering. Make it fun. I was in. 

I tried to approach it like Lilla had led us through each week in the MATS course with a mini assignment of little drawings. The advantage this time, was 3 weeks to play with. I began by drawing multiple pieces of equipment and kids in different settings, etc. I knew I wanted to incorporate kids since an empty playground just didn't sound fun. As you can see, I'm far from a world class sketcher, but I had fun playing around with different kids, many of whom missed the final cut. I had wanted to make the required word "Journal," into part of a hedge, but I couldn't make it read well enough. Usually, I would pencil out the entire final layout, but this time, I pieced together the individual drawings, kind of treating it like a pattern, fitting it all together in illustrator. 

I kept trying to add as much detail as possible, until my daughter cut me off when I told her I wanted to add a half eaten pb&j sandwich on the ground for one of the birds to be pecking along with a squirrel juggling acorns! So wise for 13 years! I took her advice ;)

I was going to include this boy admiring the girl walking the puppy amongst other little scenes... paper boats and ponds, tire swings, benches and monkey bars, but I ran out of room and in many cases, I thought they didn't have enough to do with a playground scene.

Make no mistake...I have no delusions about winning, let alone making the first cut to the top 50, but it was too fun of a subject to pass up. No matter what, I have no regrets... other than maybe not including the acorn juggling squirrel ;)

Lilla Rogers Make Art that Sells...week 5

Ok, so maybe week 5 in Lilla's course ended about 3 weeks ago, but better late than never, right? Unfortunately at that time, I was away from my computer, internet, and basically everything but indoor plumbing and was unable to complete this project on time. 

But what a great assignment! Lilla starts each week in her course with a mini assignment that will ultimately ease you into the main brief that is given midweek. This final week's theme was the gift market which is clearly wide open with possibilities. We were told to photograph some of our collections for possible use in the project. If you have ever seen my house, there is no shortage of junk, errrr "collections." You name it... kitchen kitsch (cookie jars and pixie ware condiments), McCoy planters, endless vintage Christmas items, wooden German figurines, cheap plastic snow globes, not to mention my son's extensive Pez collection! This part was easy and fun! 

a few of my German smokers

my prized Wendt&Kuhn flower children

The actual brief was to create a pouch in a "hyper lush" style, using oversaturated color, ink blotted images, fully loaded visuals...using some of our collection items. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a Christmas themed pouch. Everybody needs a holiday themed zippered clutch, right?

I decided to used the wooden flowers from my Wendt & Kuhn kids in combination with my own vector illos of elves. I tried to base the characters on my smokers...I think you can see a few resemblances. I also wanted to pay homage to another of my loves, cardboard putz houses. I've always loved their bright colors, glittery fake snow and how beautiful they look when they are lit up. I could have taken pics of my own collection, but in July, they are buried away somewhere in the attic, hence the illustrations instead. I added a few old plastic snowflakes that my Gramma used to have and voila! I really enjoyed doing this look. It was very new and fresh to me, not to mention a real challenge to my bare bones photoshop skills. My only regret was that I wasn't able to incorporate this below... a vintage newspaper map from the cold war era. While at my childhood home, I discovered my dad's stash of old maps from the early 60's... so cool! I really wanted to crop in and have the "north pole graphic as part of the sky, but there was just way too much going on already. At any rate, I hope you like my little creation and MERRY CHRISTMAS (in July ;) !!

new name/logo thingamabob!!

ok, so I go for a month or so with zero posts, to a blogging fool within 2 days! This little girl was a castoff from my journal entry for Lilla Roger's Global Talent Search contest. She didn't make the cut onto the final submission, so I decided to put her to good use. My sister has a brand new westie puppy, so that was the inspiration! Stay tuned to see more about the GTS project ;)

Society6!!

ok, so I am the world's worst self promoter, but why have a shop, if no one knows about it, right? I have  had a little shop over at society6 for a few months. No sales as of yet, but have had a number of pieces selected for "their" shop. This one is the latest that they selected, which I did for an illustration Friday topic of "talent." Here is the link...

http://society6.com/product/post-it-artist_Print

Here are a few of my offerings ;). Please pardon my horrendous layout! For the life of me, I can't figure out all this blogger formatting stuff! All items are available as prints and many are also available as iPhone cases, totes, pillows. etc. Thanks for reading this far!

illustration friday... robot!!

Heyyy, so I haven't done one of these in quite a while, but who could resist this subject? I decided to try to girly it up a bit because girls can like robots, right? Maybe that's a niche market that needs to be explored... hmmmm ;)

MATS week 3... children's books!!

Ok, honestly, this was the week I was most looking forward to in Lilla's course and the dream area I would most love to eventually become part of and one of the main reasons why I signed up for the course. At the beginning of the week, we were asked to draw snails, snails and more snails. It was an interesting subject and I could see why she chose it in that you don't have to deal with hands or arms or legs... a real bonus. This made it easier in a short time frame, to concentrate on developing a character. We were then asked to develop some hand lettering with the title, "The Snail and the Rose Tree." Turns out, this is actually a lesser known Hans Christian Andersen tale and like many fairy tales, is actually quite dark. Naturally, I had been working on cheery little snails that somehow now seemed kinda inappropriate.

meet Leroy!! I still would like to do a story about him someday ;)

Sooo, I had to switch streams and make him grumpy looking. It is not my natural tendency to do anything other than "cute," so this presented a real challenge for me. After may hours of redrawing, I came up with the best grumpy I could do. My daughter Katie took one look at him and said, "CUTE!" Oh well, I am who I am! She did suggest I add the mustache which I thought was a nice touch and it was super fun to finally work on some hand lettering.

I must say, the work coming out of this class is absolutely amazing and humbling. If you have a moment check out the flickr group and be prepared to be wowed by the submissions! Take a look at my flickr favorites... it's worth a peek to see the incredible variety of wonderful work! http://www.flickr.com/photos/71597294@N00/favorites/

Make Art That Sells, Week 2

Week 2 in Lilla Roger's e-course, tackled the housewares market, specifically, ceramic plate design. This is certainly not an area that I ever thought about pursuing. The mini assignment, given out at the beginning of the week, was to draw all sorts of pod-like botanicals, leaves, etc. and to leave the tulips and daisy types back on the drawing board. This was a far more intimidating topic than the prior week that focused on patterns. There are a lot of wonderful floral/botanical artists out there and I am not one of them. My usual approach is to try to define the problem and then a solution... well, there was no obvious answer here other than to draw a lot. My first design was the one on the right. Not sure there is a market for sleeping birds on pod houses holding flower umbrellas in the rain, but at least this was more in keeping with my general style. I then tried my hand at a more traditional approach and attempted to modernize a typical vintage style floral plate. After  much mental debate, I ended up submitting the more traditional version. Poor little birdie! On to week 3, and the topic I have most looking forward to, children's books!