hmmmmm.... whaddya think?

well it's big enough, alright. I'm talking about the new blog header ^^ ;) I've been meaning to refresh this for some time, but as everyone knows, the worst client you can ever have is always yourself. I think I like it ( I know for absolute certain that I was thoroughly sick of the old one), but I need to figure out the margin issues. I wish blogger was actually user friendly! Change is good, right? Hope so!!

happy happy!!,

Recently, I was fortunate enough to join in with a group of wonderful artists to form an art collective named, appropriately enough, Happy Happy Art Collective! We are 6 artists, who met via Lilla Roger's Make Art That Sells e-course who have a common goal of spreading smiles and happiness through our work! I am honored to be alongside the talented Tammie Bennett, Denise Holmes, Emily Balsley, Lauren Minco, and Pauline "Muffin" Grayson... a very talented group. When you have a moment, please check out our site. We are featuring artist interviews, monthly group projects, freebie printables and more! We will be action packed ;) Also, we have set up our facebook page, so stop on by and throw us a like! Wow, I've never written a post with more links or exclamation points! 

day 30 of 40 days of lettering

ok, so my sketches are never pretty, but you get the idea...

Today's piece (number 30...yayyy!!!) was a quote from Pablo del Campo, President and CEO of del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi. You can read the full interview here. I think this one is my favorite of all the quotes I have done for this series, which is funny since when I first read it, I couldn't think of any interesting visuals that I could integrate into the lettering. Somewhere along the way, I thought maybe I could tie in a log rolling idea, alongside a "top of the world" metaphor. Maybe this was a stretch, but I latched onto it because I thought it could be a fun image. I had it all drawn out with the businessman on top of the globe in water, when I started to doubt myself...maybe an actual log rolling lumberjack would be better? Maybe combining log rolling and staying on top of the world was too much for the viewer to get right away? So I drew the bearded fella on top of a giant log and although I liked him, I decided to stick to the skinny suit. In retrospect, the lumberjack looked like a hybrid of Yukon Cornelius (best character in Rudolph...) and Jack Lalanne (remember him?). Ultimately, I hope I made the right decision. This is the kind of question that would have been best answered if I had been working with an AD. I hope Pablo likes it and I hope you do too!

good ole Jack...the original fitness guru

best line in the show after he licks his pick axe..."nothin'"

day 29 of 40 days of lettering

Getting there... almost to turning that to that magical number 30 and can actually start counting down! I'm absolutely positive this phrase has been done by someone out there in starbucks land, but I thought it might make a cute valentine message. Me, I'm more of a straight up "venti bold and give me some room" kind of girl...lattes are just fancy steamed milk and sugar.

Technical question for any of you master bloggers out there...can you tell me why jpegs like this look soooo grayed out when I post them here? I don't get it. They look nothing like the actual file and how it looks on flickr or even crappy Facebook. If you have a sec, check out the difference here...Thoughts? 

the Adora project

Recently, I received a nice email from a father of a a cute little girl, named Adora. He became a first time dad at age 56 and for the last 2 years, he has been commissioning artists from all over the world, to do portraits of his little girl. Unbelievably, in the 2 plus years since, there have been over 1000 artworks created by over 700 artists! Quite the legacy he is creating for his daughter and I was happy to participate! You can check out his blog here. 

Adora has a wish list that artists can use as a starting point for their piece, or they can come up with their own inspiration. I chose to show Adora with  the dog, Hatchi from the Richard Gere movie with the same name. I had never heard of the movie, but who can resist drawing a cute puppy alongside a little girl :). I added the rabbit from a photo of Adora with a brown bunny. Lastly, I consulted my resident 8th grade French students, what the correct translation of "I adore you," was for an added lettering touch.


It was a fun little project and I encourage any other interested artists to join in the fun. Adora's family often pays a token amount to the artist, or will make a contribution to the charity of your choice. If interested, contact Adora's dad on the blog for more details.

40 days of lettering, day 28 and killing 3 birds with one stone

also available in my shop!

This is what you call art multitasking. I hadn't done an Illustration Friday prompt in some time, so I thought maybe I could combine a submission, along with checking off day 28 of my lettering project, as well as come up with a valentine product for over at my society6 ;). Hey, when you work for yourself, this is the kind of crazy assignments you can self concoct. The word for the week at illustration friday, was beginning. More often than not, when I do submit something over there, I do it as lettering. I had kinda missed doing something on the cute lettering side (a departure from some of the quotes I have been doing for creative interviews). Soooo, I came up with this quote which is a bit of a reluctant valentine, one for someone who is on the fence about revealing their true feelings, ha. I think there must be a market for this sentiment, at least with teenagers!

40 days of lettering... day 27

Today's lettering piece was done for an interview with Lincoln Bjorkman, Global Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman. The interview can be read over at creative interviews. As quotes go, this was a really good one, with plenty of visuals that came to mind immediately. The king/queen wordage lent itself to a playing card theme. Kings in card decks, typically have a sword, so replacing that with a paintbrush was a natural fit. 

I am starting to appreciate illustrator's blob brush. So many artists I know really rave about it. I have never used it much... I always thought it was just a little too, well, blobby, lol. But, you can't beat it for easy smooth marks, making it pretty much the complete antithesis of the pen tool. I used it here in some of the detail work, as well as the hair lines. And believe me, at 3:00am when I was trying to finish this baby up, it was a trusted and valued friend. What I don't get (and should really take two seconds to research more) is why it seems to continually change point size as you go along...weird. 

The pic below shows a bit of how I work, sketch-wise. I don't do a lot of tracing over roughs and refining my work. Instead, I tend to make friends with my handy eraser, continually refining and adjusting in my handy sketchbook, until I think it's good enough for a final pencil (on right) that I use to scan and then draw over in illustrator. The queen could have used a bit more styling in her face, but she's upside down anyway, ha. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out for a one day project, anyway ;)