Lilla Rogers' Bootcamp... gone cuckoo!!

Month one in Lilla Rogers' Bootcamp has come and gone, along with February, so I thought I'd give you a quick recap! First of all, I wasn't sure at first whether or not to sign up for this course, but somehow I knew that once I started seeing all the beautiful pieces coming in, I knew I would want to get in on the action. I work better with a brief anyway, and bootcamp is a more affordable option to Lilla's classes. If you have been on the fence about taking one of her MATS classes, this is a good opportunity to get your feet wet. The schedule is much more spread out, with a week for the mini assignment and then 2 weeks more to develop the final and upload it on the gallery on her studio site. In MATS, you have less than a week to do the same thing, so time seemed like a luxury.

Being a natural born procrastinator, no surprise I abused the time frame and essentially did it in a week, but somehow, it seemed far less stressful than MATS. I actually really liked the subject matter of cuckoo clocks! Being a collector of all things cute, german and wooden (a.k.a. smokers, wendt & kuhn flower children, angels and various other bavarian kitsch) , it appealed to me. We had a cuckoo clock in my house growing up. Can't imagine having one now with the chiming and cuckooing in the half hour, but you do get used to it. 

here's a little peek at my WIP in illustrator. I did everything in it.

The challenge came in when Lilla defined the end piece as a cell phone case. Cuckoo clocks are loaded with rich details, so it was hard to imagine how it would all translate well down to a such a small format. I played around with some different ideas, like turning it into a skyscraper type condo bird house, not unlike the ones you can buy for purple martins, or possibly making a city scape out of different clocks/houses, but in the end, I decided to focus on the birds. My thinking was that it might be a good way to fill the vertical space of a phone case and besides, birds are cute and fun to draw. As far as style, I went for a symmetrical folkloric look, kind of like the party paper assignment at the end of MATS B. What can I say, I'm a sucker for symmetry ;) It was fun to try to give some of them a little personality. 

The gallery of over 400 cuckoo cell phone cases is amazing. A ton of great pieces, so if you have the time, check it out here.  Enjoy!!

40 days of lettering... day 31

Day 31 sprang from an interesting quote from Jean Batthany, of Doyle Dane Bernbach, Chicago for Creative Interviews. You can read the interview in it's entirety here. I'm not up on who the the heavy hitters are in the ad agency world, but I sure know DDB from my graphic design roots. Bill Bernbach effectively revolutionized advertising beginning back in the early 50's with completely non-traditional solutions that became landmark campaigns. If you are a Mad Men fan, (and how could you not be???) DDB is portrayed as one of Sterling Cooper's chief rivals. Watch a clip from the episode where they are all, with the exception of Pete Campbell, disturbed by the DDB approach and discuss the new "Lemon" and "Think small" Volkswagen ads.  

No agency had ever taken a self deprecating, in your face approach to selling a product, let alone an actual car, before. Car ads were slick... this was not. The lemon reference was to the fact that the featured car was not considered sellable due to a scratch on the glove compartment. The ad was disarmingly simple and extremely effective and is widely considered one of the most famous and ground breaking campaigns of all time.

Anyway, I jumped on the chance to tie this back into her quote. What I was most worried about was 1. drawing a realistic car and 2. integrating interesting type into said realistic car. In the end, I was pretty happy with how the car turned out, but the lettering was definitely a struggle basically because I felt like I had to make it kind of curvy to fit in the various car shapes which seemed to go against the spirit of the simplistic clean use of Futura in the actual ad. I must have reworked the lettering 20 times. In the end, I hope it worked well enough. I know I enjoyed reading more about Bernbach's work (he also did the Mikey Life cereal campaign!) and if you are still reading at this point, I hope you enjoyed my little take on the history of advertising! 

happy happy alphabet...D!

As you may or may not know, last month, I was fortunate enough to join a collective with 5 other uber talented artist friends (Denise Holmes, Lauren Minco, Tammie Bennett, Emily Balsley and Muffin Grayson) called Happy Happy Art Collective. Our first ongoing group project is to all contribute to and alphabet series. We have a defined palette and each letter will be done by 2 illustrators. We are up to the letter D, which is my first crack at it! This is just a sneak peek, so to see the full piece, head on over to happy happy! I decided to turn my letters into tongue twisters, so this one involves danish ducks, donuts and dandelions... of course! I've always wanted to do an alphabet, but 26 letters seemed like so many to do, so I'm happy to get my feet wet and give it a go. It's really interesting to see how our different styles all come together in a group effort. Be sure to scroll down and see the previous letters and check back in later in the week to see Lauren and Denise's letter E's!

happy happy monthly project!

Things are hopping over at Happy Happy Art Collective! We're in the midst of our February project, practicing our hand lettering by illustrating the above quote. My favorite part of this was doing the little flower dude at the bottom. I had planned to make the "O" with a face on it, but when I accidentally moved a flower underneath him, he suddenly had a body. . . a happy, happy accident ;)

Check out what Emily, Lauren and Tammie have come up with here. And be sure to keep checking back there to see Denise's and Muffin's interpretations!

kids music CD!

            Here is her first album I did for her a few years ago.

I had the privilege of working on award winning kindie artist children's singer songwriter, Stacey Peasley's sophomore album, Lucky Day. She has a great voice and kids and parents alike, love her music. I worked on her debut album about 3 years ago, and this one was just as fun to do. Stacey wanted the art to focus on the lyrics of her title song, Lucky Day, which centers on a string of happy events in a child's day...getting a big blue balloon, finding a lucky penny, getting a nice red lollipop, new shoes, etc. Lot's of fun visuals to work with. The parameters were to work with the colors of her logo, but keep it fresh and new. Her first album, Together, was essentially, cyan, so I really liked the idea of making this one essentially yellow. I thought it still worked well with her logo and brand. Stacey likes to get her kids included on her album art, and this time there was a new baby to add! Not to be left out, I fit her and her husband in as well. If you have little kids, you really should check out her music. Its available to order here and here!

This is an edited version of the inside spread, minus the credits copy. The cd itself, actually goes on the right side over the soccer net and the dad.

This is what the back and front cover look like together as a spread as if it was laid flat.

it's all you need...

... at least that's what the song says! happy valentines day!

need some last minute valentine help??

If you are stuck somewhere in the northeast like me, there is a veritable whiteout going on today! If you didn't happen to get to Target to pick up some Valentine's supplies, have no fear... head on over to happy happy art collective and down load our valentine printables! We have some super cute cards by Emily Balsey and Denise Holmes, a pretty print by Muffin Grayson and a kid's valentine card/craft by yours truly. Who needs Hallmark, ha! While you are there, check out out alphabet series that we just started as well as our group project of the month, an illustrated quote.