Illustration Friday: Memories

Work in Progress...

This past two weeks I've been reminded that my time is not my own. We are back to school and I am realizing how little time I will have left every week to devote for my art. I enjoyed all of the extra time I had over the summer and had a lot of fun navigating to other blogs and learning about other artists. I am not sure how much time I will have during this school year, but I will try my best to produce one piece a week and to post once a week. I hardly had any time to visit some of my favorite blogs this week. My Google reader is about to explode with 'unread' entries!

Anyway, I didn't get too far this week, but I was experimenting again. New paper (cold press water color paper), gouache and ANIMALS! I was really intimidated trying out animals as main characters. I think last time I really drew an animal with bodies and everything was back in elementary school. I've always been into people mostly. 

I think these characters look cute. I'm not sure if original enough, but my kids really liked  them, and I enjoyed coming up with them. I thought the animal birthday party fit the 'memories' theme for IF.

My daughter has been painting a lot with me, and she wanted me to add her work to my blog, so I now have a corner on the left for my kids' art. Her favorite subject is horses!

I will be away for Labor Day weekend enjoying the family and some nice weather. I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday weekend, and I hope to catch up a bit with my blogs next week!

Thanks for stopping by!

HELVETICA GIVE AWAY WINNERS!

I really enjoyed this giveaway. It was great to find out that many people had heard or watched the movie already. 

Saturday, I put all the names in a hat, and had each of my kids pick a paper with a name.

(Drum roll, please!) ... and the winners are:

• Luci
• Scott

and Thanks to New Video Digital for giving me the opportunity to have this giveaway!

illustration Friday: ROUTINE

This week we started school and it is always an opportunity to improve or introduce a new routine. My kids are little (3 and 6) and it is always a challenge to get them to do things independently in the morning and at night to get out of the house on time, or get to bed on time. I introduced the idea of a rewards chart when we were potty training my daughter, and it worked well. We used to do a small toy or ice cream at the end of the week, but now that she is older, I want her to understand the value of money. I used the same incentive for my son because even though he is only 3, he wants to do what his sister does. 

It hasn't been a full week yet, but they are doing great! We have made it to school on time every day (which was a huge problem last year) and I haven't had to get upset! 

Anyway, I thought this chart worked perfect for the theme.

On a separate note, I am posting a late IF for detach. I interpreted the topic in two ways; The obvious, the parents and the little boy 'detach' on the first day of school. For the little one and the parents, it's usually a moment filled with uncertainty and worry.

The second meaning is more personal, I 'detached' myself from my usual style and medium to experiment with something new. I recently checked out about 20 or more children's books and have been visiting the children's section at BN quite regularly trying to find books that mimic my current style, and to my surprise, I have not been able to find any that resembles mine. (if you know of one, let me know...I'm curious).
Anyway, that made me think, that perhaps my illustrations are not kid friendly enough, and I should vary my style and try more simple shapes and more flat colors.
I used gouache and watercolors for this one. Any thoughts or comments are welcomed!

And lastly, Fay kept us home for a day, and gave me some extra time.  I decided to paint a sketch I had posted for a character study.

Sorry about the long post...

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Illustration Friday: DETACH and HELVETICA GIVEAWAY!

I know, most of you are probably thinking...WHAAATTT? This is not a children's illustration? and why is Edrian posting a graphic design piece?

I guess I have to go back a decade or so ago, when I was in college studying art, and graphic design...YES, I am a graphic designer too! So there it is! I guess that didn't take too long. I love graphic design and when I think about how much design is around us, it's really amazing to see how much we take it for granted. 

I watched a wonderful documentary about one of the most popular typefaces out there: HELVETICA. If you are curious about how design impacts our culture, or if you love graphic design, I highly recommend this film.  

HELVETICA is a film by Gary Hustwit and is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It also features some of the greatest graphic designers of our time! 

GIVEAWAY!!

You could purchase the entire film on iTunes  or you may take your chances and win a FREE download from iTunes here. Just enter a comment for this post from now through August 22nd-noon.  I will then pick TWO winners at random and forward the email addresses to the film's distributor who will then gift the download from iTunes. I will post the winners on Monday Aug 18th. Please make sure to leave an email address where I can contact you if you win.

Helvetica Trailer: http://www.helveticafilm.com/clips.html
Helvetica Art: http://www.plexifilm.com/title.php?id=31

Illustration Friday: SAIL, UPDATE

I Could not resist! I had to redo this illustration with acrylics, my medium of preference. Every time I looked at the color pencils version, it just seemed unfinished, washed out and not quite right. As much as I liked the colors, I felt the background was fighting with the main characters. I fixed a couple of other things that were bugging me like the feet of the boy on the left. They were too small and made him look off balance. I think now he's more anchored.  I also made the frog bigger.

This is a quick post, and maybe the last one for another week. We are gearing up for the beginning of another school year, and getting up early, making it to school on time, homework, and after school activities will make next week CRAZY!

 

MY CARDS ARE IN!!!

My cards are here, and they look great! They are printed in a really thick matte stock, which I've always liked better. Psprint.com really delivered! The colors are great, the quality fantastic, and the price very reasonable. I am very happy with their product, now I just need to start handing them out!

An Award!

What a great day! I was surprised by the very talented and kind Diana Evans who makes the most delicious digital cupcakes ever! (among other things). Her blog is so neat, I'm a fan myself!

Since I have to nominate 7 other blogs, I will start with some VERY talented artists and some of my favorite reads:

• Diana's (right back at you girl!) followed by:

• Nicole Merkens for always being such a wonderful friend off-line and on-line!

• Bella Sanclair whos given me such wonderful words of support since she found my blog

• Dani Jones for having such cool tutorials and putting so much effort into her blog. 

My last three nominees are people who's work I admire and who visit my blog on a regular basis... 

• Kathleen Rietz
• Eric Barclay, and
• Andi Butler.
  
  I could go on and mention more wonderful people that I have had the pleasure to contact through my blog, but then I would not finish today...and I want to get back to my illustration...

The rules are:

1. The winner can put the logo on their blog

2. Link the person you received your award from

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs4. Put links of those blogs on yours.

5. Leave a message on the blogs of the girls or boys you’ve nominated
I'm passing this award on to these wonderful and talented blog friends....I pop by their blogs almost daily for some inspiration....

Illustration Friday: SAIL, paper boat competition...

MAY THE BEST BOAT WIN!

Here's my entry for this week. I noticed that I've been posting girls mostly, so I wanted to change it a bit, and add some boys. I also used a different medium (color pencils and acrylics on Bristol board). WOW! Color pencils are so time consuming! I like working with them, but I am not sure that it's practical working as an illustrator.

 

I am also posting the sketch for this illustration and the color study created in Photoshop. I sketch by hand, scan it and then add some quick color in Photoshop (Danidraws tutorial). I print this and then use it as a guide when I'm painting. It is so much easier this way!

Thanks everyone for all your comments. I really appreciate them!

MONDAY ARTDAY: 1 Character, 4 panels

I started this character as an exercise for last week's Illustration Friday theme poof. The idea evolved from a sketch to a series of illustrations for a mini story. I have colored two of the illustrations, and may complete the other two. 

As part of my process for this study, I had to use reference material. I am not sure how many artists draw from memory, but I am on of those that needs to look at the subject for better accuracy, or things begin to look a little too weird. Even if the lines of the subject are very simplified, it still gets a little tricky for me with perspective and such. I wish I had the time to take a drawing class with live models. I think it would really help my drawing abilities. For now, I will keep working with my two live models….my children! They don’t seem to mind either!

Any feedback or comments are always welcomed!

I'VE BEEN BLOGGED!

I just found out that my blog was reviewed by the editors over at blogged.com which is a site that rates and categorizes blogs. I was pretty excited to see my blog's rating... an 8 out of 10!!!

Considering I have only had my blog for 3 months, that's not too bad!

Illustration Friday: POOF!

Read updates to this post below...

What do you know? I thought I would pass up this week’s challenge and tend to some other projects I have been putting in the back burner, but my mind kept taking me back to ‘poof’. So I started to sketch, and from the sketches I thought the idea lent itself for a book layout. It’s not really a spread, because it’s not one illustration that spans over two pages, which is something I have wanted to try out.

I went back to the drawing board and the writing pad. I am not claiming to be a writer, but I wanted to show text on the pages and I did not want to use dummy text as a placeholder. I wanted to show the same character in different poses and show how the text and the illustration relate to one another.

Well, a few tracings, scans and re-draws later, I present you … this little witch!
I usually like to post my work in color. This was such an exploratory exercise, that I did not have time to paint them, but I’ll try to finish them next week and when I do I will update this post.

BTW- If you have any recommendations or suggestions to improve these, please feel free to comment. I want to build my portfolio and it is difficult to know how strong your work is without the input of peers. My kids and my husband think everything I do deserves and award, which is so sweet, but not necessarily reality!

FIRST POST UPDATE:

Here's the first page in color. I must say, I am pleased with how it came out. I shortened the text a bit. Let's see if I can recreate the 'magic' one more time! ...I 'll post the other page before the end of the week. (if I can get to it!)

SECOND UPDATE:

I had to share this with everyone... When I realized the obvious, I chuckled! Let's see if you can realize it too. 
Now, let's play the game: What is different between the picture above and the one below?

If you guessed the dog is missing one leg, you were right!

I have no idea how that happened? Even the sketch didn't have the leg, and the whole time I was painting, I just thought of shapes, colors textures, and never noticed! Poor dog!

Anyway, I feel better now that he is complete.

THIRD ... and last... UPDATE

I was getting ready to work on the second sketch, when I received Heather's comment. She made so many good points, mostly about point of view and layout. I took her advice and made some changes to the sketch. I think this illustration has more energy and movement. 

OFF TO PRESS!!

FRONT

BACK

My business cards are off to the printers! I am so excited and can't wait to get them back! Overall, I am happy with how they turned out. It's a very clean design and I was able to fit all the right information on the card. I still hesitate about the illustration. I like the colors and how well it stands out on the front, but the characters may be too passive. Oh well, I could go on forever. 

Oh, I am using psprint.com for the printing. I will let you know what I think of their service and product when I get the cards.

Have a great weekend everyone! and thanks for visiting and for your input!