Thought Bubbles

Hey there blog readers,

As part of my recent letter-project to N, this week I sent a normal sort of letter, but on thoughtful sorts of paper.

I had a silly idea, playing on the idea of "thought bubbles".

I packaged all of my Thought Bubbles in a little square envelope:

I wrote the letter itself on the backs of seven different bubbles... and I added a bunch of fishes for good measure.

Here are a few of the individual bubbles -

Sketchbook Thursday

Halloo dear blog-readers!

I've been working on a project recently that has necessitated sketching all kinds of fowl. Chickens and turkeys and geese oh my! Considering the season, it seems rather timely, so I'll share a bunch of my sketches. Stay posted for the finished illustration in the next few weeks.

Fowl prep work -

Turkeys!

Chickens, chicks, hens, and roosters

Gooses

Ducks

A wee thumbnail -

And the final sketch -

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Culinary masterpieces

Today was a rather busy work day. However, most of what I created was made in the kitchen. - chickpea and artichoke salad, heaps of pumpkin muffins, and salted caramel apple pie.

My kitchen smells incredible right now.

Sketchbook Thursday

Hey there all!

Another Thursday, another sketchbook drop. Here's a bunch of this week's pickins.

A Coco-ish gal and a couple more chickens...

Henny (an old lady character from a new story) and oh yeah, another chicken...

Goofing around with text and such...

Emilou and Papa Fox - a couple of characters I've been playing with...

Penguins!

Cards: Diamonds

Halloo all!

I've been hard at work on the other suits for my deck of cards. First, I spent a while just brainstorming for the additional three suits. I hadn't really thought about the others when I settled on sparrows for the spade cards. So I did some doodling and a handful of sketches and finally decided that I didn't want to draw birds for every suit. Instead I settled on two sets of birds and two sets of mammals. I've been doodling foxes in my sketchbook for a while now, so I thought, why not a foxy royal family?

This time around, I did all of the number cards first. I already had quick templates, so it was easy to sub in diamonds and flip around the colors.

Once I was done with the number cards, I moved on to the Ace, using the design for the Ace of Spades as a jumping off point.

Followed quickly by my Jack, who I imagined to be a wily, mischievous sort of character.

The Queen was a wistful, almost sad, lady fox.

And finally, the King, a concerned and regal sort of royal.

This time I also took a handful of photos of the actual printed cards -

I packaged them in a handy little case.

And finally, the full suit.

Sketchbook Thursday

What better way to start a Thursday than with a big ole sketchbook dump?

I, for one, can't think of anything better.

An early sketch for the Book Cover Club project...

A warm-up sketch of working in the studio just post move... the studio is a liiiittle better now, though, admittedly there's still room for improvement...

A pre-Halloween warm-up sketch of Coco & Oscar...

Silly circus-ness...

And CHICKENS!

Cards: Spades

Halloo all!

As part of my mail-project to N, I decided to start designing a deck of cards. I've always wanted to make a set, and it's a nice finite sort of project. For my deck, I decided that I wanted to play with the royal cards, and give each suit a different animal. I had been doing quite a few sketches and doodles of birds for an earlier project and arbitrarily assigned them to the spades.

The first thing I did was design the Ace. I needed to get a feel for the overall shape of the suit elements. Was the spade itself rounded, pointy, wide, skinny, elongated...?

After the ace, I did a bunch of the numbers just to play with layout.

And finally, it was time for the fun part, the royal cards -

The Jack, who I imagined to be a self-important, plump little bird.

The Queen, a regal but distant sort of lady bird.

The King, somewhat aloof and irritated, most often by his Jack.

Once I had all of the cards in the suit done, I had a basic sense of the color palette and the overall shapes and feel of the characters, and I was ready to design the back of my deck.

Stay tuned, dear readers. Next week, diamonds!