Craftitude

Halloo blog readers!

So in addition to the usual sorts of art-working things, I've been doing a bunch of crafty things - birthday related projects, in fact. I made a certain someone with a new job a "cube" decorating kit. When you work amongst a sea of cubicles, you need some fun stuff for your desk.

In addition to photos, a mug, tea, snacks, and random toys, I also personalized a couple of notebooks. I hate being a brand snob, but I love my Moleskines... love love love. Other than something handmade, they make my fave notebooks ever. If I'd had a bit more time, I probably would have hand bound something... but for lack of free time (in light of recent publishing internship), I bought a couple of moleskines and proceeded to personalize them. It's always helpful to have somewhere to organize your thoughts, soooo...

Work Thoughts:

and Creative Thoughts

In addition to thought-organizing and all of the other stuff I mentioned, it's also nice to have a little work buddy...

As of yet unnamed -

I've actually gotten a lot of good responses from my teeny weeny goldfish bowl, so I may be making more of them. (Hard to tell scale here, but it's made in a votive holder.)

Until next time!

Panthers and Flamingos

I know it's been forever. The summer has been zipping by with a speed and ferocity only matched by my cat (who thinks he's a panther, but in fact much more closely resembles the Cowardly Lion).

Yes, this cat...

It has been eons since my last update. Eons. Yes, you heard me, eons. Since graduation, I've been interning at Penguin in an imprint of their Young Readers division. It has been an incredible learning experience; my projects have ranged from design based (book based merchandise for Christmas, end-paper design, picture book layouts, scanning and placing artwork) to daily support of the art department (archiving old work, mucking my way through the slush pile, packing up artwork (this is MUCH cooler than it sounds... the other day I got to - very carefully - handle original artwork by Dave Catrow, Sophie Blackall, Patricia Polacco, Tomie dePaola... I mean, Tomie dePaola!!!!)). Not to mention, the people I work with are fantastic - the art director is brilliant, the two designers are incredible at what they do, and the assistant to the department is always super helpful and is an artist/designer in her own right.

That being said, with the full-time gig and summer rolling in full tilt, there has been little time for much else... like updating the blog. That being said, I haven't stopped working on artsy things. So here's a little something for all of you fab blog readers out there.

I made a "Get Well Soon" card for a dear friend/mentor who just had knee surgery.

100th post project!

Happy 100th blog post loyal blog-readers!

With the show down, graduation over, and summer on its way, I have some new projects in the works. One of the projects required an entire day of googling for owl reference. You'll be seeing more of these little guys in the coming months...

Graduation!

The end of an adventure. Who knows what's next?

Thesis Show

Many thanks to everyone who came out to the show yesterday. All of your support meant so much. Likewise, thank you dear readers from far away for messages and notes!

The show opening was amazing. I felt honored to have my things up on the well with so many incredibly talented people. Congratulations to everyone!

And finally, a couple of photos of my corner of the gallery:

Five books!

Loyal readers. ;)

Big Day!

Thesis show day!

It's hard to believe that it's already May, the show is hung, and I graduate in a week. The last two years have been unbelievable, and tonight is the culmination of a year of work. I'm excited to the point of shaky hands. That said...

If you're around the NY area, I'll see you tonight at the SVA gallery - 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor - from 6-8pm.

Oh, and if it's any incentive at all, I'll have some sweet merch!

I made stamps, lickable and stickable.


And buttons... heaps of buttons.


And will be selling the first official run of Amelia Pepper.

Butterflies at the Museum

For one of my last drawing classes, we went to the Museum of Natural History. Our assignment was (as always) draw loads, but in addition to the usual draw, draw, draw, we had to create a promotional postcard for the museum using one of our drawings.

I actually had a really great drawing day and came out with a bunch of things I liked, but halfway through a drawing of some ducks, a security guard came up to me and asked if I wanted to check out the butterfly conservatory. Apparently he'd found a ticket on the floor that needed to be used within the next fifteen minutes. I hastily agreed and headed to the conservatory.

For those of you who don't know, when I was a little girl, I had two "pet" butterflies; they made an appearance in our backyard every summer, and provided you were patient enough, they landed on any outstretched hand our arm.

It was an easy decision... I designed my postcard around the drawings I did at the conservatory.

Nearly there...

I'm not going to post any pictures of the full display until after the opening, but for an early sneaky peak... hanging day...

(Bottom photo credit: one Mr. Gant Powell, extremely talented artist and SVA class of 2011)

Thesis Interlude

Hallooo blog-readers. Thesis show prep is in full swing; we're actually starting to hang the show today. (Sneaky peaks to come.) But it's been a while since I posted any art, so I thought I'd interrupt the regularly scheduled thesis-related whatnot to post some images I did in my drawing on location class. Last Friday we went up to Kykuit, the old Rockefeller estate on the Hudson. It was beautiful and a much needed trip outside of the city. While I love New York, it was wonderful to take a break from thesis-crazy and abandon the concrete jungle for birds and flowers.

The estate is amazing, but my favorite bits were the details... lots of wrought iron and fountains and gargoyles...

Flamenguin

Most of you out there in blogland are well aware that I am, by nature, a very silly person. Other than general goofballitude, word play has a tendency to invade all parts of my life, extending well into my work world.

A little background... In order to keep track of all of my projects, I always give them a one word name/title (for file-prepping, list-making, etc). At my least creative, I use the name of the main character. At best, it's a play on words, a pun, or a mash-up of other words in the title. One of the projects that I've been working on and talking about on the blog (here and here), as I've mentioned before, has two main characters, a penguin and a flamingo. I actually gave this project two different titles - "flamenguin" and "penguingo". Ridiculous, I know. But seriously, flamenguin! It was just too good to keep to myself. So if you can make it to the thesis show, you may find that it is actually prominently featured in another one of my books.

Got Mail?

Halloo all.

Show day is fast approaching, and I'm in the process of wrapping up the books - working on a couple paintings, last minute edits, typography, text design, endpaper design - before I print and bind them. This part of the process is exciting, but I find much of this bit (from the finished painted product to output) exhausting.

However, in the process of working out the endpapers for one of the books, I actually ended up getting to do a little bit more painting. For the book I described in a previous post, I designed a set of endpapers made up of postage stamps (as the book prominently features two characters who send letters and postcards to one another.) At first, I thought that I would just do the stamps as line drawings, but after a bit of down time and some scrap watercolor paper, I ended up with thirteen painted stamps.

Eventually, I'm going to print them up as stickers to send out with my promotional materials.

Keep running!

It's my current mantra... only three weeks until the show goes up, so...



just keep running...

Once upon a time...

Gather round dear blog readers. It's story time.

Once upon a time, a flamingo (one, Aloysius T. Pinkerton) and a penguin (the indomitable Birgitta Le Blanc), conducted a most extraordinary correspondence. Penpals and best friends, the two sent letters between the Caribbean and the Antarctic. Their friendship resulted in unexpected travel, marvelous days in the snow, warm afternoons on the beach, fancy tropical cocktails, frozen feathers, unfortunate sunburns...

I could go on, but alas, there is work waiting for me on the drawing table.

If you want to find out the rest of the story, you'll just have to come to the thesis show. (I know, shameless plug... but seriously, thesis show! The opening is May 5th, 6-8pm. Additional dates and details to come.)

New art!

Apologies my dear blog readers. I have been three weeks silent... but let me tell you, they've been a busy three weeks. Most of my time has been spent at my drawing table and only on the computer to do the cursory e-mail check and to hit play on the day's chosen playlist or podcast, so all e-whatnot has come to a screeching halt. However, in the hours that I've spent not on the computer, I finished putting together a total of five dummies and four new paintings. Chock full and all around exciting, but admittedly exhausting.

But this is a short update, as there is another painting waiting for me on the drawing table. In the meantime, however, I thought I'd give you a sneaky peek at one of the new ones.

From the balloon book (as of yet, untitled):

Subway doodle

I had to go up to the upper East this morning - I know, it may as well have been another country. As such, I found myself with more time than usual on the subway. A handful of sketchy notes and this fellow were the product of my ride.

Dummy Number 3

Halloo dear blog readers,

The past month has whooshed by with loads of drawing; during the past three weeks, I've put together three book dummies. One of my favorite parts about working on a book is really getting to know the characters. As you draw the character over and over, you begin to have a sense of how she/he moves, reacts, and expresses her/himself visually. I love feeling that each of the characters is a solid, three-dimensional (so to speak) person in the two-dimensional world that exists between the covers of a book.

This week, I was finishing the book dummy that goes with the art I posted a number weeks ago back in January. So you've already seen a couple of the finishes, but here are some of the sketch pages that I've been working on this week for dummy numero tres.

Which makes three down and perhaps two to go...

The Pom Pom Girls

A friend needed some cheering up this week, so I took a break from thesising and dummying to draw a quick cartoon. I was going to make something along the lines of a get well soon card, but I ended up with this gaggle of gals instead.

So for all of your life-cheering needs, I present to you...

Clearly they're going to need their own story.

Thesis Dummies

Halloo my dear blog readers,

First, thanks to everyone for the congrats and well wishes. The scholarship was a really exciting surprise this week.

But moving on... you've all been extremely patient. I keep dropping hints about my mysterious thesis, one book, two books, three, four, maybe six book project. Perhaps I should tell you what I'm doing. Originally, my thought was to make a dummy of two or three different ideas and then pick one to finish for the thesis. However, picture book publishing looks less kindly on finished work... an entirely fleshed-out book leaves no room for the excellent collaboration that happens between an author/illustrator and her editor/art director. Publishers do, in fact, prefer to see dummies in the sketch stage with two or three finished pieces thrown in to show how you would render the final artwork.

So why pick one book to finish? The upshot is I'm not. Rather than one book for thesis, I'm doing very finished dummies of three - six original books with two or three finished pieces of art per story. I have one 99% done, a second nearing that 99% mark, and then the third - sixth book... well, loads to do still. Depending on how satisfied I am with the work, I'll show three or six of the books. Though admittedly, a bit schizophrenic, it's been great to have more than one project to work on. When I get fed up with or sick of or stuck on one of them, I can shift gears, work on a second book, and then return to the previous project refreshed and ready to go.

You've already seen a couple of the finishes going into the books, but here are some of the sketch pages that I've been working on this week for book number two.

Be forewarned, the images are not for the faint of heart... here be monsters...

Good news

Last semester, I submitted an application for an Alumni Scholarship to help fund my thesis project. It required a big 'ole proposal, budgets, thumbnails, image descriptions... it was a long process and a lot of work, but in the crazy of the New Year, I had mostly forgotten about it.

In any case, I had some pretty exciting news this past week...


It seems that I didn't just get an alumni grant but won the Illustration Department scholarship. Neat.

Thesis show!

Mark your calendars folks! The opening reception for the MFA thesis show is going to be May 5th. It may seem early to start planning, but in addition to all of the actual art, there's printing, binding, designing promos, getting prints made... loads to do, as it were.

We've been working on the official promo card for the show as a class, so that our work is all equally represented. Each of us is doing the portrait of one of our classmates.

Philip!

Playing around

Just doing some experimenting...

... Day!

(If you're just arriving, you may want to backtrack to Saturday's post, and work your way forward for the full effect of the warm, fuzzy sentiments of this fine February day.)