Includes my art process, art shows, new ideas, products that are released into stores, artists I admire, and printable art that is free to download (free printable coloring pages, etc.). Your feedback is always welcome.
A few weeks ago, my 8 year old son asked why I only submit collaged work to Illustration Friday — why don't I submit drawings? I'm not 100% sure of my answer for this yet, but I did decide to draw for that week's challenge, which was "Nest."
I went with one of my favorite styles to work in right now, an all-one-line/not-lifting-my-pen drawing. I then cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop and added a subtle blue tone in Illustrator...
I enrolled in another year of Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp. Previous years' assignments have included creating art for a phone cover, illustrating an online editorial, and making a holiday plate/paper collection. I find that MATS Bootcamp is an exceptional way to try new materials and markets, and the class has really helped to develop my portfolio.
Lilla starts all of her course assignments with a "Mini." This is a just-for-fun exercise, which includes a little research of a given topic and a whole lot of no-pressure creating and experimenting. For this first month's assignment, our Mini was 1920s hairstyles. I found a ton of cool photos online, and I drew and drew. It was a surprisingly inspiring subject for me, and I found myself drawing more portraits in general that week.
After one week with the Mini, we received our full assignment, which was to assemble our drawings and ideas into a faux cover for an adult coloring book. After drawing several faces, hairstyles and patterns, I went with this as my final submission....
I submitted my hi-top coloring page to bucketfeet.com, and it was accepted to go to the next round for product testing!
Because I'd actually drawn the art onto my shoe outline, I needed to re-create the design into 4:5 print-ready vector art. Below is my final reinterpretation, and I've also uploaded it here as a free, downloadable coloring page (PDF and JPG).
Enjoy, and don't forget to tag me on your colored piece on Instagram!
On Friday, I submitted my entry for the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search. This was my third year of creating work for this competition, and it proved to be as challenging and rewarding as ever.
This year, we were given a story about a fictitious young woman who lived in Brooklyn. The brief showed us a picture of her (and her clothing style), where she shopped, where she worked, products she'd buy, products she sold in her shop, the food truck she stopped at, and so on. With this type of person in mind, the assignment was to create a patterned sneaker that she could wear when she bicycled to work. The patterned shoe also needed to incorporate at least one word, hand-written or an actual font.
Although I really liked this approach of getting a visual story about the client, I did find it tricky to create something for a person I couldn't really relate to, while still keeping myself in the art. So I focused on whatever images I was drawn to in the brief.
In her shop, she sold some darker, occult-type of items, so I decided to go with a crow theme. They are one of my favorite birds – strong, smart and ominous, and I knew I would enjoy drawing them.
She also sold some pretty, Parisian-style gifts, which made me envision using a loose, dreamy watercolor style for my pattern.
I drew my shoe template with a sharpie, painted several crows (you can see one of them here), and this is the mockup I submitted, followed by the actual pattern...
For a recent assignment, I drew my own shoe template. Now I can't stop drawing on it with my Artwin marker...
Here are a couple of my doodles. Feel free to download these images here, print them out and color them for yourself. I'd love to see what you come up with, so please find me on Instagram and post for me to see!
I'm loving my new Artwin watercolor pen. I find it lends itself to the quick gesture sketches that I really enjoy creating, and the set up and clean up is minimal.
Here's a crow I painted yesterday in the few minutes before dusk turned to night...
Yesterday, I remembered to create an illustration for Illustration Friday's weekly challenge. The word was "Heart." Here are a couple collages I came up with...
We've been traveling a lot over the past few weeks, and I always look forward to the free time on the plane to sketch. Here are a couple of my favorites...
I thought I'd forever be a Pigma Micron and Sharpie marker person, but I've found a new love: the Copic sketch marker. The brush side moves so smoothly on the paper that it feels like it's leading my sketches, and I've found myself drawing a lot more the past few days...
Sketching in the car, while waiting to pick up the kid at camp
Bird sketch, merely because I saw the Copic marker and I couldn't not pick it up
Floral sketch to warm up for summer school class