Sketchbook update

It always takes me forever to get around to scanning my sketchbook pages, but here's a compilation of pages from this last semester at school, and a few from this summer.  I need to get a new sketchbook to fill now...

 

Bedtime Story 5 and 4

Apparently I forgot to post the last bedtime story that I illustrated, #4 Stay in Greece, Stay with me:

This week I completed the spot illustrations for bedtime story #5 - Paris has missed you, Gigi

At this point we decided to go back to a look closer to the original concept illustrations, and to enter the story in the blog editor, rather than in a whole separate design layout.  Here's the link to check out the Bedtime Stories blog on the Knickers website: http://shopknickers.myshopify.com/blogs/bedtime-stories

Lily Pattern

I guess I forgot to post this, but I made it a few months ago anyhow.  I think I would redo the pattern, I'm happier with the color scheme and the flats I made to apply it to.

Garden Stationery

 
A friend and now client of mine commissioned me to create some personalized stationery as a birthday gift for his mother. As she has now received her gift it is safe for me to post this online. This is a digital painting I did of my interpretation of her described garden. I was given much artistic freedom to create the vision as I chose, and only descriptions, no photographs, of her actual garden. Which made this a really neat project to work on! I'm happy with the end result as a painting and the client's mother is happy with her note cards. I've included so many specific plants from her garden that I think this is what makes it personal. You might not be able to pick them all out online, but among others there are: roses; lavender; balloon flowers; dianthus; geraniums; thyme; sweet woodruff; myrtle; Russian sage; butterfly bush; goat’s beard; hydrangea; maple trees, and spiderwort. I did create the original at a much larger scale than the note card dimensions for the possibility of larger printing.

Post Ringling

I know that I have not posted anything in quite a while but I have been working on a lot of different things actually. I'm surprised and also happy to say that I'm making a decent living on freelancing - some design, some illustration (probably about 50/50). I'm doing work for a local publication/crafting materials company called TJ Designs. It's mostly design/layout work for packaging and print materials related to vintage themes and ephemera for Altered Artwork, Card-Making, Rubber Stamping, and Scrap-booking. Since they are products owned by the company I can't really post much from what I'm doing there.

I also have been continuing to freelance for Lotus and Knickers for which I plan to post a lot of the design work I've done for our advertising, eventually. (Up till now I've only posted illustration work.)

My biggest and most exciting client in my life right now though is Bealls department stores. I wanted to wait a little while before posting anything about it in case it didn't work out. I also won't be able to post a lot of things I'll do for them until after they are in stores. But here's a little bit to show what I've been doing so far:

When I first started interviewing they asked me to do some "Florida Friendly" icons as sort of a test run. This was all the direction I had so they are for a variety of customer demographics and aren't based on any of Bealls' actually lines/or current color palettes.

 Shortly after the interviews they gave me my first freelance assignment! I was given 4 patterns that hey had purchased at a trade show and was asked to translate them into vectors/perfect repeats for their pattern library. Here they are: one 1-way repeat and three 4-way repeats.

 

 

 

Christmas in June

 
Sorry I haven't updated in a while...very busy trying to attain full time work. Just wanting to work on something for fun, I found this painting that I had started in a sketchbook last year and decided to finish it. It's not Christmas time and this movie came out in 2003...so all I can say is I heart Buddy the Elf. I was thinking about what good reason, beside this, that I would have to do a painting of him and I thought about how enthusiastic he is. He has so much blind faith in Christmas spirit and Santa Claus. We can all find a wonderful example in his zeal. I strive to have this same excitement every day about my savior and His imminent return.

Favorite Elf quotes:
Arctic Puffin: "Hey Buddy wanna pick some snowberries?"
Buddy: "... smiling's my favorite"
Buddy: "SANTA! OH MY GOD! SANTA'S COMING! I KNOW HIM! I KNOW HIM!"
Buddy: "First we'll make snow angels for a two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookiedough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle."
Buddy: "[quickly, and high pitched] i love you. i love you! I LOVE YOU!"
Buddy: "I'm in love.. I'm in love and i dont care who knows it!"

Ray and I recite these at any given moment to each other on a regular basis.

Moms, Dads, and Grads....

Or at least that's what they used to say this time of year when I worked at Best Buy for our target shoppers...anyways. Hurray for graduating! It took me 5 years with a major change from computer animation to illustration, but I finally graduated from Ringling (School) College of Art and Design, with honors. (I only put school in parenthesis because I did enter RSAD and graduated from RCAD) But I'll be getting that BFA in the mail sometime this summer! So I'll be getting some better pictures to add to this post later, but there's me and my dad! My parents brought me the most perfect rose that they had in their garden. And on Saturday night I thought it was just too pretty to pass up so I did a watercolor for a Mother's day gift to mom. Went down to their house Sunday afternoon and made dinner for her, we had a nice relaxing time. ^_^

Senior Illustration Show 2009

For the last two weeks I've been finishing everything up for my Senior Illustration Show, where all of the graduating illustration students display their senior thesis projects. I've posted photos of my display, my thesis statement, and my lamp that I've been working on for what seems like forever! I was also on the planning committee for the show, doing my part in helping to create the poster, brochure, getting the word around town about the show, and helping the whole thing happen during set up and opening night! I'm very tired and yet it's really really weird to be finished with schoolwork. Graduation is this Friday and I'm really excited about celebrating with friends and family!

New Carter's pieces

So Carter's is going to be back on campus tomorrow! I didn't get as many pieces done as I would have liked to for them, but here are the new ones I've done and have never posted before. Some are following their format very closely as they requested and others have a little more of my own flair. Thesis show and career stuff is consuming my life right now...will post other tid bits after the show!

Product/Miscellaneous

I was preparing to post the new application elements I've recently created for some of my portfolio pieces and I realized I hadn't posted some of these things originally. So here is the little three ring notebook diagram I made to display another application of my beach girlie design:This is just one pattern design that I made using some characters I did in the Carter's workshop: 

This is a personal project I never posted, inspired by Peyton the 3 1/2 year old I've been babysitting for almost 3 years:

And these are the applications for the art, a magnet toy (the new paper doll) and a flash dress up game concept, which I intend to learn how to actually make/design more thouroughly one day:
And one possible application for the tropical watercolors could be for a restaurant menu:

High Tea in the Park

I just finished this freelance job for the Downtown Merchants Association of Sarasota. It's for a fund-raising event set for Mother's Day weekend on Saturday May 9th, from 3 to 5 pm. It will be one big tea party in the park at five points, hence the event's title "High Tea in the Park." Anyways the artwork is going to be printed on a 5 x 7 postcard to be distributed by the downtown stores. If anyone is interested in a great Mother's Day gift to spend the afternoon with their Mom- tickets can be purchased at Lotus, Jake's Downtown, Write-On Sarasota, L. Kids, and Juno & Jove. It's meant for children and adults, all in good fun!

Best of Ringling 2009

It turns out the least expected things will get into juried shows... the watercolor piece I did for the Shop Local sticker design got into this year's Best of Ringling exhibition. I'm currently in the process of getting someone to do a circular mat cut for me...not fun and expensive. This year's show, for the illustration department, was juried by Shawn Barber.