ring of blue

Hooray for personal illustrations!! This is the tight sketch/color study for an illustration I am starting based off of this poem:

I sing to you, I bring to you, a ring of blue, my love.
Through swollen sky no bird could fly, but I alone would come.
This gale may claim my feathered frame, though my heart belongs to you.
For it cannot be, my love, you see - no bird may love a man.

I'm thinking mixed media - mostly acrylic and digital, but I may print it out on a nice high quality textured paper and embellish it with embroidery.... Or I was thinking I might just go ahead and embroider the whole bird (as in my North American Review illustration) and do the hand and background acrylic and then put it all together digitally... We'll see.

final pezzettino posters

Final poster designs for the lovely Margaret Stutt.

September

My last calendar illustration for the month of September. It has nothing to do with the month but I liked the idea so I ran with it.

character concepts

Studio Sunday is writing a fairy tale of sorts - that will possibly translate into an installation at a local art gallery. Woohoo for keeping busy!! These are studies for a protagonist... She's a young girl, wears the head/skin of the wolf. Still doin studies for what her clothes would actually look like...

rikki tikki tavi

Rikki Tikki Tavi is a short story in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (one of my favorite authors). I did this about two years ago in a "painting for illustration" class. It's done in watercolor and colored pencil and it's actually cut out of a piece of paper and kinda just hangin out by itself because the background I did sucked... I brought it out to see what I could do with it because I still really like it - so that's another project I'm working on at the moment.

ireland panorama

I found this while cleaning up some files on my computer... forgot I had it! This is a picture from the 4 weeks I spent in the town of Ballyvaughan, in County Clare, Ireland. It is located in the Burren and right on Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland. This was taken from the back road that eventually lead to the school, which can actually be seen in the image if it was bigger. And a few of us climbed that huge bluff in the picture and it was the single most inspiring thing I've ever done in my life. Utterly amazing and I'm still speechless! That was about 4 years ago now I believe... It was such an amazing experience. It was through a school program and we each had to create artwork by the end of the 4 weeks that was inspired by our time there - you can check out my work here if anyone's interested.

calendar stuff

So two calendar images completed for Studio Sunday!! I have one more on the way but I left the file at someone's house so I haven't been working on it.... woopsies. Anyways, the bottom one isn't going to be in the calendar - it's just a joke - just for you Jackie! The top two are January (very top) and May. The May illustration was inspired by this German tradition that I read about - on the night before May 1 a guy will plant a birch tree in the yard of his beloved and adorn it with ribbons and such. I thought it sounded cute so that's that...

still workin out the concept...

Actually, there's not much of a concept here.... at all. I think I'm going to have the background become some sort of super-stylized, textured and patterned landscape - probably mostly created through shapes.... not totally sure yet. So there you have it!

january calendar illustration thoughts

Studio Sunday is collaborating on a calendar!! Hurray! I have January, May, and September. These thumbnails are for the January illustration. I wanted to keep with a wintry theme and I know I want the subject to be this Mongolian girl or possibly an Inuit girl with a baby caribou. The first thumb has the original sketch of the girl and the original concept which has to do with the caribou spirit. I know, it's a little bit hokey, I'd have to flesh it out some more. And the caribou "shadow" for lack of a better word would look more like the aurora borealis.

The second thumb has the ink drawing that I created from the sketch and a rough color study - though after looking at the line work the next day I feel that it's so lifeless and rather boring. It could possibly work better as a more graphic image without line - just using shape.

The last thumb is from another sketch I did recently after deciding I didn't like the others... Obviously it's way more stylized than the other two ideas but I kind of like it. It's more like the fashion illos I did recently. Though the backround would definitely have to be worked out... maybe some design work and pattern and texture...

woohoo! we're up and running!!

So Jackie and Brent of LovesickRobot, Christopher MacDonald (aka Topher), and I have started a group called Studio Sunday! Check out our new website! We also have an Etsy store you can browse through with more amazing products to come! Studio Sunday started as a Sunday gathering to keep us motivated and keep those artistic skills from packing their metaphorical bags and leaving us. It's been really motivating and I think this is the most productive I've been since graduation... Which is kind of sad when you think about it but at least I got it back together for now.

Also, I sold my first plushie through our Etsy store! (my favorite little armadillo) Also - Squiggle, one of my plushie monsters, has been mentioned in the Plush Monster Feed! Anyone who likes cute plushie things should take a peek because there are some absolutely adorable critters on there!

That's all for now!