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I don't think this is the most original idea I ever had for an illustration, and not the best execution ever either. But I am trying to produce more, and trying to stick with certain techniques and within a certain style, and that is working out well. I'm off all week so let's see what else I can make happen!

good advice

Frank Chimero did a series of inspirational posters "to help clarify a few thoughts I had about the creative process". You can see them here. *The one I always think about when I'm procrastinating reads:

Remember! Looking at design is not making design

I desperately need to remember this. I could happily spend hours and hours looking through illustrators' portfolios online, looking at good illustration blog/sites (illustrationmundo is a current fave), and oohing and aahing over a pool of illustrations on flickr. I need to produce more, and "look" less.

Above: A little illustration I did based on a drawing I did of two of my students during class this week.

*I was totally unsure about just lifting that pic off his portfolio, so I only put the words up here...I know I have to save the picture to my desktop and not just link to his, but somehow, for something that fantastic, I don't know...Just putting it up here feels totally wrong. Go look at it. It's awesome.

Playing with Textures

Playing with texture = tons of fun. Today I had a bit of an epiphany in Illustrator, realizing the enormous potential of the Brush tool. Somehow, though, adding these textures makes my computer/Illustrator enormously tired...I mean, not that that will stop me or anything, but it sure is a pain!

Meanwhile, in life, I have a big break coming up and plan on going all out producing illustrations so I have enough that I'm proud of to put together an online portfolio in January. I currently own cleverviolet.com, but it forwards to my etsy site...I wonder - should I use that as my portfolio site, or look into buying my full name? Or both??? What do you think?

winter wonderland

I'm working on lots of projects all over the place, trying to build up the number of pieces I can put in an online portfolio later this month...eek! I am happy with this new one but there's so little time left till my Christmas/New Year's deadline, and so few pieces that I'm happy enough with! I gotta keep moving.

on the up and up

It makes me happy when I create a new illustration and promptly hate everything else I've done. It indicates progress, right? Here I was trying to do something that's mainly digital, but without any fake textures...I don't know, when I add textures, it's so clearly, "Hello! Look! She dropped in color, pasted in a texture, and played around with some options! Whee!" Bleh.

This feels better, somehow.

feeling better

The style is coming along more. Kind of. Yes. I'm experimenting more with photoshop, putting illustrator work on hold for now. I read a tutorial on how to isolate pencil sketchings, and have been a lot more successful with it than I expected at first. I love all the smudges that are visible!

hard at work

I've been feeling frustrated over this whole no-coherent-style thing...It's really much more than the style. It's kind of...well, I can make an illustration. And it can be fine, and my friends/family are happy with it and impressed, but there is a clear sense that it's nothing more than just a cute little picture. There's no particular originality or style. It's just whatever I felt like doing that week. It's more than just whether or not all of the stuff I'm creating fits together - it's that none of it is particularly good. Good, yes, maybe, but not particularly so.

I'm not sure if/when this will be resolved but for now I suppose it's a matter of making a billion more illustrations and waiting for magic to happen.

illustration progress

Taking a class makes producing artwork a necessity, rather than an added luxury, every day. I love it. I am totally accomplishing things - and not just stuff for class, but personal projects - on a regular basis. I've been forced to figure out all sorts of tools on Illustrator and Photoshop that I usually try to get around, because "getting around" these issues would normally hinder my progress or take away from the quality of the work. Which is not to say my work's quality is improving dramatically...at the very least, being so productive means getting closer to finalizing my style, and hasn't that been the goal all along?

And today! I have been painting. For fun. Which I haven't done in ages (weeks). Hurray!

getting things done

I had a huge to do list to work through this weekend and surprisingly, I've made a lot of progress. Yesterday I did schoolwork, then in the evening I tried to do some illustrating, and it was a TRAINWRECK. I was miserable. But I woke up with some fresh ideas, and completed three different illustrations that I'm very happy with. And started one other one that may or may not get finished, depending on how much time I want to spend learning about textures on photoshop. But today...Today. I have made some new buddies. One of them I will call Illustrator, one I will call Cut Out McFilter, and one I will call My Printer. I am getting them to help me in new exciting ways and I couldn't be happier about it!

Above: The first illustration assignment for my class, based on an article from the New York Times about parents letting their children run around without clothes on, and other adults finding it inappropriate. Well, something to that effect I believe. 5x10" acrylic/pencil on wood.

Richard and Leonard have the same favorite color

Acrylic on wood, 10x10"

It's so nice to be able to do a teeny bit of painting while school is in full swing and super crazed. It's also soooo nice that my illustration class is happening, and starting Tuesday!!!

My scanner does some excellent scanning of little drawings when I put it in the "Magazine (Color)" mode. I feel like it's revolutionized how I'll be able to get my drawings into my computer, and how I'll be able to edit them or add color in Illustrator. I'm thrilled!

This one came out a little silly because the colors are way more intense in the scan than in real life. I'm ok with that. The plus side is that the figures are also better defined now.

is this an illustration?

It must be, right? It's illustrative. Right?

It's been extremely challenging to find time to paint/create now that the school year has started up again. I've been a bit disappointed by it. I've found a little time over the past week or so though - there's a weekly meeting where my drawing little pictures isn't yet frowned upon, and a few days ago I started trying to create little silly illustrations like the one above, on a hopefully daily basis. I hope to paint a bit over the coming three day weekend. Also, I'm signed up for an Editorial Illustration class in Manhattan that starts in a few weeks - here's hoping it doesn't get cancelled! (Currently I'm the only person registered. Whoops.)

Ted

Ted, acylic/pencil on wood, 6x6"

This is my first self-driven "assignment" - a portrait of the dear departed Ted Kennedy. So many well-known figures have died this summer, and often after reading news of another death, I am temporarily fixated. Do other people do this? After Michael Jackson's death I spent way too much time on the internet reading up on him, not to mention watching all the youtube music videos - including Thriller, multiple times. Something similar has happened in the past few days with Ted Kennedy. Obviously, there are way fewer music videos to watch on youtube, but I'm so intrigued by everything I've read about him. I don't know a lot about politics, but I've watched enough news parody programs/Saturday Night Live skits to know a few things. I read through Kennedy's obituary on nytimes.com last night, though, trying to get a sense of why people speak so fondly of him, and I found out quite a lot! Here is my favorite quote they posted of his, from after he lost the 1980 Democratic presidential primary.

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”

zebras and going back to school

"Jason and Peanut dress alike on Wednesdays"

I finished this one a week ago. Now I have four kids + animals paintings! It's very exciting to see them all together. It's also confusing...I want the paintings to all have a similar "look" but I don't think they really do. They all have a child, and an unusual pet, and that's all well and good, but the way they're painted isn't similar enough for me. I'm not sure.

Meanwhile, I start teaching again in two weeks, and I need to start strategizing about how I'm going to keep myself motivated to create when I'm not at school. Last year I did pretty well painting on week nights, but I didn't complete anything too big or exciting...mostly it was just little exercises at abstract stuff, which is still so hard for me. I plan on taking an Editorial Illustration class starting in October, that meets once a week for two months, which will help.

Bears and Goldfish

"John Trains Victor to Stand on Command" Acrylic on cradled wood panel, 8x8".

Victor will do anything for a goldfish.

Found on Etsy: Pins

As seen on: thepinpals, amypanda, ohmycavalier, jeunebugs

In Julie & Julia, the Amy Adams character is constantly wearing pins. I think I'd like to start being a pin-wearer. What do you think? Can I pull this off? I'm not particularly hip/gutsy, but I have high aspirations for myself when it comes to fashion. I have several badges collected from various etsy sellers and groups I'm a part of, and those are nice, but some are mostly advertising. So I have been collecting a list of pins on etsy, and even purchasing a few favorites. They're mostly so affordable! I think this might really work out.

Painting vs Illustration

Donna and Herman Start a Puzzle, acrylic on wood panel, 9x12".

I'm very pleased with how this one turned out. I have this idea of several paintings where children have unusual pets. (It's mostly because I myself am constantly wanting to take all the animals from the zoo home with me.) So first I had Joan in the Kitchen with her pet bear, and now I have Donna with her pet giraffe, Herman.

What is it that makes something an Illustration? This painting feels like an illustration, and I'm not totally sure why. Perhaps it's the fact that it's a complete scene, instead of just a character and a plain background, like so much of what I've been doing lately. I could see it in a children's book. It's not a bad thing, per se, but it's not what I was going for. What is the difference between Fine Art and an Illustration? Obviously, what an illustrator creates is art, in itself, but still. Why do some creations get called "illustrations" while others are just "artwork" or "paintings"?

Joan in the Kitchen

Joan in the Kitchen is my new favorite painting. There are lots of potential issues with it, I suppose, in terms of composition/contrast, but I'm so pleased with it. I like the way she kind of sinks into the background, and the way the bear sticks out. The most exciting part is how it's a little fanciful, and how it seems like it's telling a little story. I know what story I have in mind, and why the bear/dishes are there, but another viewer could have a totally different idea.

more portrait plaques

I worked on more portrait plaques yesterday, ending up with two new ones that have a fairly different quality from the others. They have this watercolor/pastel look about them...I'm not sure how I feel about it.


I also made a larger painting (7x10" MDF) where my goal was for the first time to make one of these little portraits have a body. I'm still working on figuring out backgrounds though...I tend to just want some striped wallpaper and call it a day. This is a little more detail than I usually add, but still very very little!

Seen on Etsy: speaking of my love of bears...

This is My Boyfriend by Julia Pott


Giant Bear in a Tiny Village by Lizzy Stewart


the giant suburban bear monster visits new york city by matteart

natural history museum inspiration

A few months ago I started craving a visit to the Museum of Natural History here in New York. I wanted to see those lush, old, retro-colored dioramas filled with stuffed animals. After many failed attempts to organize a trip, the big day arrived yesterday.

What's not to love about these dioramas? (Except for the depressing part about the dead animals/taxidermy, and seeing baby animals and wondering how those were collected...Let's ignore that part.) The aesthetic is fantastic! And there are so many different hallways and exhibits to walk through! The bears will always be my favorite, but the African Mammals exhibit was amazing as well. Two floors of all sorts of familiar and unfamiliar creatures, like elephants and ostrichs and greater and lesser koodoos and elands (a word I know only from crossword puzzles) and so many more.



The highlight of the visit, besides the diaromas, was seeing a special exhibit called Extreme Mammals. We learned about the biggest and smallest mammals, yes, but the best part was seeing lots of creepy weird mammals that went extinct thousands of years ago...beavers with horns, whales with four legs, and a wooly mammoth-type monster with a long silly gonzo nose, to name a few. We watched sugar gliders hop around a little mini-environment, and discussed the pros and cons of having baleen instead of teeth. Just fyi: humans are apparently the only two-legged mammals who "walk" - I think all the others hop? Or most of the others hop, and some do other things? Still. We are unique!

Meanwhile, I'm still working on finding a local place to show some art. I have organized the results, but there is a bit more fact-finding to do before I narrow it down to a few places to actually approach. I started working on my artist statement, and am varnishing a few pieces that I want to move out of here. More information to come!

Game on!

Today I go on my first fact-finding mission throughout the area, looking for potential venues for showing/hanging/selling artwork. Coffee shops, diners, small stores...Game on!

Normally I'd make a nice template that I could fill out for each location, just so I could stay super organized. Unfortunately, my computer and printer are no longer speaking so I am going to have to take notes in a little notebook with no formatting whatsoever. Still, exciting, no?

Things I will consider:
1. Does the venue already have artwork on its walls? If so, what kind?
2. Does it seem like my artwork would fit with the venue's vibe?
3. How crowded is the venue? How many people will be seeing my artwork?
4. What kind of customers come to this venue? Families/yuppies/hipsters?

After I've gathered the information, I plan on choosing my top 3 venues and organizing everything I need to approach them about my artwork. I might have some brochures/flyers made. It's very exciting! And I need to work on an artist statement so I can join the local artist group here.

5 Tips

5 tips to developing a unique art style, from imagekind's blog.

Seen on Etsy

Romantic Space, original illustration by dropesdementol

I love the work of fricdementol - she makes these incredible gocco prints, very colorful and fun, with lots and lots of patterns and details - so I was excited to see she opened a new shop for her original illustrations. This one is my current favorite. You can also find her on flickr and on her blog.

more portraits

Sometimes when I look at all my portraits lined up around the apartment it's very much like they're part of some secret conversation. Now they can have something to say!

Also, a friend in Denver cut all sorts of beautiful wood panels for me in varied sizes. The wood is very thick - about an inch - and the sides have this great striped texture. I'm so in love with them! I have painted two so far - the one above and another that I haven't taken a picture of yet - and it's so much better than masonite/canvas. (I'm very sick of the texture of canvas...getting coverage with acrylic is a huge pain. And with masonite, the painting feels a little flimsy, and the colors can get lost if I don't put on enough gesso.) I'm so pleased with the results!!!

double date

I started this last night. I'm thrilled with how it's looking (and as usual, my photography skills are quite lacking) but have no idea what the background will be. Right now it feels like a double date, with both men looking in different directions, but if I make the background something crazy and fun, that title might have to change.

This is the exact painting style I am trying for all the time...however, the acrylics are still fighting me every step of the way. Things look great while I'm painting, but as the paint dries the colors seem to disappear into the canvas. Actually, that might be the low-quality canvases I've been buying. I have some new wood panels to try out soon so we will see!

hank

I met Hank while in Denver for the past two weeks and needless to say, fell desperately in love. This portrait is one of two Hank-related paintings I created while there. I have many other Denver pictures uploaded to my flickr so more Denver paintings should be coming soon. Oh, Hank.