MATS B Week 3 - Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking. I must admit I was kind of dreading this week since I am not a scrapbooker and haven't felt much of a connection to a lot of the scrapbook market. But the mini assignment that was provided was airships- blimps, dirigibles, balloons! love it! I just wanted to have some fun with it at first so I painted up this piece:

Then I got started on the assignment. The truly freeing part about this week was just being able to make a ton of little icons and then puzzle-piece them together. So on Wednesday I painted my shapes and words:

I wanted to go kinda steampunk-light and focus on nautical adventure. About an hour into work on Thursday I realized that Juni didn't have school the next day and my mom was coming to visit. So I pushed hard and finished it up on Thursday night:

I like how it turned out. However I think some things get a little lost since it's all very much a similar tone. My favorite things are the whale weather vane, the birds, and the fact that i got to letter "ahoy-hoy" and "huzzah." On Sunday I was able to sit down and paint during Juniper's nap...

And then on Monday I procrastinated by making these guys:

Can you tell that it's been kinda a grey week here in Dubuque? Maybe some warmer weather and sunshine will add a little more color to my art. ha! Now time to work work work!

MATS Part A - Round-up

Welp- here they are. My first five weeks of Lilla Rogers's Make Art That Sells course. Looking at them all together- i feel proud of what I made. My favorite is week 2's whistling goat plates and I think my weakest is week 1's root veggie pattern. I feel so fortunate to have been in 4/5 of Lilla's reviews (week 1 did not make it). I went into the course knowing that there was a high likelihood of not having any of my work reviewed. She talks about 15-20 pieces every week and with a class of about 200- well- you do the numbers. I truly feel like I learned so much while she talked about other people's work- that even if my work was not talked about- I would not have felt too disappointed. Creating this work propelled me into mega-productivity. Besides these 5 pieces I made a bunch more work in the 5 weeks:

The recipe, teeth, gems, and reef illos were re-worked from illustrations I had already made. Space cats and doll patterns were completely new, and the botanicals were for Audi Magazine. I also did a site-redesign and kept up with sales from my etsy shops and wholesale accounts. Basically the past five weeks proves my theory that I am most productive when I am juggling lots of gigs. Although I don't think I can quite keep up this pace 100% of the time- I am starting a 25-day holiday thankfulness countdown. I'm illustrating 25 things I am thankful for this holiday season. You can follow along on instagram. Here's the first one:

MATS Week 1 - Bolt Fabric

Ok- so week one is done. We focused on the bolt fabric market- which to be honest I had never considered for myself. I even went into the week thinking "well- i'm more interested in wallpaper- so that's what I'll design my pattern for." Thankfully I got that thought out of my head or else i would have missed out on really learning about this exciting and fun market. The week started out with sketching root veggies and pyrex. Not being terrible excited about the shapes of pyrex casseroles- i focused on root veggies and pyrex patterns. here's some of that preliminary work:

As you can see- the icons on the left were the ones I narrowed in on for the final pattern. I felt like I needed to figure out my color scheme before refining the pattern itself- so I did a few rough color-way studies:

At this point in the week I was approached for a small (5 spots) illo job and we decided to travel to chicago for the weekend. I was feeling pressured to just finish up the main pattern and coordinates so I worked hard on wed/thurs to get to this:

I love how dramatic the colors are- it really stands out. I'm not sure if it would appeal to customers looking for kitchen fabric- but I do enjoy the play between bold shapes/delicate lines. It also would fit into my portfolio- so that feels nice. In looking back now and after listening to Lilla's final lesson I would change up the coordinate patterns and make those more special/hand illustrated (though I do like the geometric against the illustrations).

Anyhoo- I had a few free hours on Saturday to do some work so I took those veggies and turned them into their own separate recipe illustration:

kinda fun eh? 

Overall thoughts on Make Art That Sells so far? I think it's great. There is so much inspiring talent, so much encouragement and support, and a ton of enriching information. I'm so thankful I worked really hard the two weeks before MATS to get into my making art groove, re-look through and edit my website, and hone in on what makes my art mine. Looking forward to next week!

White + Black + Gold

I just spent many a hour gold leafing this year's batch of Season Calendars. Most of them are headed to the sweet NYC shop Catbird- but I will have about 25 for sale in my etsy shop (they'll be up on Monday- so act fast). This is the third year for this calendar and I still love it- simple, unique, and GOLD! There's something about gold leaf that makes everything more awesome. Although it's a mess to work with- it's ultra-satisfying to see something that's hum-drum black and white turn into wham-bam-glam- white, black and gold (W-B-G)! I'd say the only negative for gold is that a scan or photograph doesn't do it justice.

I guess all this gold leafing rubbed off on me- the other day i was doing some painting exercise (gotta keep the muscle going!) with just black ink and before i knew it a gold paint pen was in my hand and taking over! W-B-G!

summer

whoa. what a crazy summer. we put all our belongings in a truck that drove away (for all i know our couch might have been hanging out in mexico for a long weekend!). we stayed with my mom for a bit, drove out to colorado to get away for two weeks, came back to my mom's, moved to dubuque, and now we're entering our last week of summer.

I feel so fortunate for so many things surrounding this summer- a hubbie who worked so hard last year, never letting his dad duties slide, and was happy to put work on hold for a bit this summer so we could all have this adventure. A two-year old who (for the most part) was incredibly flexible, didn't drive us too nuts, and re-learned how to nap in the car. A mom who took us and our doggie in when we didn't have anywhere to go. And so much more.

I thought I would get so much done (art-wise) this summer. Spoiler alert: i didn't. Thankfully I've been bitten by the productivity bug this past week and am feeling very motivated. I have a few bigger projects that I need to keep chipping away on- more on those later. For now- here are some pics from our time in Colorado.

did these two little map illos after some nice day hikes. working quickly and loosely was just what the art-doctor ordered!

The house we were renting was a hippie-haven. We were surrounded by nature inside and out. It was just what the nature-doctor ordered! (our fake doctor bills are out of control!)

We saw 3 moose! A moose trifecta!

Juni loving the mountains. No filter/adjustment needed on this pic. 

Perhaps my favorite pic of the summer. Perfectly sums up how cool the people I love most are. (yes- Juni is wearing a cape while playing the recorder)

Inspiration to implementation

The other week I wanted to create something fun and a bit different- no plants, no flowers, no animals. wha?! I found this vase at Goodwill about a year ago and decided to use it as my jumping off point...

How sweet is that face?! From here I made sketches...

then I chose 5 of them and took brush and acrylic ink to paper...

So these are fine and cute and all- but they're all white- and people come in more colors than just white, so I scanned into the compy and with the help of photoshop and my pen/tablet turned them into...

So there you have it- not sure what I'm going to do with these guys yet, but I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into my start to finish process!

sketchy sketchy

hopefully a glimpse of some new things to come....now i just need to invent an eight day of the week. I'll call it Museday.