Updates and such and such

So what's been happening since I last blogged you ask? Well...LOTS of art making, a new computer, still pinching myself that I'm represented by Lilla Rogers Studio, 8K+ instagram followers, and I took up needle punching (I'll show pics of that in a separate post once I have a few things to show).

Can I just say that upgrading from a 5 year old 17" laptop to a 27" sparkly new desktop has been AMAZING?! I must've had the patience of a preschool teacher while I was working on that lappy. Now I have the patience of a preschooler if my file takes longer than .3 seconds to save. Seriously. Having the large screen also revealed a major flaw in my website. My images were all different sizes and I couldn't tell on the smaller screen. It was bugging me for a while- so tonight I decided to re-size all my images and make them consistent. I also updated my landing page with that big kitty illo that I reworked from a MATS assignment. rawr.

WHAT THE WHAT?!

Wow. Just WOW. I'm not sure if I'm even ready to write this post- it's all so surreal. But here goes...I am so excited to say that I won the Special Studio Award of being represented by Lilla Rogers Studio! (Read their post HERE) This final round of the Global Talent Search was pretty intense! We were to design two boards of a home decor line based on a trend board given to us by Margo Tantau (Art Director for Midwest CBK). I chose "Vintage Cottage" and just started brainstorming. I knew I wanted to do some animal/floral platters so I jumped right in. And actually, those are the only items that stayed in from start to finish. I have about 3 other boards worth of illustrated products that did not make the final. The whole time I just tried to stay confident and true to myself. I knew that if I was designing things out of fear of losing, my work wouldn't come across as strong. Here's what I ended up submitting:

I love where I landed with these boards. I knew that perhaps it wasn't the most commercial stuff- but I also knew that Lilla liked my quirkiness. Now I need to do a shout-out to some awesome peoples. My hubs and family for being the ultimate support crew! Emily Balsley and Candice Hartsough McDonald for encouraging me to take MATS a year ago and being super artists to bounce ideas off of! Also a shout out to the other finalists- I know Lilla's choice couldn't have been easy. And then a mega CONGRATS to Kate Mason- the grand prize winner and Clairice Gifford- my fellow studio prize winner! 

Now....how do I get that rug made?!

MATS B - Round-up

Welp- here are all the Make Art That Sells part B assignments. Kinda fun to have them all together and realize just how much work I created in five weeks. I was also working on a few commissioned pieces during that time- but I think my favorite non-MATS piece i did was my llama pattern!

MATS B Week 5 - Party Paper

It was a bittersweet end to a fantastic course. This last week I went on vacation starting Wednesday so I had to have all my painted bits done really early in the week. I then brought my laptop and tablet to Arizona where I worked on my piece with palm trees, cacti, and love birds in the background. Not too shabby. I knew most people would be focusing on birds and flowers with the Bavarian/Ukrainian Folk theme- so I went with fish. Folky fish. A "Folk-sea" if you will. :)

I was happy with how it turned out given my vacationing circumstances. Also- since creating art with icons makes your work really versatile- you can easily turn bits from this into:

A little illustration for a card or print. Or into:

A cute fish pattern! 

I think that was the biggest takeaway from MATS- as Lilla says "icons, icons, icons." And it's true- when your work is versatile- the possibilities for different gigs is endless. Now it's time to get back to work and keep on crackin'!

MATS B Week 4 - Editorial

Good gracious- i'm so far behind on my blogging. Time to catch-up! Week 4 in Make Art that Sells B was one of my favorite (and arguably most successful) weeks yet. I knew it would be a map assignment and I was kind of dreading that I needed to do a map of Dubuque, Iowa. Then I found out that we could do a map of where we lived OR a favorite place. I could do Yosemite or Bloomington, IN, or somewhere else! But then I thought about it- and realized that illustrating Dubuque was a good opportunity to really look at our new city and challenge myself. (Thankfully Dubuque does have a lot of interesting old buildings, a river, and a noticeable german/irish Catholic influence). Here's what I made:

I adore how it turned out! It was so fun to draw such a variety of icons- from a nun and trout to an eagle and trolley!

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 B WEEK 2 - Baby/Kids Apparel

ah seahorses! I feel like ive been doing a lot of ocean illustrations for Oopsy Daisy (coming this summer i think)- but I was excited to go at it again in a new way. Right away the idea of "Hide and SEAk" came to me and though i tried to think of other ideas- it just stuck around. So i went with the bad pun. I got to a point with my main pattern where I wanted to settle on the color scheme. Here are some color drafts that I sent around to some trusted illustrator friends and the MATS community to get some votes on:

from this I narrowed it down to the off white and dark blue...

Here I blocked in some potential coordinate color ideas. I was leaning toward the lighter colors but something needed to change...

 Then I switched out the blues for the olives and it felt fresh but kinda vintage and fun! So I went to work and came up with the final....

and quickly realized that this was crazy-boat-overload. So i tweaked it till I had this...

ah so much better! Juniper definitely needs some eyeball leggings asap! 

But wait! there's more! 

So I still had that pretty sweet darker color scheme and some time on my hands (well, a morning at least). So I decided to jump on the llama train (yes, there is a llama train) and made this...

i'm kinda obsessed and now I definitely need to get this licensed and made into a sheet/comforter/pillow set! 

Thankful indeed

Wow- so I ended up making 22 new illustrations for my #25thankfuldays thingy I did during this holiday season. Somedays I made two a day to prep for going on vacation, most days I made one a day. It was fun and enriching to think about just a few of the things I am thankful for (this could have been #1,000thankfuldays). Anyhoo- here are my faves from this little series:

Thanks for following along- hope you have wonderful holidays! I know 2015 is going to be full of exciting new adventures- can't wait!

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 5 - gift market

The final week of Make Art That Sells focused on the gift market. So fun! We illustrated "hyper lush" zippered pouches and were free to also include a few other products. Lilla had us gather and illustrate our collections (or things we love) early in the week to use for the final. Since I don't really collect anything I ended up illustrating bouquets I had made back during my florist days. For my extra products I didn't want to just re-use the same bouquets from the pouch so I created 3 little critters to "wear" the bouquets on their little noggins! Here's the first version where I included basically everything I had and the kitchen sink:

I felt so fortunate to have Lilla review my piece and make some suggestions on ways to improve. I needed to focus on one color-way and design the page a bit more. Here's what I came up with:

I really love the more muted version- and the page layout feels fresher. It was a great note to end on and I feel really excited about the months ahead! (And MATS part B in the spring!!)

MATS week 3 - Children's Books

I was probably most nervous for this week of Lilla Rogers's Make Art That Sells course. First of all, I haven't drawn characters (aside from my chipmunk cheek animals) in a long time (really ever?!). I also don't really do scenes. Characters + scenes = children's book. Anyhoo, coming off feeling great about last week's assignment- I decided to push my fears aside, create an illustration that felt like "me" and that I would be drawn to on a book shelf. The first part of the assignment was creating a tortoise character. I did a few pages of sketches/paintings- and felt like I landed upon something with these guys:

I really liked their texture, awkwardness, and googly eyes. For some reason I didn't want a green tortoise. I knew that for the final illo I wanted the colors to be informed by the scene/season. After doing these I felt like they belonged in a desert. The assignment was to illustrate the cover or a spread of The Tortoise and the Hare incorporating some hand lettering. Once I had them in the desert- I knew I wanted my lettering to be more "western" styled. Here's how my final turned out:

I love this color palatte! I experimented with some different textures/brushes in photoshop and really enjoy the result. I was able to complete this with a few days to spare (I worked hard early on because I felt a cold coming on and really wanted to just rest up this weekend). But in my experience work begets work- so I took the extra time I had and worked up this little pattern...

I think I have conquered my fear of characters (the googly eyes were key is this!). This idea of space cats was just floating aimlessly around my brain earlier in the week- so I had to follow through with it. The hubs thinks it would make a great sheet set and i have to agree. 

MATS Week 2 - Home Decor

Week two - BAM! Man this is flying by! This week's home decor inspiration came in the form of suzanis. These are gorgeous embroidered textiles from Uzbekistan. Right away I thought I really wanted to do something celestial. This changed to doing the zodiac- which eventually led to whistling goats. So how did I get from point A to point G? I was working hard on making the zodiac work- but it felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole- and the results were not feeling fun, quirky, or effortless. So i took a deep breath and simply changed direction...

NOT AT ALL!! More like I freaked out, stayed up way too late scouring the interwebs, and made furious doodles in my sketchbook. I was not going to be able to sleep unless I had a new direction. Then I met this dude:

How could I not be inspired by mr. Markhor the wild goat of Uzbekistan?! I quickly began doing some large/medium/small ink paintings of forms inspired by suzanis. I wanted the large ones to feel very loose and have a real "inky" quality to them. From the get-go I envisioned my plates being sold as dessert plates in Anthropologie- they do not shy away from quirky, hand-painted work. Here's what I ended up submitting: 

While I was first making these I had the plants and markhors different colors but once I unified them with the blue everything else fell into place. 

Since I didn't want to have these plates on my website (I kinda feel like unless they are actually made into plates- they should be presented as an illustration- therefore could be used for different applications) I merged them together and created this:

now someone could look at it and see wallpaper, fabric, plate, or any other application. Thank you whistling markhor for making this week's assignment really enjoyable!

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!

Random acts of artiness

I added this snazzy custom paint job to Juni's ukulele months ago (as seen by the "well-loved-patina" which has occurred even though i did spray it with a clear coat). Nonetheless she loves it, I love it, and her fellow bandmates at band practice love it. 

 silly juniper.

art is fun

this little dude told me he had to go on a vision quest...i swear i'm not hallucinating...but i can't promise i'm not procrastinating. 

ghosts in the grass

One night while deliriously nursing at 3 or 4am I thought of the phrase "ghosts in the grass." I kinda fell in love with the visuals it was conjuring up so here are some little sketches. 

BHM

come say hi NEXT SATURDAY at the Bloomington Handmade Market!

(illustration by yours truly)