Illustration Friday - Undone

A quick IF this week. This was drawn partially on the airplane going to St. Louis (during which there was a ton of turbulence), but I had a nice conversation with the lady sitting next to me about tablets.

My First Picture Book!!

Well...sort of. I was commissioned via Etsy to turn a poem that a grandmother had written for her grandson into a set of two hard bound picture books. I did all the illustrations in Photoshop. I had never actually done any bookbinding before the project, but I was confident in my abilities to follow directions. I bought two "Bookbinding for Beginners" kits that I found online. Each kit comes with all the supplies you need (plus step-by-step illustrated instructions) to create a 5.5x4.25 book. The one difficultly that I ran into along the way was that the poem was pretty short. Even when I broke it up to basically one page per line, the book ended up having only 10 pages. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough pages to actually bind. I ended up getting the images printed on cardstock, and that added thickness did the trick! The books turned out great and the bookbinding kit was incredibly helpful. I'm now eager to make more and more books! I hope that the woman who commissioned them enjoys them as much as I did.

Illustration Friday - Hatch

I've been meaning to do a quasi-painterly, sci fi illustration for a while now and this week's IF topic, hatch, provided me with a good opportunity. I think of this as a Mysteries of Harris Burdick sort of piece - that it would have a caption to go along with like, "And then he opened the spaceship's hatch..." - but I included the egg in there at the end because I couldn't resist having the illustration include two different interpretations of the word.

3D Comics Are Pretty Great

This page that I posted last week if finally done! Head on over to Adam's blog to see the final result in 3D! More info about the project is coming in the next few weeks.

Farmer and Son

The two main characters of the first issue of the the comic that Adam and I are creating!

A sneak peak at things to come

Remember this post? Well things are in motion and the comic project that Adam and I are working on is well on its way. This is one of the pages that has been finished on my end of things (art, inks, shading, etc), but it has one crucial step left to go. Check back soon - Adam should be posting the completely final version in the next week or so!

Illustration Friday - Crunchy

This week's Illustration Friday theme is "crunchy" and this was the very first thing that popped into my mind when I thought about that word. I used to get these recurring dreams (or nightmares) where all of my teeth would fall out and I would feel them rolling around in my mouth. When I'd wake up I would be left with this very real feeling of my mouth being full of marbles. This is the only instance in which my dreams have left me with such a vivid waking impression and it was never a pleasant experience. It was a very gross feeling, but also very, very crunchy.

Cat Napping Poses

Cats are very strange creatures. Their ability to make themselves comfortable under pretty much any circumstance constantly amazes me.

Sophisticate Bust

Just a doodle. I've really been enjoying playing around with this graphic, flatter illustration style recently. Fashion blogs and fashion photography have been a big inspiration in that regard and I keep getting these sorts of images floating around in my head that I just have to draw. Also, it'd be pretty sweet if I could get my hair to do that.

Illustration Friday - Entangled

No Illustration Friday entry last week because of Thanksgiving, but I'm back this week with my new illustration! The theme this week is entangled:
I chose to illustrate one of Aesop's Fables, The Fox and the Mosquitoes. The fable is as follows:

A Fox after crossing a river got its tail entangled in a bush, and could not move. A number of Mosquitoes seeing its plight settled upon it and enjoyed a good meal undisturbed by its tail. A hedgehog strolling by took pity upon the Fox and went up to him: "You are in a bad way, neighbour," said the hedgehog; "shall I relieve you by driving off those Mosquitoes who are sucking your blood?"

"Thank you, Master Hedgehog," said the Fox, "but I would rather not."

"Why, how is that?" asked the hedgehog.

"Well, you see," was the answer, "these Mosquitoes have had their fill; if you drive these away, others will come with fresh appetite and bleed me to death."

It's a strange little tale, but upon reading it I could completely envision the composition for the final piece. I wanted to play around with a flatter illustration style this time around (somewhat inspired by illuminated manuscripts).

More Wild Things Photos

The CJM sent me some of their photos of the Wild Things from the Gala! These gorgeous photos are © weeksphotography


More to come!