Illustration Friday: INSECT

Yay! I can get one in early this week...

This is a sampling of the work I do at my day job. I design stickers for a craft/scrapbooking company. Well, used to really. I've been there 5 years and now I do a lot of non-sticker related design work and more project management - don't get to illustrate as often. Both designs are several years old.

These are photos of the actual stickers, I plan to update this post later with the digital artwork.

I'll still be thinking about doing a new piece for this week's topic... but that'll come later in the week, as usual!

Illustration Friday: TEA

Like you didn't see this one coming...

Over on my design blog I have a million illustrations of COFFEE. Why, oh, why wasn't the theme this week coffee?! Anyway, I was at a complete loss this week, and then this teacup unicorn idea popped into my head, I thought it was kinda funny. The original sketch is below. I like them both; I consider it a great asset that I can amuse myself so easily. ;)

Obviously the expression of the teacup unicorn is the most dramatic difference between these two sketches. The top guy is proud to steeped in your tea, but it appears the guy down below, mmmm... not so much.

Illustration Friday: SONG

Swan song.
This is actually based on Hans Christian Anderson's tale called 'Eleven Wild Swans', done for a college assignment... eight years ago. Wow, time flies!

I'm sorry I had to recycle this week. It's been a stressful one, but I was thinking about 'SONG' all week - I got really inspired by this song from a 1973 Vangelis album called Earth:
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I would like to write a song
That is so vibrant and so intimate
That the earth would adopt it
As if it had sprung like the stream
From the land's memory
As if no one had written it but life itself
And my song would travel along
From bird to wing, to tree
To breeze to heart to breath to song
Because a song belongs to everyone
Like the spring
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But, I've never heard the song, and I feel like I need to in order to interpret it fully... and it's been a little hard to find, so I'll keep it in mind and hopefully down the road I'll come back to it. Enjoy!!

Illustration Friday: SIMPLE

This is so lame... no time this week to even think, so I threw this together. my apologies.

Illustration Friday: CHAIR pt.2

I just got a flash of on image in my head – this little girl sitting in, not a “highchair”, but a chair with long tall legs. So I started drawing her, and the chair around her and as I drew, the chair just... became, a bird. Then it got fun. It’s just a sketch now – but I’m really looking forward to finishing it!

I’ve shown it to a few friends and what I really love is that they don’t know if it’s supposed to be real or if she’s imagining it, or what. I really hate how the first question they ask is: Is it an ostrich?

No, no no nononononooooo.



I don’t know what it is, but I like it!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! :)

Illustration Friday: CHAIR pt.1

To be honest, I’ve always been a little taken aback when I notice that people participating in Illustration Friday say things like “I wasn’t inspired by this week’s theme”. I usually think to myself, well... that’s life isn’t it? As an illustrator or aspiring illustrator you often take jobs that don’t inspire you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do the best you can, right?! I know I’ve come to Illustration because I wanted the weekly challenge, and my fellow participants become my inspiration!

Having said that, I must admit – I was completely uninspired by this week’s topic. Hello! Hypocrite! But, even being uninspired and having no idea what direction to go, I just started doodling. The best things come out of doodling, in my opinion. And while I don’t particularly like any of these, it was definitely a beneficial experience, just sitting and drawing for a couple hours. Along with keeping up with the IF posts, it seemed to clear out whatever creative blockage that was clogging up my mind because I became mysteriously inspired a day after completing these – which led me to an idea and new drawing I’ve very excited about... see Illustration Friday: CHAIR pt.2

Illustration Friday: GLAMOUR

I can't believe I made it! With one full day left, YAY!!



This is totally up for interpretation, and I suppose it could be some kind of comment on celebrity image... but it's actually a drawing two years in the making, for a children's book I'm working on (written by an author friend of mine). Okay, I know she's scantily clad, but it's a actress glamour shot and it's supposed to be a glamour shot (an actual photo in the book), so I hope no one is offended, just wait until you see it in it's proper context! I’ll be working on the rest of the sketches for this spread soon - now that I’m started I want to keep cranking them out!

So thank you illustration friday for finally motivating me to commit to paper what's been in my head for over two years! Thank you, thank, thank you... and my new goal is to try and get more of these themes to apply to images from the book so I can get even more of these crazy ideas on paper and out of my head!