Giant Robot 2's Eleventh Annual Post-It Show

Hello my long-wondering-what-I'm-up-to blog followers! Let's just say my 2014/15 years have been a time of introspection and exploration. I've been taking workshops, webinars, and online classes. I've been taking trips and attending conferences. Basically, soaking up a bunch of knowledge and being inspired a whole lot.

And I've been creating. I've continued to experiment with my brush-pen patterns and designs. I've even started doing some representational experiments. I have an exciting new personal project focusing on just that, I'm hoping to get it started in early 2016.

In the meantime, I'm very excited to announce I was invited to participate in Giant Robot's Post-It Show Eleven! The show opens at the LA gallery on Dec 5th, 2015 (check for show news here). Here's a preview of the pieces I submitted to the show:

15 post-its submitted 

"7 of 15"

Some interesting bits about the show this year: All artwork is completed on actual Post-it notes. All Post-it's are $25 (50% goes to the artist). Over 450 artists are confirmed for this year's show — including Dan Santat, Susie Ghahremani, J. Otto Semibold, and Jamie Zollars!!  (forgive me other children's book peeps, the list is SO LONG I may have missed you).

Happy Holidays!!

To all my Interweb friends and followers – have a happy, happy Christmas and merry New Year!!

I hope to post process images later… I was all over the place with ideas this year, so there's a lot on the "cutting room" floor that I hope to use for future cards and/or projects.

Happy Holidays!

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And a little behind-the-scenes process work:
First, after trying to start three times before, I finally decided to center the image on the road runner. I'd had a lot of fun drawing him for my card two years ago and I'd already had a special rubber stamp made of him, so I would get to use it again:

These two images give an idea of how I build illustrations - I start with rough sketches. If I get something I like, I scan and piece together an overall layout template to use to either transfer or as a light-table guide. In this case I had to transfer the old-fashion graphite way, because the paper I did the final drawing on was ultra-thick (I mean NO LIGHT was getting thru that sucker).
I also had to plan for the paper-punched layered star (fixed in place with a gold brad), which looks like a moon in this template.
At this point, I was still going for 3 road runners. I eventually decided against the 3rd because I didn't like the way his beak stuck into the back of the front road runners head and two seemed enough to communicate the message of loved ones and/or friends. BTW, the mountain range in the background is the actual Sandia Mountain Range, as viewed overlooking Albuquerque.


My sketchbook page of swatches and notes… trying to decide what colors to use, materials, trying out stamp colors, etc.


This is the the final illustration with no digital adjustments, straight-up scan.