Happy Halloween!

Just for fun, I started this piece last weekend and finished it during the week. I put a couple pics of it in-progress up on Instagram, but I wanted to share it with everyone here, today. This little character (Charlie the Shy Pig) has really stuck with me and I had SO much fun dressing him up for halloween.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Rose Hearts"

Happy Valentine's Day!
This was design did not start out as a Valentine's theme. At least, not that I know of. I suppose I could have made the assumption with the only direction of the assignment being "heart shapes made of roses". I tried to find traditional and non-tradional ways of showing the requested icons. Some results worked better than others. I was afraid the heart made from petals wouldn't read well in vector art, but it was apparently the heart shaped rose bud that did not - as can be seen in the change made by the production team after I submitted my final art. I'd also tried to keep the colors varied, including oranges and yellows along with the whites, pinks and reds. But this theme was released last month with other Valentine themes, so I guess they felt the need to make the colors more universally Valentine's related/monotone at the production stage as well.

Working digitally makes things much easier/faster with this kind of theme. I only had to draw 3 or 4 detailed rose variations and 4 or 5 rose petal variations, and use them to create all the varied icons on the sheet. Flipping and rotating the individual pieces so duplicate roses can't be easily identified, I pieced it all together like a puzzle (FYI, I created the original sketch the same way, using photoshop). Along with the color changes, it gives the sheet a nice variation of shapes with uniform "building blocks" to hold it all together.

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Hearts & Stars"

Happy February! I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day, but I have done a LOT of heart and love themes stickers. This is one of the most recent, and most experimental/non-conformist of the bunch. I'm still not sure what material they are actually printed on (haven't seen a sample), but during work on this project, they were rumored to be going on chipboard (a rigid and thick material, compared to standard paper adhesive stickers). I was asked for a doodling style which recently became a popular theme itself, on stationery products at the time. As you can see, I initially included words and phrases in the design, but they were eventually removed because they were deemed illegible.

I started out with a very "pop" color theme (cyan, magenta, bright green, black & white), but I was asked to revise to include red. Eventually the green came out all together and magenta, red, and cyan became the final dominant color way. Personally, I really prefer my first submission - layout with text and color, but I still can't wait to see what the actual product looks like. :)

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Holiday Snowflakes"

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a lovely New Year's Eve… and recovered well on New Year's Day! Is it snowing where you are? It hardly ever snows where I am, and I do miss it.

These stickers are part of a very fun collection called Parcel (based on vintage Christmas decorations)… named after and developed with a shop of the same name in Montclair, NJ (just around the corner from where I used to live). It's an adorable shop that sells vintage items and paper goods of all kinds. If you live nearby, I highly recommend a visit. As you can see, the final product changed from the original sketch in favor of larger icons. Seeing the actually samples was also a surprise, sometimes I never know what to expect from the translation from sketch to 3D production. They certainly are beautiful… (if I do say so myself).

New Work: Sticker Sunday - "Santa's Valet"

Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone, who celebrates it, had a lovely Christmas Day! Santa's big night is done and it's time for him to put away his working clothes for another year. :)

This sticker design changed after my sketch was approved and submitted, as it turns out I completely forgot his hat! I thought the pajamas and slippers were a cute addition, but I totally understand having to lose them in favor of including Santa's hat.

Enjoy the holidays & relax… I'm sure that's what Santa's doing right now!

New Work: Sticker Sunday, "Giving Thanks"

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
This was a fun and interesting subject to tackle with stickers (and scrapbooking in general). We usually try to avoid people in scrapbooking stickers, because… well, they probably won't look like the people that are being scrapbooked about (and let's face it, it's hard to translate faces into simple cut paper shapes). With this theme, we were able to fudge the scenario a little more, since the subjects shown are not meant to be the actual people your scrapping about, but accents to highlight holiday photos, school projects, or anything else you like. You can see that they kept the bottom icon the same, while changing the top icons so the cornucopia was the largest, instead of the hat and headdress. Makes sense to me. Personally, I think the faces still came out a bit funny, but overall a fun sticker sheet for a wonderful family holiday.

Eat tons this week, ENJOY IT and be thankful for it! (Not guilty! No guilt for Thanksgiving - we can feel guilty at New Year's when we don't fit in our party clothes. ;)

New Work: Sticker Sunday, "Happy Halloween!"

Happy Halloween! In celebration, here's one of my favorite recent sticker sheets. I just love how they produced these stickers, I couldn't have picked better materials & colors myself.

Merry Christmas!

This is a drawing I did for my Christmas Cards this year. It's one of my first truly melded traditional/digital images. The drawing was fully rendered in black and white on tan Rives BFK paper. The drawing was then scanned and fully colored digitally. I was very happy with the finished piece. I had three patterns papers that I used in making the cards, so the pattern in the background of the illustration changed according the card it was placed on.

I will update with photos of an actual card shortly.

Enjoy!