Illustration Friday: IMPOSSIBILITY

I've drawn a lot of impossibilities - in fact I'm pretty sure it's my favorite thing to do. This is just one... that I don't think I've shared before. I imagined a unicorn from Madagascar (one of those unique and amazing places I would really love to visit in my lifetime). I think I may have pushed him a little too far in to the lemur side, but I've always thought he was an interesting hybrid. :)

Illustration Friday: SUBTRACT

Simple Sauce
art 3.375" sq., frame 6" sq
colored pencil
©2009

So, this is a little bit of cheat, but I needed to do a miniature piece for a show (deadline was this morning), so I'm posting my entry for Masterworks as well as submitting it for this week's IF theme. The idea here is there were several other tomatoes on the vine that have been subtracted to make sauce. Am I stretching it a bit? Yeah, I thought so.

There are all kinds of rules for miniature works - the general one being 1/6th scale (if the actual tomato is roughly 3" in diameter, it can't be more than 1/2" in the miniature artwork. But sometimes that's not enough! If the artwork doesn't portray a 'sense of miniature' it can be deemed a small picture, as opposed to a miniature. It's baffling, I know. Anyway, I do have that concern with this piece... but I'll keep you posted if I make it into the show. -m.

Illustration Friday: INTRICATE

So, it's been a really long time since I posted for Illustration Friday. I've got my friends & colleagues hooked on it so much that we have a weekly 'date' to set aside two hours every Friday afternoon at a local coffee bar with free wifi. But when I get there I realize I have an email to answer, or I have a deadline to meet, and I somehow blink and the our time is up. Of course, this week's theme (so right up my alley) called for a little time to be spent - I thought about it for a couple days and realized I could combine this theme with another project I've been wanting to work on - Custom 52!

So here it is, in progress - my intricate deuce of diamonds. Will post updates as they come!

PROMO '09 UPDATE: In the Mail

NEW WORK: Sticker Designs

I have worked with EK success for many years, and I can tell you it's always an amazing feeling to see me designs as finished products in the stores. Just this past weekend I wandered into a local Michael's store and discovered several of the projects I worked on over the last year have finally been released, so I share with you an example of the process!

This sticker is part of a series of 5 wedding themed designs. I did not know they were going to be cut/layered paper - it's wonderful to see the new and creative ways EK is producing their products.

This is cut/layered vellum with glitter themography. EK has changed the original design I submitted (they really like stems!), and it still looks great.

This was a fun one - toy race cars and race tracks. This is layered mylar, a shiny metallic material (that's obvious difficult to photograph). It's so much more impressive in person!

Now this is what really gets me. I've done a lot of sticker designs, completed in vector art, but these three items are from my first group of designs for Jolee's, EK's sticker embellishment line - all 3D materials. For these all I submitted where detailed sketches of various themes which where interpreted by the in-house design team. Wow! It's like they've really come to life!

NEW PROMO: "Cold, cavernous, huddled, hibernation."

The second piece of my ambitious 12 part series of promotional postcards is complete!

FEB '09:
This new piece showcases the Kodiak Bear, the largest of the Brown Bear family (about the same size as a Polar Bear), that can only be found throughout the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska. Look closely, the two little cubs form a heart shape tucked into they're mother's warm body, in honor of February's most noted holiday.

NEW WORK: Family Crest Design & Illustration

I get some unusally requests from time to time and they usually end up being the most fun to work on. This is a family crest I was asked to design and illustrate. My client came to me with very specific requests that I used to create this detailed, traditional looking crest with some very modern elements. My client is very happy with the results, an so am I!