I’m not saying that I have a lot of down-time at work, heavens no, but every once and while I find myself twiddling my thumbs for one reason or another.  Sometimes I’m waiting for someone to get back to me with revisions, sometimes I’m waiting for a file to PDF, sometimes there’s only 15 minutes left before a meeting and I just can’t bring myself to start a new project.  So at those times I’ve started “doodling” in Illustrator.  Little practices and exercises to keep my mind creative and my fingers quick.

Here’s a piece that I did after a particularly rushed and stressful string of days.

A little dutch saying that I repeat in my head when people start asking me to do more things than I can.

I decided to start forcing myself to do these drawings at work (as opposed to facebook-ing or reddit-ing, or whatever else I would be doing to kill time), because I was never much of a doodler  and it’s something that has always bothered me.  When it comes to an assignment or deadline-driven project, sure no problem- I’ll draw for hours, but drawing just for the sake of drawing has never really engaged me.  I’ve got dozens of notebooks and sketchbooks, but they’re full of lists and to-dos and plans.  I’ve spent very long periods of time post-college drawing nothing at all.

I’m working on fixing this problem.

So I participated in another Drink Philly show! (those guys are so good to me)  I’ve been super busy lately with freelance junk (!!! more on that later) so this was a very last minute project, but it actually ended up being a really fun way to give my brain a break from Photoshop and make some cool new stuff.  First I decided to submit this older piece:

And then in an effort to actually cover some wall space I decided to create a couple more hex signs.  Appropriately enough, Yards Brewing Co themed hex signs.  How cute!

The first one I did is based on the Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce Ale (which is not an ale at all, but one of my new favorite alcoholic beverages):

The center piece was drawn from an existing traditional design, but the rest I kind of made up on the fly.

The second on is based on the Brawler:

This one is largely based on a traditional design, which ironically enough, is a symbol of peace and contentment.

I’ll take some good photos of the final prints once the show is down and I’ve got my pieces back- my favorite part about the hanging was using embroidery hoops as little frames for the canvas prints.  I dare say this is one of my more adorable projects to date.

On a related note- it’s also made me realize how much I’ve grown to enjoy vector art.  I’ve always been a pencil and paper, collage, and Photoshop kind of girl.  Lots of hands-on, lots of texture- but through my job I’ve gotten really good at navigating around in Illustrator, and this project has me wanting to try my hand at more vector art.  I’m curious how much I can come up with- and how fast!

The last update I have is that freelance project (the one that’s been consuming my life for the past three months)- I illustrated a children’s book!  It’s silly, about turtles and frogs, and pretty adorable.  So once all the edits are over I’ll post some pre-publishing teasers

And now, for me at least, it’s bedtime.  Ciao!

I’ve got a little more new work to share.  I’m starting a new project as we speak- I’m finally going to try and tackle another carousel book, a big project for me, but we’ll talk about that later.  First, let me tell you all about the show I participated in for the last First Friday.

Drink Philly opened up their office for the first time as a gallery space and invited the public in for beer sampling and pretty pictures.  It was a little bit of a melting pot show with a couple of fine art painters (Megan Coonelly and Brit Miller) and a photographer (Jimmy Lin) and two illustrators (April Kuhn and myself).  It went over really great, was massively attended (see below), and was a lot of fun!

Hopefully we’ll be working with them again and participating in more shows in their space.  It also served as great motivation for me who, post-college, has been having a lot of trouble getting my act together.

And here are the two new pieces I created for the show.  I used the same techniques as I did in my last post (that piece was also in the show).  It’s very involved and not totally practical, but I think the effect is really interesting and it also serves as a tool to get me more into the project (I love cutting and pasting and playing with paper!)

Because I’m so proud of it, here’s the drawing construct first:

At the time, because the drawing/cutouts/shadows were relatively complex I kept the colors pretty simple…  Looking at it now, I kind of want to either redo the piece, or go back in and spend some more time with the painting aspect.  We’ll see….

And here’s the other piece that I did, which turned out to be my favorite.. even though it had the most involved and annoying process.  I ended up drawing everything on different layers of layout bond, which I photographed separately and digitally composed (because layout bond is too thin to make the 3D constructs out of- hence the annoying rippling that I encountered in the first piece), then I printed the drawings, drew back over them to get good, thick, textured lines, and then I cut, composed, and took the final photos.  A lot of fuss, but I think totally worth it because I kind of love how it came out.

It’s definitely the best 3D effect I’ve gotten so far- and it carried through really well to the final product.  Probably has a lot to do with the nature of the drawing, the fact that it’s kind of in an empty space (no real perspective to deal with), but this is still a learning process so we’ll have to see what interesting new road blocks I run into with the next piece!

Thanks for looking, and the next time I’m in a show, maybe I’ll actually give some notice, invite some people, and we can bust the seams out of that gallery!