The Most Fabulous T-Shirt

It has been a while since I last posted! I am back home in Washington, DC, and am currently preparing to move to a new house where I will have a larger studio space! Joy!! I will share some photos once it's all set up. Meanwhile, I want to share this great new t-shirt printer which does all-over printing (not just a square in the middle of the shirt, oh the possibilities!). Nuvango.com has a great line-up of artists selling printed work, and you can also upload your own work to get printed on various products. As an experiment, I uploaded one of my paintings and ordered a t-shirt, and I LOVE IT! Check it out.

That's me modeling the shirt, and that wall is attached to my new house!

I may eventually open a shop with them - I'll let you know when it happens. For now, this shirt is one of a kind :)

2014 Year in Review

Well it's been quite a year. At almost this exact time last year I left my day job to pursue freelance illustration full time. The next day, I moved from NYC to Washington, DC. It was one of the more terrifying and stressful times of my life. Ack! But some really great things happened in 2014, and let's focus on those for now. Here are the highlights:

I exhibited at my first two conventions ever!

Here is my table at AwesomeCon DC, which I shared with the glorious Marc Scheff.

Here I am at my Illuxcon Showcase table. Illuxcon was inspiring and loads of fun. There was an embarrassment of wonderful art and lovely people there to meet and reconnect with. I was also thrilled to sell a lot of my drawings and even a painting. I will be back in the showcase again this year!

 I produced my first Sketchbook, containing sketches from my Russian Fairy Tales series.

I opened an Etsy store, where I sell original art and other products (like my sketchbook!), and an INPRNT store where I sell a selection of art prints.

I started a series of drawings based on the animals at the National Zoo, which, lucky for me, is a short walk from my home in DC.

I dipped my toe back into teaching by leading two art workshops for teenagers, one about book cover illustration and design, and another on mural painting. Here is a shot of the mural my students created, with the theme "Our World". It was awesome and I look forward to doing more teaching.

I did concept art for a film which will be based on an Irish folk tale.

I busted out my big brushes to paint a 40 foot long mural in a children's library.

I turned 30!

I illustrated and designed the covers for a Young Adult book series which will come out in 2015. This is Book 1 of the series.

And here is the cover for Book 2! I love that the main character is a strong young woman. Keep an eye out for these (and a third book in the works!) in the coming year.

I had the opportunity to move to Oakland, CA for four months, and have been getting lots of inspiration from the art scene and all the twisty trees.

I got to be a model for the Dazzle Camo clothing line designed by Stephanie Syjuco for The Workshop Residence in San Francisco. 

I got to meet sloths and feed them apples!!!

I designed my first game character - a kick-butt 11 year old girl! Fun!

And the biggest milestone of all - I got my first full PICTURE BOOK assignment from Cengage Learning in Australia, for which I just wrapped up the last of the 23 illustrations. Phew! I will have some images from this project up once I get the green light from the publisher that I can share them. Thanks to my agent at The Illustrators Agency for bringing me the project!

Lessons learned - Overall, even though I earned less than in the years when I had a day job, I feel that last year was more valuable than any previous year of my career. I took huge leaps forward in improving my art and gaining a wide variety of freelance experiences. I am also happy to be getting a lot of work that focuses on portraying strong female characters, and also work based on folk tales, as these are two of my major areas of interest. I am still getting used to the ebb and flow of freelance life - weeks can go by without new projects coming along, which is always nerve wracking, but I am learning to make use of those times through personal projects and networking.

There were moments when the fear of failure loomed so large that I felt frozen, immobilized by uncertainty. I recognize that these moments will come along every so often, and I have found that the best way to deal with them is to just make something. Anything. A drawing, some jewelry, bake some cookies - just do what you can to get up and be productive and then get back to work. I am also working on making and maintaining connections with people - the freelance experience can be a very isolating and lonely one, and it takes some extra effort to stay in touch. This has been a year of learning and challenges and growth and fun projects and frustrating projects. It's been harder than I ever imagined, but also more rewarding and full of wonderful surprises.

And now for 2015!

Blue Fairy

This summer has been filled with a wide variety of freelance projects which have kept me very busy (a mural, 11 illustrations for a film, a YA book cover, and jewelry design, phew!). It's been awesome, but every so often I need to work on something for myself. I've been plugging away at this little series of Blue Fairies, and finally the trio is complete. All three fairies will be traveling with me to Illuxcon next month. Come meet them (and me!) at the Friday/Saturday Showcase.

(Click to view larger)

A Mouse in Love

This year, for the first time, I decided to submit a piece to the SCBWI Tomie dePaola award. I have admired author/illustrator Tomie dePaola for pretty much my entire life (his "Strega Nona" was a fixture in my childhood library), and when I read this year's challenge I got so many ideas, I had to go for it! The prompt was to create a six-panel sequence with a clear beginning, middle, and end, showing an original and consistent character. So here it is, a little love story.
(Click to enlarge)

Work Selected for Showcase 100

Exciting news! My "Swans Rescue" piece has been selected for inclusion in the Showcase 100 project, and will be part of a show in central London in April, 2015, along with a printed publication. This is the first time that the folks over at LCS and Hire an Illustrator have put something like this together. I'm thrilled to be a part of it!

Fairy Scouts

On sunny Saturdays in spring, the fairies and the hares go scouting for freshly sprouted mushrooms. With their large ears, the hares can actually hear the mushrooms as they pop up through the earth - it is said to sound something like a very quiet belch.

Graphite and white chalk on Strathmore toned paper.

Friday Fairies

I am working on a little series of fairy drawings, which may turn into a little series of fairy paintings. More to come! (Click to enlarge)

Graphite and white chalk on Strathmore toned paper.

Wizard Painting

 I have recently been re-reading the Harry Potter series (which I seem to do every few years), and I was inspired to do a little wizard painting. He is not any particular character, but I think he could live in the Harry Potter world. In any case, here he is, just for fun. 10.5x7.5 inches, mixed media on bristol paper.

Close-up

And here is the drawing that started it all.

Awesome Con DC!

This past weekend I exhibited at my very first convention! Up until now, I have only been an attendee at conventions (Comic Con in NYC and San Diego, CTN, Illuxcon, etc). As a recent DC transplant, I was looking around for artsy stuff to do in the area, and saw that my illustrator friend Marc Scheff was listed as an Artist Alley exhibitor at Awesome Con. I wrote him a "Hey dude, I'm excited that you'll be in my town" email, and he wrote back asking if I'd like to share his table, and that's how it all went down!

Here is Marc at our table. Day 1! My stuff is to the left. He was selling his beautiful art book and some sweet mugs.

Awesome Con is only in its second year, but it grew exponentially from last year, filling a HUGE hall at the Washington Convention Center. I sold prints from my Russian Fairy Tale series, my artist sketchbook, and a few folks even bought original drawings. The convention was definitely focused on comics and pop culture fan stuff (Dr. Who was everywhere!), and by the last day it was pretty clear that it was my cute stuff (bunnies, turkeys wearing hats) that this particular crowd was most interested in. To test my theory, I drew a cuddly hedgehog and put it out front, and immediately started getting more people coming to look at my stuff (and I sold the drawing).

My cute hedgehog

Overall I had a great time, I got to meet some really wonderful area artists, I am happy with how much I sold, and Marc and I already signed up for a table at next year's convention! I plan to bring more cuddly animals next time around.

I learned that at conventions you may end up doing a lot of sitting around, which can lead to some sweet sketchbook drawings!

Firebird Sketchbook: Coming Soon!

Here is a little teaser for my sketchbook, which is currently in production and will be in my Etsy store very soon! This has been in the works since the summer, when I finished my MFA thesis on Russian fairy tales and had Russian fairy tale drawings coming out of my ears. The book is 32 pages, and contains a mixture of finished drawings and process work, along with bits and bobs of story. Each book will be signed and numbered.

I must also mention that part of my motivation to get this thing done is that I will have a table at my very first convention in April - Awesome Con! I'll be sharing said table with the ever awesome Marc Scheff, who will be selling his gorgeous new art book.

Firefly Jar ANIMATION!

Hey folks! I have lots of news to catch up on, not the least of which is that I just moved to Washington, DC! I am excited to explore the amazing museums here, and get to know the local art scene. Meanwhile, I am without a day job for the first time in about 7 years! Now that I have this extra "free" time to fill, I am picking up some new skills. I've started to learn how to animate using Photoshop, and am totally addicted. I am perhaps overly proud of this rough little animation, but nevertheless here it is!

Russian Fairy Tales and an MFA

Well, it is done! As of July I have finished the Low Residency MFA in Illustration Program at the Hartford Art School. Although I consider myself a student for life (there's always something new to learn!) it does feel great to have this degree under my belt, and I am thankful for the wealth of knowledge and artistic leaps that I gained through the program.

 My thesis show hanging in the Joseloff Gallery

The major project that I chipped away at for the entire two years of the program was the Master's Thesis. I chose to focus on Russian Fairy Tales, combining my love of fairy tales and folklore with an exploration of my Russian heritage. I spent much of the first year reading stories (and different versions of the same stories), and researching Russian history, politics, clothing, landscape, architecture, etc. I finally settled on a selection of eight stories for which I planned a series of paintings and drawings. The stories vary quite a lot in subject matter, but I generally looked for ones with strong female characters (I'm always a fan of a gal who doesn't need to wait around for a prince to save her), or plucky children who get themselves out of sticky situations.

I ultimately completed eleven paintings and about sixteen drawings. Here I have posted a few of the pieces from the project. You can find more on my website.

 The Frog Princess

Swan's Rescue - from the story The Witch

 

 Baba Yaga - a character who appears in many stories

 Prince Ivan and the Grey Wolf

Home Grown Gifts (again)

Creative gift idea: personalized recipe box with favorite recipes inside.
Recipients: My good friends Owen and Sarah for their wedding.

With this box I channeled their romantic-with-a-dark-side aesthetic, and topped it off with their black cat Mim.

Recent Publications

This month I had a couple of fun items arrive in the mail! Below is a piece that I did for the October issue of Spider Magazine. Such fun, and they are so lovely to work with!


And this one is a cool story, and a good lesson on tagging blog posts/images! A woman contacted me from a French educational publication called Eingana, asking if they could use this image that I did as a project for the collective blog, Running with Paintbrushes. I did a Google Image search for Baba Yaga, and sure enough, my painting popped up. It's great that my work was discovered this way, but even greater that she actually contacted and offered to pay me!

Google Art Project

All I have to say is, Holy Cow! The Google Art Project has embarked on a mission to allow anyone and everyone to explore the greatest museums in the world, all from the comfort of your home computer monitor. Now, I must preface this by saying that no virtual experience can beat the real thing, but that said, this project is pretty darn sweet! Currently, 17 museums have participated in the project, with more likely to be added in the future. For each museum you can view a selection of paintings from their collection. The website works really smoothly (no long waits for pages to load, thank you!) and the images are available at high (HIGH!!) resolution. Go enjoy the brush strokes!!

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Homegrown Gifts: Part 2

Magnets!

Who doesn't love magnets?! And it's even more fun to make them yourself! You can use just about any junk you have laying around to make a magnet. Behold, just some of the tools of the trade:

For these particular ones (made as xmas gifts for some co-workers), I collaged magazine photos onto buttons, glued some other stuff on there, sprayed them with a gloss coating, then glued each one to a magnet!




Aside from making them as gifts, they can also be an excuse to have a party! A couple of years ago we had a party and ended up with a fridge covered in awesome magnets made by our artsy and not so artsy friends!

For these, we just used cardboard, elmers glue and duct tape, and attached magnetic strips! If you want to go down the recycling route, then, aside from cutting up old magazines, you can use those handy magnetic business cards that your local pizza joint and dentist give out - just collage right on top.

(Scott Murphy and Beth making sweet magnets!)

Fun times!

Next up: It's a SECRET!