Saturday, August 29, 2009

Banjo Sky




Decided to stay in tonight and draw. This is what I produced. I was listening to The Avett Brothers, a folk band that features the banjo, and I decided I just really needed to do a stream-of-consciousness featuring a banjo. I had a lot of fun uploading and then playing around in Photoshop. I really like the filter effect here ("film grain"), and even though the craziness and inconsistency of it was not planned it looks pretty cool. I might try to do this again on purpose at some point. It was applied after many layers of cutting, copying, pasting and redrawing. I didn't do much to the color of the drawing because I liked how it turned out to begin with. Just upped the saturation, esp. in the green ink. Good night, moon-banjo!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Skullz n Treez




Here's some wrapping paper I designed for promotional purposes. The pattern is smaller and there's more of it on the actual piece but it's easier to see the detail here when I crop it. This took many hours of labor as I needed to retrace everything in Illustrator after doing it in Photoshop--it just kept getting too pixelated. At least I got more practice at Illust., a program I dread. It's not such a horrible monster anymore.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

ALMOST DONE!


Part of the Final Page of this story. Well, not last in the story, but last that I have to finish. I've been going out of order, obviously. I have been moving my efforts now on perfecting my cover letter and fine tuning a list of agents and publishers to send this all to!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Children's Theater!

Right now I'm working on some stuff for a children's theater in Maryland. They want their play programs to be kid-friendly so they asked me to convert some drawings into vector black and white outlines like a coloring book. It's kind of fun to be working with some of these old favorites! More to come.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Europalooza 2009



Wow, it's been awhile. That's because I've been away for a few weeks now: I went on a much-anticipated backpacking trip with my sister through Europe. I have been wanting to do a backpacking trip for a few years but things kept falling through, but things finally fell in place this year and before either of us knew it we were whisked to far-off places on low-budget planes!

We first stopped in Dublin, Ireland where we visited the Guinness Brewery and visited local pubs with traditional musicians playing (I wanted to see the Book of Kells but kept missing the tours--oh well, guess I'll have to go back!) and took an evening trip to Howth, a beautiful marina outside the city.

Then we hopped a Ryanair flight to Paris--a lifelong dream for me (well, minus Ryanair). We climbed the stairs--yes the stairs--up the Eiffel Tower, visited the gardens of Versailles, and I finally got to see the Mona Lisa herself at the Louvre. I even got to taste one of my most favorite foods, escargots, in their home country (they're better there!).

Then on to Amsterdam, where I visited the Rijksmuseum (a great experience since I am a fan of Dutch painting). We took a beautiful bicycle ride through the countryside past windmills, canals and bucolic cow pastures. The night life there was something to remember as well.

After that came my (unexpectedly) favorite city of the trip: Berlin, Germany. What a unique city! So gritty and deconstructed, yet so vibrant and youthful! Everywhere we turned there was a building covered in awesome graffiti and street art. We visited a beer garden in a warehouse district that had two floors of clubs where everyone danced. The Berlin Wall too was unexpected in its artistic weight: each section had a mural painted on it by artists all over the world depicting their thoughts on the Wall and its history and future.

Finally, Prague, which was indeed fairytale-like in its architecture. The castle was very pretty and the buildings could give you hours' worth of photo-taking and scrutinizing with their ornate details and decorations. We visited the Alfons Mucha museum too, which was cool to see as an illustrator. The last day we spent in a little town about 1/2 hour away called Kutna Hora, where there is something called the Sedlec Ossuary--essentially a small church filled with the bones of 40,000 people, arranged in various ways such as garlands, crypts, and chandeliers. It was one of my favorite stops on the trip, very weird place (top picture).

I was sad to leave but now that I'm back I'm ready more than ever to get started on some new projects and finally see through to the end the old. I will be sending my children's book to some publishers and beginning the first stages of my next book, a modern fairy tale. I will also be stepping up my game in applying for some full-time jobs in the arts.

Stay tuned for more art, coming soon!