She Sure is {Popular} Scribble me This

As a child, I was a wit. I could dance the hula. I had great hair. I was working on an ever expanding vocabulary. However, it was clear early on that my parents took their greatest reward in rolling me out for this one parlor trick. Draw a scribble. Give it to the girl. She'll make it sing.

 

I was sure my parent's friend's desire to see the girl who scribbled was just a fluke. However, apparently the interwebs and my family and friends all see my worth the same way.  My blog gets more than a quarter of its fame from society's apparent insatiable hunger for "Scribble Drawings". Google brings them  here. So today I scratch my head, and let Jon scribble away on this lined paper, where I build a popular menagerie of mingled line.

p.s. in keeping with today's Illustration Friday theme... I might be responsible for a clean million of the views on this video: http://youtu.be/8UVNT4wvIGY

Birds On A Branch

Bird Brain

Last night I went to a lecture on the migration of New York's American-Indian(hyphen? no hyphen?) tribes. The room was crowded and too warm and it smelled like pizza...which can be awesome if you are eating pizza and horrid if you are not. However, the lecture was exceptional and my fuzzy little brain focuses better when I'm inking. I decided it was officially time to christen the new sketchbook I got for my birth-day.

I sat next to some skinny and nerdy boy (swoon) who couldn't take his eyes off my page. Never intimidated by attractive onlookers - I kept drawing, fitting each bird into his respective nook and cranny. When the lecture was winding down he leaned over and pinched my elbow in that come-here-I-need-to-whisper-something-to-you way.

"Gee, you must really like birds, huh?"

YES. Yes, I really like birds.

In my defense it was a lecture about migration! I guess I should have been drawing cowboys and Indians. Stay tuned next week ;)

Happy Tuesday.

listening to right this second: "2 legit 2 quit" -- MC Hammer

Going to the Birds

I've been peeking at Spoonflower.com off and on for a while now. They have weekly fabric design contests that seem like a hoot to participate in. I'm usually just swamped for time. I like the idea of whipping something up for a challenge in a few hours, helllow Project Runway Obsession... I decided to approach this week's Fabric-of-the-Week challenge in a similar way. I set a timer and gave myself three hours. Here is what happened:

The Color Palette:

The Challenge: Use It.
Oh. Use it to draw some birds. In a repeat.

The Sketches:

The End Result:
listening to right this second: "all will be well" -- the gabe dixon band

Owl Done

Hehe. Sometimes I crack me up.

You can see the progress on this little journey here
and don't here.
Voila!

Vermin and Strigiformes Revisited

You know what my favorite thing is?

Like my very, very, favorite!?
Progress.
Word up, yo. Word up.
listening to right this second: "its all been done" -- barenaked ladies

Of Mice and Owls

Here's a couple of pages from the children's book I'm percolating with these days.
The turn around time on this project is whiplash worthy. I have thirty pages due by the end of the month. My novel hasn't really budged since November 1st. While I watch the world's writing tallies go off the charts I pull out the Col-Erase and draw me some unruly animals and everything is fine.
It's kind of killing me to see how great everyone is doing on their novels at NaNoWriMo. I take solace in knowing that I'm working hard crossing so many things off the parchment paper of stuff to do that rolls out of my studio, down the stairs through the door, down the street and across the Brooklyn Bridge as it makes it's way to Midtown.

The nice thing is that while I'm overwhelmed all the projects I have in the air, all working really means is listening to Ben Folds and drawing animals. Sometimes I even eat chocolate while I do that. So life is good and while things are crazy I'll just save it for the drawing board.

'Surviving Ebola' may be taking a back burner, but PiBoIdMo is going swimmingly. Don't forget to stop by Tara's great motivational blog to kickstart your kid's book thinking. I hope you're all finding inspiration while the year dies out your window ;)

I'll write my novel, and I'll do it this month, but right now this book is the thing!

listening to right this second: "Narcolepsy" -- Ben Folds

Frrrrrrrrrreezing

These illustration thumbs are taken from two dummies I'm in the middle of pulling together. Different books, same series. Double the fun.

In other news that starts with the letter F - I had to turn on the heat this morning.
Fall!!! Come back! I'm not ready for the tundra!!

Remember - I'm a greedy comment loving wench. Be generous. Xoxo.

Tweet Cred

This morning at "job-job" I jumped into a battle. Our graphic designer was checking Pantones against our latest promo giveaway. I'll ruin the surprise. He was designing a shirt. The shirt was made to pimp our twitter feed. It's beautifully designed, but marketing totally missed the boat! The shirt features are everyday logo with the words "follow us" running along the bottom.
Lame toast.
The thing that first attracted me to the twitter culture was the funny fan art birds that show up on people's websites. I love that this logo lends itself to wide artist interpretation.

I thrill when I find a unique Twitter Bird.

"No, no, no, no, no!" I exclaimed. "The whole fun of Twitter is designing a twitter bird in a new style!" If you're going to design a shirt do it right. We're a children's animation company for goodness sakes!! Who better to design a bit of fan art in our iconic style?
Anyway, they asked me to prove it, I showed them an array of fun cute tweeting birdies.

Then they backed me into a corner. "IF it's sooooooooo cool why don't you have one you've done!? Huh?! Huh!?" Damn it! Trapped. In the end our logo stayed and I was labeled "hypocrite".
Way to shove the thought back into the box, boys.

Sad thing is -- I've been meaning to get a little twitter bird done in She Sure is Sketchy style for quite some time. This is so I have a comeback next time. Take that! boys!!! Haha.

Here's some quick birdie doodles. Which is your favorite?
I'll finish up a couple for you to use too, maybe you're more open minded than my marketing team.
One can hope ;)

That's Not Flying... That's Falling!

I want this illustration to soar, but right now it's having trouble in its take-off.

These are three different takes of the same two-page spread I'm doing for a children's book. This is the first one I thumbnailed. It's totally wrong.
Ick. I spit on it. Phsh, psh.

I like the composition of this one. The bird's expression beneath her is laughable. These books are such a riot to illustrate. I'm so lucky to have this project on my plate. I'm excited about the imagery the author's words pull into my head.

I thought maybe this would be more dynamic with a bit of land in it?

The fact that I'm still vacillating is proof that it's not right yet.
What do you think, illustrators?

I just remembered this quote from my favorite aviatrix:

You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky. ~Amelia Earhart

Maybe this is the extra bit of inspiration I need to get this juuuuuuust right.
Happy Friday!

Digital Stamps

At one point in my career I was the founding designer and illustrator for a rubber stamp company. I recently had the opportunity to reflect on the experience. I miss creating stamps but not for the reasons you'd think.

I miss the collaboration that came when stamp artists took my images and added to them, coloring, cutting, designing and them making them their own. I loved seeing the million directions they could take an image and I thrilled at seeing my illustrations used by other artists to create new art.

So I'm starting my own company! It has a ways to go. I'm still in the process of putting it together - bit by bit. Barbara Streisand has been being pumped into my studio on a fairly regular basis. we'll be launchingOctober 15th. 2009

We'll be counting down on a weekly basis over the next month. Make sure to stop by for our freebies. Today I'm offering up this new digital stamp for your talented and creative use. Please remember that all images on She Sure is Sketchy are never to be used without permission. This stamp can be downloaded here for all your stampy needs.

If you're a stamper and you decide to use this image please leave me a comment and a note to your blog where you post your project! I'd love to see what you're up to.

Roughed Out

These are a few random bits from a storyboard I did for Job-Job a couple of weeks ago. I particularly loved the babies and the turtles and thought I might as well save the birds too. I think when I do the turtles I'll make them look a bit like fairy mushrooms.

Modify

My favorite part of the illustration process is development. I started this blog here at She Sure is Sketchy to showcase the sketches I do on my way to getting somewhere.

Everything about my concept process involves modifying my sketches and changing them a little here and a little there to end up somewhere new. So here's how my brain works. See if you can see the thought process. I warn you, sometimes it's messy.