Ommmmm...G!

I've had a few really coo artists and proactive students email me about my process lately. I thought I'd share a bit. Instead of photographing a tutorial as I go along and showing you everything once it's done, I decided I'd give you a hint of how I work on something over time.

Here's my step 1: Decide what I'm going to sketch. You'd think more goes into this. On occasion I look at upcoming trends and think about plans and things. More often than not I just draw what I want to draw. I think that trends are worshiped too much. If something is good it will sell. If you know your market, you can create for them. I'd much rather start a trend than follow a trend. When I'm drawing what I want to draw I create authentic designs that are happy and energetic. BE ENERGETIC!So here's a typical page of focused sketching: I started this after getting back from a Pilates class Saturday. My brain wandered so much during the session that I didn't get a lot from it other than drawing ideas. I ran straight home to take care of my itchy sketchbook fingers.

While I'm sketching I'll put check marks next to stuff that I think has promise:

Then I crop the page and pull each little individual sketch into Photoshop where I rename it and save it. I like to darken everything up. It's easiest for me to do this in Photoshop by adjusting Black and White Levels. I'm a hot key queen, you should be too. We get here super fast this way: Alt+Shift+Cntl+B

Shazam!

Once I crop and save every picture. I dump them all into my development folder on my desktop for later, because now they're boring to me. I refuse to ever work on something that is boring. Soon they'll be shiny again and then we'll really have fun. Now I am off to draw me some fish. Fish are never boring.

Fishy

Motivation Tuesday

My Oh-So-Fab BFF and I have begun a mutual admiration society. OK, in all honesty we did that years ago, but this time we're being productive about it. On a weekly basis we make goals pertaining to building our brands, skills and companies while bettering our lives. We have weekly check in sessions to report our progress. One of our strict rules is that we have to post to our blogs on Mondays. I have decided that I want to use these Mondays to motivate myself and also to discuss where I'm at and what I'm doing in the hopes of giving other artists out there that extra little push. Wonder of wonders

I'd already posted to my blog yesterday, so this week you're getting a 'Motivation Tuesday.' We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

When I find myself making excuses, I need to think back to this idea of priorities. I am always trying to rededicate myself. I just feel like everything is so damn important! Here are some of the things that I am constantly trying to balance.

• Living an Active Life
  if I don't make it to the gym at least three times a week I know that I get grumpy, my mind wanders, my art suffers and I feel awful.
• Being social
  As a single girl in the city this is vital. If I give this up I become that raspy cat lady who never gets dressed before 3pm, existing on a diet of stale Saltines and canned soup.
  
  Being a friend could be a full-time job if I let it. I am really lucky to have so many people I want to spend time with. It makes it hard for me to prioritize. I'm not naturally social. It takes work. I know I have the ability to go totally unhealthily recluse artist. Once I get started one direction or the other it's hard for me to stop. These days I feel like I'm spending too much time out and about with friends. I need to pull back a little but it is hard to feel like I'm missing all the fun when I sit things out.
• Sleeping
  My entire life, this is always the first thing to get cut. It just feels like if there were more hours in the day everything would be OK. So 86ing sleep buys me time. Lately I get by on about six hours on a good night. Um... yeah, so I need to reassess the importance of this. There are times late-late at night that I trick myself. I think, "I'm so close to finishing this illustration. I'll just stay up and conquer it!" But then I'm not giving my body a chance to recuperate. I always forget that whatever I'm doing will still be there when I wake up. I'm starting to set an alarm clock to make myself go to bed. I'm trying to scale back so that I say, I will go to bed by 1:30 am, working back to getting to sleep before midnight.
• My Art
  I need to put in a lot of time every week on my personal work and my client's work. It's my dream to have my next tradeshow roll around and to just casually stroll into the convention center, well rested and so completely prepared that nothing extra has to be done prior to getting there.
• My Business
  I really try to keep this separate from 'my art' in my head. I put everything dealing with liaising, follow up calls, promotion, digital footprints etc. in this pile. It is not supposed to be in anyway lumped in with the act of creating. I need it to have a life of its own. The trouble with this is that a lot of it needs to happen in the day time business hours which is sometimes difficult because of....
• Job-Job
  This is the easiest to balance with everything else. My job is wonderful. I get there, I draw some cute stuff, I talk to people I genuinely like. My problem is letting things go and leaving after I've been there for eight hours. Sometimes I convince myself I should just put in more time. It's pretty obvious I don't have any extra of that.
• Education
  I'm always working on this. I read a lot, both books that are helpful for my career and books that are fun. I subscribe to several 'smart' magazines. The subway really spoils me. I have a 35 minute commute and it leaves me more than an hour to read a day. I just feel like I need more. I'm at an age where a lot of my friends are looking at grad school and deciding where they're going with other endeavours. The nice thing is that I know exactly where I'm going. I feel like I am successful in everything I'm working towards. The goal is to be more successful.
  
  I know I don't ever want to sit down in an academic adviser's office and be told what idiot class I need to take to complete a degree again. At the same time, I miss the classroom. I miss the energy that was in such rabid supply at Pratt. Just being there is exciting to me it's almost as if the air is crackling and everyone is feeding off each other's creative process. So I'm trying to find a way to add this to the mix too.

I want to make this idea of making room for the important things my mantra. It's all a matter of balance. Speaking of which. I really need to get to bed. Typical.

Let Freedom Ring

If my life were a Venn diagram, the beach and happiness would always overlap. Last year I some pals and I discovered Long Beach and in my opinion when it comes to NYC and the Atlantic, it's the only way to go.

I woke up this morning with the sun across my eyes. I jumped out of bed like it was Christmas and ran to grab my suit. I had sunscreen on before I brushed my teeth ;) The fourth didn't disappoint. I got so much wave jumping, gossip mag reading, Dorrito Eating and sunning bliss in, the day left me critakachiced. The sky looked enormous and bright. I snapped away with my Nikon. This week's new fabric repeats will steal a some of this thunder. I'm so thankful that my career lets me 'work' just about anywhere.

I'm craving sun these days. I thought I was going to go crazy if I had to go another day without direct sunlight. My plants have been taking the torrential downpour considerably better than I've been. Sadly, it means I probably couldn't hack it as a vampire.

I hope your Fourth found you happy to be alive and thankful for our founding fathers, watermelon, fireworks and the freedom to do what you please.

Listening to right this second: 'Boys, Boys, Boys' - Lady Gaga

Where You Least Expect It

NYC has been Coco Puffs lately. The weather has really been getting me down. As a result I feel my art suffering. My typical Pollyanna ways have been dragged away by those really creepy dark monsters that show up in the movie 'Ghost'. Yeah those guys. Things have been bad.

I had been consciously avoiding seasonal depression. This winter just seemed SO long. Under the impression the rain has to be evaporated back into the sky before more can show up, it's defied everything I've ever learned about the water cycle. Then we seemingly skipped Spring. This darkness has been the last straw.

I was pretty sure Bloomburg was going to officially cancel summer.

Then, on my walk home on Thursday, navigating my way through puddle after puddle and enjoying the cadence of the torential downpour on my 'brella, the sun came out.It reminded me how unexpected inspiration can be and how lucky I am to be living in my beautiful Brooklyn, doing what I get to do every single day. It's ridiculous how easy it can be for me to forget that. As you were.

Listening to right this second: 'Down' - Val Emmich

And The Fast and Loose Award Goes To...

Me? Really?! Me?! You like me! You really like me!!!

I love that joke.

Here are some boards I did today for my next movie.

When I originally started working at job-job my hand got slapped fairly often for the intensely rendered storyboard frames I would do for each project I was handed. They wanted it rough and they wanted it now. We'd go head to head. Figuring stuff out on the computer and stabbing shots out digitally seemed barbaric. You know me, I love the pencil only slightly more than I love challenging authority. Times were tough.

Slowly, ever so slowly I've gotten to this zen spot with job-job. I adore it there. When I'm storyboarding that line from The Three Amigos often comes into my head and I think "Storyboard like the wind!" Haha. We've reached this insanely happy spot where I knock this stuff out, they go, "we love it, we love it!" Then we call it a day. See Robert Frost?! Sometimes the path of least Resistance makes all the difference. This has been a big deal for me. It's allowed me a whole new way of seeing.

Yay for new tricks.

Listening to right this second: 'More Bad Times' - The Presidents of the United States of America

She Sure is Scrappy

Where do you do your best thinking and sketching? Place? Medium?

I'm often inspired by things I can't quite put my finger on. I make shorthand notes to myself on post-its and little worn scraps of paper. The other night a friend was digging in my purse for a chapstick and asked, "Do you keep a Guinea pig in here too?" There's that kind of paper in my purse, tons of it. I clean it out every once in a while to catalog and regroup.
It was worse in college - in college I kept scraps in the back pocket of every pair of jeans I owned. Sometimes they'd make it out before the laundry happened, but the ones that didn't went the way of detergent-drowned paper pulp. Now I'm a grown up that never happens because I carry a purse, a hamster-ready purse.
Yeah.

Listening to right this second: 'Music Box' - Regina Spektor

Summerstage Fever

I spent the day in the SUN!!! I'm so happy to know that I live in New York City again. It's been Seattle here since May. The sky was so many shades of blue, and the clouds were just plain showing off.
It was a thankful to just be alive day.Summerstage blew my mind today. More specifically Esperanza Spalding blew my mind today. It's rare that I find someone who leaves me in complete and utter awe. Her performance was inspiring in every way. I watched most of it with my mouth wide open in shock at her shear genius and presence.She bopped around so quickly and switched from instrument to instrument so often that I stayed in quickdraw mode. That bass is just an extension of her arm, she tosses it around like it ain't no big thing. "Oh, I just happen to be able to sing with more confidence and clarity than anyone has a right to while I play this upright bass better than anyone you've ever heard play an upright bass. What's new with you?"

Eventually she covered a Nina Simone song that gave me goosebumps. I abandoned my sketchbook for standing and swaying and clapping.
Good times.

A Page from My Book

I've been doing a lot of sketching with my Tombow Markers these days. If they were a boy I would marry them. Seriously. I have no complaints and you know that is seldom the case with the men I date. ;) These Tombow markers are the greatest. They allow for a varied line and weight. They're comfortable in your hand and skinny enough to shove into just about any purse or clutch. Of course they're Acid free. The brush part rivals any other brush pen I use, it keeps its point crispy and perfect for ages. In addition they have that other side with its little nubby point that is perfect for writing, note taking and less brushy sketching.

I thought I'd show you something straight from the book today. These days I'm filling pages to the brim. My dad and I had this fantastic father/daughter talk a few weeks ago about the preciousness of paper. I'm happy to report it has me living Greener than ever. That's saying something because I've been hugging trees since the eighties- trust me that was when it was weird, wayyyy before it was cool.

Motivation Mondays

Gerber Daisies are my favorite-thing-short-list, barely beneath Golden Retrievers and right above Hawaiian Shave Ice. These petals are from a smart boy's bouquet. The colors were too much for me to waste in a vase of water so I taped them to some paper. I justify this flower torture because they'll live forever when i make them into a winning design.

This little orange was from a quick marker sketch done on the back of a Vitamin Water receipt from Wholefoods. I've been carrying these little baby markers around in my purse. The lack of solid black line can get me thinking in a totally different direction.

My sketches tend to be in monochrome. I try to grab a few markers or colored pencils on my way out the door an make myself use them before I get home again. Color isn't the easiest for me. Sketching just happens but color takes a lot of thinking time.

How do you incorporate color into your thought process?

Listening to right this second: 'Like Dylan in the Movies' - Belle and Sebastian