Let them wear hats!

So let it be written. So let it be done.

That Disingenuous Creature...

Some call him 'Fox'.
mediums: Construction paper, Bic ball-point Pen, White-Out, Boredom

Ain't No Routine Like an Olympic Routine!

Ah hem... so like I mentioned....I've developed what you might call an unhealthy obsession. Luckily it's for watching extremely healthy people. The Olympics have reminded me that I am actually an animator, that I have my BFA in FILM and that I should be paying attention to MOTION. I sketched this series out rapid fire last week during the Olympic diving trials.
Go USA!!!

It's best seen in scrolly vision, meaning start at the top and on your mark, get set, go!!!

I Cannot Possibly Be Expected to Create Art....

I'm in Olympic mode. My world has been dominated by trials for weeks and now it's dominated by actual events. I'm inspired and I'm sure you'll appreciate the aftermath. I'm sketching like a fiend and you'll love the "women's" gymnastics sketches that I've been pulling together. I'm too busy to post now, as the majority of my time not watching the Olympics is spent daydreaming about Michael Phelps. I hope you're soaking up the sports. I'll be back soon. I'll be back with Vampire art and Sporty drawings in a week or so, as all my time has been divied up between the Micheal Phelps and Stephenie Meyer. It's been a long time since I've been so greatly influenced by the outside world. As I'm swept into my own radical fandom, I appreciate my loving audience even more. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you. I'm excited about this upswing. Have happy days and check back soonish;)

Time for Pie!

I've always dreamed of being a domestic queen. As of today I am not yet Queen of all things Domestic. Sadly, as I creep further into my twenties, it's becoming clear that perhaps I never will be. Gasp!

In my teens I was always floored by my mom's ability to bake up a storm without ever taking out a measuring cup. I thought, and she assured me, that once I left the nest and had my own home and my own kitchen these things would just come to me. Looking at a bowl full of flour and knowing that it was filled with a cup and three-quarters of unsifted would be as inherent as my abundant beauty marks, flippy earlobes and embarassingly flat feet. . . . As the years slip by it's becoming clear that someone missed the boat when they passed out the "complete knowledge of measurements" gene. I've been living it up on my own for eight years now and my domestic goddess abilities still haven't kicked in! Pammy Kay is as me as the image in the mirror. I figured if I don't know how many apples it takes to bake a pie, Pammy wouldn't know either. It just wouldn't be fair!

I hope you enjoy this little sketch. I'm off to pack, queen of the kitchen, never. . . queen of travel, handmade sketchbooks and white sand beaches, always :)

Unicorn at 200 Fifth

I did this last night at '200 Fifth' it's one of those perfect fancy restaurants/sports bars that you find in New York. Scott got back from Switzerland so we went out to celebrate. In his honor, and also because I can't ever keep my hands still, I drew this fairy riding a unicorn while we were waiting for dinner. Luckily all the tables had crayons. I judge a restaurant by two things it's water service and it's ability to keep me happy while waiting for service. The unicorn happened first and then of course he needed a fairy riding his back. I didn't have any intention of packing it up and I was going to leave it. Sweetly enough the men in my life support me enough to fold up table paper for my blog :)

I didn't arrive in fairy princess unicorn mode. Birthday Frog happened when we first got to the restaurant and I was still ticked about my subway ride. Party mode and commuter mode are like oil and water with me the last couple of months. This summer my NYC tolerance has been at an all time low. It was a really happy evening and I was only peeved long enough to finish my angry little sketch.

This "elbow snail" was a collaborative work between me and Garrett Rose. It's his elbow and my brilliant crayoning. When I begun it was meant to be an alien but sometimes you have to let a piece of elbow art be what it wants to be. Obviously Garrett's elbow was meant to be a snail.

Anyway we had a blast and ended up at Haagan Daz for dessert. I had Baileys Ice cream, the way it was intended to be consumed, frozen and in mass quantities. If you've got some fun that needs to be had I totally recommend 200 Fifth. You might want to bring your own crayons though, there was a shocking lack of color variety. If you want to draw a bunch of Ninja Turtles you can leave your own crayons at home, they have every color you'll be needing for Leonardo and Michelangelo.

Happy 4th!!!

Here are some rubber stamps I designed way back before Christmas. I'm not designing stamps anymore, but I still love peeking at all the genius things that people make with them.

Bird Brain

I've got birds on the brain, on my little itty bitty brain. These are most likely going to end up as textiles. I'm off to a party at the Chocolate Factory in Union Square, then somehow, I don't know how, I've been talked into seeing "Love Guru." I'm hoping the Chocolate party will inspire fun sketches.

Sidetracked by Life - but Back with Pumpkin Bread

Hi lovelies! I know it's been awhile. . . but man have I been busy! I'm developing a new line of sketchy goodness - drawings to be sneak peeked sooner rather than later. I'm working like a maniac in my other life in full time animator/story boarder/lover mode. I'm busier socially than ever, which means that I'm way busy socially and deserve a butterfly medal. I had a stellar beach weekend and I have the sun burn to show for it. I look like a cheetah all over my back where the spray sunscreen most likely needed to be rubbed in.

My computer went fried egg on me, but luckily I had a lovely boy around to fix it. Now I have a factory new-old computer and I promise to never, ever say a bad word about poor Ruby Computer ever again. It would be impossible for me to ever express my complete and utter thankfulness to God/Technology/Karma etc. . . that Ruby Computer didn't decide to pull down the curtain over Surtex. The nice thing is that without a computer at home I've lived a semi-normal life recently and have taken the vacation from the computer that I have long promised myself. Now I'm back - with a vengeance, and with Pumpkin Bread.

My friend Kristen is getting married in a couple of weeks and so the perfect group gift turned out to be recipe cards. Smiling Pumpkin Bread is the tops and so I thought I'd send her off to her huge fancy house in Long Island with a map for making it. I thought you'd probably like it too, even though I'm sure it tastes best in the Fall in a big old house on Long Island :)

My illustrated recipe card collection/calendar is going to be available on Etsy in the next few weeks. If you must have your hands on them check back next month and they could be yours!

Surtex is OVER baby!!!

I'm almost recovered from the thing that was Surtex 2008! I'm still sleeping more than I've ever slept in my life. I think my body is trying to make up for the days prior to the show where I slept an hour or two, went to eight or more hours of my day job, came home and worked on my own art until the wee hours where I snuck in a nap for an hour and then tiptoed out the door to my day job again. Luckily I managed to take off a full week of work, giving me two days before the show and one day after to try and get my sea legs again.

My mom was the lady of the hour and flew up from Hawaii to take care of me and to help out with the show. I'm very lucky to be blessed with the most supportive family on the planet. It's so nice to have parents that don't say stupid stuff like, "You really have to go to sleep, this is just crazy," or "Are you sure you really want to do this show, it seems like a pretty big expense? I mean can you afford all this?" It's a relief because that's what I was saying to myself in the mirror often enough. Haha. The last thing I needed was for someone to reinforce my fears. In life I tend to fluctuate between alarmingly self conscious and worried to overly confident and cocky. This whole Surtex ordeal brought out both sides of my introverted-extrovert personality.

I'm going to be blogging about Surtex off and on over the next couple of weeks. Today I'm going to touch on preparatory materials. At twenty-six I'm very lucky to have a couple of distinct and set styles. Growing up in an artistic household and then attending Pratt Institute where I got my BFA taught me one very important thing:

**As an artist it's imperative that you create work in a style that becomes you.**

If you do artwork that's all over the place and that doesn't have a look that can be traced to you, you can forget ever finding steady work. For this year's show I saw my art being divided in three ways that really stood out to me:

1. Fashionista East - consisting of feminine but bold vectorized black line and highly saturated flat color
2. Baby Mermaids - bright watercolors based on always sweet and often funny sketchy line art

3. No Ka Oi - vectorized artwork without a solid line, driven by shape and a set Pantone color palette

--a look that a lot of my surface design is taking lately--

As an artist when you interview for a job it's not uncommon for you to have three or four resumes. If I were interviewing for an animation position it's likely that my background in apparel would have no place on my resume. If I was looking to work as a graphic designer it's doubtful that an interviewer would want to know about my experience working as an oil painting instructor at Interlochen's summer art program. I went into Surtex knowing that it was important to take this concept to heart. The last thing I wanted was for a potential contact to fall in love with my baby mermaids and get home and not be able to remember where they saw them.

I designed three separate business cards so that people could take whichever card was going to remind them of what they were interested in my art for. It turns out that this idea was pure gold and I got a huge response from people who would methodically look through the three cards and then take one for their ever growing packet of artist materials.

Here are the three business cards that I pulled together for the show:

I also had over sized postcards printed with lots of writing space and with artwork similar to the business card above that matches my blog design. That ways potential clients could write notes to themselves so that they had stuff to talk about with me later.

Since this was my first show I came into it a tad blind and a bit not knowing to expect. It turns out all the print collateral stuff was right on the money. When I do the show next year I'll create stuff with the same design principles and sensibilities. However, I will make Hella sure that they are not sent to me via DHL shipping. I think I would have had more luck with a carrier pigeon. I actually didn't get stuff delivered on time the way it was supposed to go. I ended up printing the first day's print collateral on my HP 5150 - AKA 'The Little Engine that Could.' My mom actually had to go to the DHL warehouse to pick up the cards and everything in the wee hours of the morning on Monday the 9th, the second day of the show. It was OK because Sunday turned out to be pretty sleepy and the stuff from my printer was just fine. I was upset but everything worked out A-OK no thanks to the shipping service from hell. Seriously, never use them. Never. Ever. Never. Well you can use them if you don't care about ever getting your stuff. At one point they had no idea where on the continent my stuff was. Just a word to the wise, Fed Ex has none of these crazy problems. DHL was the only major glitch for this mission. Surtex turned out to be very NASA-like to me and I talk about it in a kind of scientific way now that I have this first show under my belt.

Next time I blog about Surtex I'll be talking about my booth. Rah Rah Rah! It's nice to be back :)