Sketches on the Beach

Return of the Cute Girls

Okay! I know, I know. I haven't posted in a stupidly long amount of time. I have an excuse though, honest! I'm actually so busy with freelance work at the moment. As I'm freelancing I really strive to keep my client's confidentiality. That way they're allowed to use a trade secret approach to any product or design I make for them. That client confidentiality goes right out the door the minute I flaunt the nuts and bolts on my blog while we're building stuff. So when there's not a lot of new work on my blog it usually means I'm busy working but that everything is under wraps.

However, one of my favorite projects I'm working on right now is just too fun for complete secrecy. These are a couple of the drawings that we decided to discard recently. I loved them too much to completely toss them aside. The products for this new client are going to be soooooooooo spiffy! I love my other freelance clients too. I've been really lucky lately, all my freelance clients have great stuff for me to do and work is totally exciting development-wise. Juggling it is hard sometimes, but it's more than worth it.

Since I'm such a nerd, in addition to my freelance work I'm chipping away at my independent stuff. I'm still working on my children's book. Hopefully I will have some pages to show off before too long. My biggest goal for the late summer and early fall is to redesign that website we all know and love so much, that's right - we'll be creating a new face for www.AmberAlvarez.com. Please contain your excitement.

Growing Up Keats

These illustrations are all for a little movie I'm working on right now about the life of Ezra Jack Keats. I'm waiting to hear back from the lawyers of his estate. There's only so much we're allowed to do. We're allowed to use his original book covers but none of his original artwork. We also want to be "sensitive" about the subject. That's a word being thrown around a lot at the office this week. It's just plain weird having to create art about an artist. They don't want me to in anyway use his style of illustration and they have all these rules about the difference between "homage" and "satire." Hopefully these pass the test and I can move on to animation soon. I really think these are fun to do. I like the bold lines and while they're different from my typical stuff they're a closer marriage between the way I draw and the way the company's work looks. They've been great about giving me creative license and allowing me to make these stand away from our typical style at the studio.

Splish and Splashed - All done!

Here's that pattern I was working on. Here it's shown on an infinite repeat which is where the pay off comes. I'm pretty happy with the result but part of me can't decide if I like it better with the raindroops spread out the way they were last night or if I like them now that they're all squished together. I thought for the splish and the splash to make sense they'd need to be in a downpour. Now I'm not so sure.

Splish Splash

I love walking in the rain. . .but so do jungle animals! I love textile design, I love the math side. I think that's why I'm an animator, scientific principals and wild creativity always seem like the best marriage. This is a rough design. It still needs a lot of work. I had to do it in Photoshop as my version of Illustrator is acting all kooky. I hope when I open the illustrator files tomorrow at the Manhattan studio that everything works perfectly and I can turn this into a proper textile design and a fab repeat. Some of the raindrops still need to be moved for line up purposes and stuff like that. I'll post the final tomorrow! xo - Amber

So Many Fish In the Sea

Well, this particular project was great, due to the fact that it combined most of the loves of my life, namely, mermaids, Coney Island and creative freedom. I have a friend who's dusting off her party planning chops for the event of the Summer. As she sees it it's up to me to come up with advertising. It's a huge dating day, Brooklyn-style with a lot of young, single cuties. My only directions were, "Make our event look like the best thing you could ever hope to do with a Saturday!" Oh and I had to include the info too. I started by doing a google search for Coney Island (something I admit to doing all too often) I found this:

I REALLY liked this sign. It got me sketching. I came up with the lettering which started really detailed and had to be watered down and simplified. The neon thing is still slightly present, but it doesn't over power that lovely lady on the bottom. Of course, lately whenever I start sketching I end up with a pretty girl's face. There's only so much you can do when you've got a lovely girlie staring up at you from the pages of your sketchbook. . . . MERMAID. . .mermaid. . . MERMAID!!! The "fish in the sea" thing grew from there. Dating, Coney Island, fish in the sea!?! It's official I'm a genius. Now our mission has a slogan.

Oh to be a full-time mermaid artist, (by that I mean a mermaid who draws for a living). I guess I'm pretty much a full-time robot artist. I'm living a different kind of dream. . . a ten year old boy's dream. Not that I'm complaining. . . . I love my robot job. Besides I'm young, we'll work up to the mermaid gig.

Polo Boy

I like this. I like this a lot. I like this more than anything I've done in a long time. I think that's bad. I think that I shouldn't like this doodle so much. I see it working as a logo for a soccer team, or even a little weird emblem Polo shirt style? Of course, this could just be delirium talking. DELIRIUM? No I don't think so, I think it freakin' rocks!

Hotlanta

See the Sea Horsies?

Last Sunday my friend Steve's six year-old asked me if it was my job to draw sea horses. Mind you, this is the same kid who once asked my permission to do "math" in my living-room. When I asked her if there was any grand reasoning behind her sea horse inquiry she got pretty thoughtful and then answered, "well. . . it's all you ever do!"

That's when I realised she was right. I have a problem. My post-it note doodles and telephone scribblings all point the way of the horse these days. This all stemmed from a conscious effort to develop some sweet companion-like fish for my Baby Mermaids. However, the conscious took a walk weeks ago. I always try to keep you abreast of my insanity, this week it's of a sea horse variety. The horses below are a few of my faves. These particular sea horse friends come to you from the corner of my telephone book and the backs of a few odd Starbucks' receipts.

Month by Month

I've been working on a fun little calendar project lately. It's not exactly in the vein of my typical style, but I wanted to put it up since it is fun and fun is me!

We ran into some problems with this little cupid baby. She was my favorite out of all of the work here, but they were afraid that she was too nude for the kids this would be going to. I forget how immature kids can be sometimes. I do think it's pretty obvious she's just a little baby. What's wrong with a nekkid little baby with a bow and arrow!?
Below you can see here as she dons more modest attire. Ahem.
Funnily enough, growing up in Hawaii, I always associate March with kites and sandals. I guess kids in the East never get this experience as I've been told that the attire of my little kite girly will need to be changed as well. Darn me and my inappropriate dress! When will I ever learn?
I love this kid below, but think he should have been a tad shorter. I debated just cutting his coat to line up with his little boots but after playing around with it realized so much of his charm is in that little bare spot of leg. Of course it could just be that I like as much exposure when it comes to attire as possible.
The bunny on this one is going to have to go too. Apparently bunny = Easter which also equals religion and the month of April, all no-no's. So I have to think of another way to show May. I really liked that bevvy of Gerber daisies. I'll figure out a way to keep that row.

This pic below is a bit of a self portrait. I don't think a June ever passes without a teddy-bear picnic. Actually just last year I gathered up a bunch of girls and we took off to Sheep Meadow in Central Park for a teddy-bear tea party better than anything Paddington would have been able to pull off. That's saying a lot. After all, Paddington's a pretty capable kinda guy.

They love the image for the month of July. It doesn't sit right with me at all. Now that I put it out there they don't want me to change it. The biggest piece of advice I can ever give any artist is to never show someone something that you don't want to do, or think might need a change. Alright, the dolphin's hogging the show here what a distraction from those perfect Hawaiian palms! They're probably my favorite thing I've drawn on this assignment.


This one's pretty great. The filling in the cornucopia is a repeat. It's stuffed doubly full of the exact same stuff, but I think it looks really good for what it is. Sometimes it's okay to cheat on a drawing as long as it doesn't really LOOK like you cheated.

I'm going to have to add a close up of that little squirrel, he's too darn cute to be that hard to see.
I'm going to be working on a new stationary line over the next two or three weeks for the Spring 2008, so there's sure to be some exciting posts! Keep checking I promise not to neglect you for so long again!