Saturday, January 12, 2008

Sketches

I haven't even finished the last piece and I have ideas rolling around for another one... I want to depict something that happened to me a few years ago. I used to walk my dog around a pond that is in the forest by my old house and in the winter at 5am it is completely dark. I continued to walk there, though, because there is a board-walk with old, worn, lightly colored planks.
The day I stopped going through there in the dark was when we disturbed a Great Blue Heron on the pond. I almost had a heart-attack when I heard the sound of its great big wings at such close proximity and in an enclosed space; it was really startling... It took me a moment to even figure out what was going on and that I wasn't going to be attacked by some nocturnal beast!

Here are my rough, preliminary sketches. The Great Blue Herons are really beautiful birds... I have been really into birds lately (?). julie

Thursday, January 10, 2008

New Year contests

First of all I have to say, I really like these two illustration blogs; The Little Chimp Society and Drawn!. They both always have new posts daily, they highlight great designers, illustrators and artists as well as interesting design-y and arts-y things, and they always announce contests and call-for-entries. Two of the latter sound really cool. I don't know if I will have time to participate, but I'm going to try:)

1) posted on The Little Chimp Society, the MAiLmeART project (deadline is January 30th! They are going to sell the pieces they receive and give the artist 70%... cool things shown on their site: www.mailmeart.com)























2) posted on Drawn, the Post-it-note project
(doesn't start until February 01; check out the original post at theartoffee.livejournal.com.

back to school...

I have been busy at work and busy signing up for school... I have to go back to school so I can get an in-school deferment for my student loans- I've used up all my other deferments and forbearances :( And since there are classes at UAS that will benefit my career and my art, I decided to at least make the attempt. Now we will see if they will give me anymore money for school! I am especially excited about the John Fehringer classes (I registered for Art and Technology). I love his work and really want to see what his process is as a designer. Looking at his site it looks like he is doing all web design. I've heard he doesn't do air-brush at all any more and works exclusively in digital format; I can see how you could go that route, although I really like doing hands-on hand-work. I will post about all the exciting things I learn! Julie

Sunday, January 06, 2008

New work inspired!

Thanks to Illustration Friday I have some really good brain fodder to work with! I am determined to take my work to the next level this year... the piece I did for last weeks topic, "soar," is something I want to play with more and it actually made me get my canvases prepared and get my pastels out. I am going to play with the idea of origami birds added to my pastel background. I will post when I come up with a good solution (I have a some ideas in mind, but I'm not sure if I will like the results...) The picture isn't great, I need a new /better camera. The flash is blowing out all the detail in the trees, but you can see the basic result :) Julie



Saturday, January 05, 2008

cute wallpaper!

I just wanted to show off the wallpaper I downloaded for my son's computer... Heather Sloan has the cutest illustrations! I especially like her "monster girl" (#13 and #14 under portfolio/illustration). My son thinks the bunny saying "I think I peed" is hilarious (I do too until he tells everyone at school about it:) The wallpaper is free to download on (one of) her other site(s) barknuggets.com.

Friday, January 04, 2008

t-shirt design for a friend...

Here is a variation of the Mendenhall Glacier illustration I did a while back... It is for the Coast Guard medical clinic here (a friend of mine works there). I don't know if it is what they were thinking, but I like the way it turned out! Julie

Thursday, January 03, 2008

from the left...

This is just a short post to share this great site for left-handed artists and designers. It is a well designed site and it's fun to go through the profiles and read their left-hand stories; not to mention there are some really great artists highlighted. My sister and I are both lefties but we cut with our right hands(?)! Check it out: lefthandside.com :) Julie

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

IF SOAR

Here is my Illustration Friday try at "soar." I've had a picture similar to this in my mind since last summer when I saw a bunch of birds flying over Twin Lakes... I believe it was stormy and misty out, but when I went to interpret it I had to let loose with the color. I like the idea of the birds being origami birds. I need to add trees (if it doesn't get horribly busy) and I'd like to add some pattern. I will post the final later when I get to it;)

















Here is my rough, rough sketch... but I know I liked it. Sometimes just putting a concept on paper helps even if it isn't a perfect pencil drawing!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

inspiration

I know I just posted, but I wanted to make sure I pointed out this really great blog... it is two friends/sisters and they live 3,191 miles apart. They both take a picture every day and post them side-by-side. They both have similar aesthetics (an aesthetic I can really relate to), and many times the pictures turn out strangely and surprisingly similar. I found them at the end of their year of mornings which will be published in book form some time this year... But starting on January 15 they will be doing a year of evenings. www.3191.visualblogging.com.
It is one I can count on for (almost) daily inspiration. I have become really obsessed with needing eye-candy (design wise) to look at every day to keep me inspired... There are worse obsessions I suppose:)

Happy New Year!

I have been extremely busy, as always at the end of the year... Have to make the kiddo happy and I am an overachiever when it comes to presents and wrapping (even when b-r-o-k-e).

I felt bad that I ran out of cookies for my colleagues at work, so I found this template on designverb.com for paint-chip card holders! Really easy and cool, although I don't recommend staying up until 2am making them like I did:) There are two templates: one for a standard 3.5" x 2" business card and another for moo.com mini cards that are 2.76"h x 1.1"w (and 19.99+shipping for 100..! I guess you can upload pics from flikr... not sure if other picture services will work, but I'm sure you can upload directly from your computer!) Moo.com seems to be super cool. I have plans to get sticker books made and possibly the mini cards; they would both be great giveaways. They also do postcards; I highly recommend checking them out!

Here are pics of a few of the ones that I made... The back row has unfinished ones shown.
























I got really carried away at Home Depot and grabbed two of every color that I liked. They didn't even bat an eye. I also grabbed some of the small single color paint-chips and used those for gift tags. They worked great! They have rounded corners and yummy colors, what more could you ask for?

Click on the template size you want (open it in a photo editing program, or else it won't print as the correct size):
1) Standard Business Card Holder 3.5" x 2"
2) Moo.com Mini Card Holder 1.1" x 2.76"