Drawing again

As recently as a year ago, I told a friend that I just didn't love drawing anymore. I remember feeling sad about saying this, but since I haven't drawn much in the past 10 years, I felt it was probably true.

Five weeks ago, however, when I started my amazing class with Lilla Rogers, I found myself not only loving it, but craving it. I began carrying a sketchbook and an ink pen again, everywhere. I have been drawing the shapes of the hardware in a subway car, my shoe laces, my son's face as he plays iPad. I have also begun drawing from my imagination, which, outside from my childhood, I don't do much of. And this is where I've begun to find some unexpected joy -- in my imagination. How cool of a (re-)discovery after all these years.

For this week's assignment (the last one of Part A), we focused on the gift market and created a zipper bag with a "lush" or "hyper-lush" design. Popping colors, florals, fantastical or dreamy subjects, lusciousness. Because I enjoyed my first assignment so thoroughly, I decided to also draw this design with a black pen and an 8.5 x 11 sheet of printer paper. I scanned it in, added color, and moved the elements around. The first image here is the one I submitted, but I really loved creating the bottom two as well, so I thought I'd include them here.

Painting again (Welcome back!)

This week's assignment for Lilla Rogers' class was about wall art, with a focus on collage, paint, layers, and text. Our color palette was limited to neutrals, plus the colors of our birth sign. I'm a Taurus (May), and my colors were green and yellow.

I'm a somewhat messy artist, but because I've been working out of our bedroom, I don't go nuts very often anymore. But this week, I did not hold back, and I pulled out art supplies that I haven't used in years. It felt tremendous to just sit down and paint, and to smear around so many layers of oil pastels that my finger nails were caked with the colored oil for days. I kept saying to myself, "Welcome back."

Hand lettering

This week's assignment for my class with Lilla Rogers was about children's books. Everyone was to create a cover or a spread for Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The Snail and the Rose Tree, with character development and hand-lettering as our focus.

Although I pretty much choked on developing my characters, I spent a ton of time on hand-lettering. I absolutely love illustrations with hand-lettering, but I never felt I'd be very good at it, and I found this part of the assignment to be extremely rewarding. I've already incorporated some of the lettered styles I created into my current children's book illustrations, and it felt great!

A bit of what I made this week:

Pods and plates

This week's assignment for my class with Lilla is about Home Decor, and we are focusing on pod-types of plants and dinnerware sets. I'm still not sure what I'll go with, but here are some possibilities. If you'd like to weigh, your comments are most welcome. (:

Over in the Meadow submission

Outside of some freelance work and being Archer's mom, I've spent most of the past three months illustrating books for a new children's book publisher. I've said this about a million times lately, but it really is a dream come true.

It was my teacher, Mark Mitchell, who notified my class of the call for illustrators back in February. I read the submission guidelines and got to work. About a week later, and with crossed fingers, I sent these two pieces in. Over the next several days, I refreshed my email's inbox about 500 times, hoping for good news.

That email did arrive, and it's been a scary-wonderful experience since.

A long lost painting found. Thanks, Bobby.

A couple weeks ago, I received a friend request on Facebook by someone I did not recognize. I generally try not to answer those, but I accepted right away. I was annoyed at myself for doing so, and I decided to keep an eye on his posts for any chicanery.
Yesterday, I had this sudden urge to check my Other section within my Facebook messages (which I almost never do), and I had this message:

Hi! So I'm pretty sure I bought gigantic painting of yours. It's about 6 ft tall, and it appears to be of a man that looks not unlike Norman Mailer, sitting in a flannel shirt, with a cup of coffee. He looks to be sitting in front of a computer, and the word "The" is below the computer, as in "...New York Times"...did you paint this portrait? If so, I love it! Who is that guy? Is it Mailer?
If you didn't paint it, I still love it.
Thanks!
Bobby

I was FLOORED. All caps.

Back in 1994, I had lent a painting to a local Chicago restaurant. I moved to New York in 1995, and I just didn't take care of my loose ends. I failed to inquire about it, the restaurant closed down, and I never saw that painting again. I have always kicked myself for letting that happen, as the painting had represented a shift in my student work, and the actual painting of it was a very meaningful memory for me as well.

And then this message one day on Facebook. How amazing.

Now I know that it wasn't trashed, that my immature inability to call that restaurant before I left in 1995 didn't result in complete regret, and that there is a person out there that would not only pick up that painting, but he would search for me, just to let me know that he had it and liked it.

It was quite a day for me yesterday. Meaningful in so, so many ways. Thanks again, Bobby, for seeking me out. I suspect your life will be full of creating little miracles for people.

It's critique night with Giuseppe Castellano!

Tonight is critique night!

In March, my wonderful and generous illustration teacher, Mark Mitchell, made arrangements for a critique session with award-winning illustrator and Art Director at Penguin US, Giuseppe Castellano.

Giuseppe created a mock assignment for our class, based on the very first Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books (Giuseppe also oversees the imprints of Grosset & Dunlap, the original publisher for both series). He gave us very specific guidelines to follow, and encouraged us to treat this as an actual submission. The class was excited and enthusiastic, and everyone worked diligently to get the assignment turned in on time.

After reading through The Tower Treasure, it was the road leading up to the tower and the yellow jalopy that stuck out for me. I used my Brooklyn photographs and a couple of watercolor paintings to digitally collage my cover. It's been a couple of months since I created this, and I can now see many things I'd do differently, but I really can't wait for this critique. I'll let you know how it goes!