Illustration Friday: Eyeglasses

Love those bespectacled folk! A lens-assisted look back at my fellow four-eyes:

2013

2010

2009

2008

2008

2008

2006

2005

2004

Illustration Friday: TREE

The Illustration Friday topic this week is "tree."  This is great, because I love trees AND I love drawing trees.  I'm actually currently working on a new illustration that is 100% tree, but I can't share it yet.  So in lieu of that, I present an arboreal retrospective:

August 2007

September 2007

October 2007

February 2008

November 2008

March 2010

May 2010

November 2010

August 2011

January 2012 (but really 2004 or so)

A Glimpse (or Klimt!) into the Past

My cousin Emma is almost exactly ten years younger than me and is now studying art at my alma mater (what up, University of Dayton!)  Ten years isn't all that long in the world of higher education, and so in a lot of ways, Emma is following in my artistic footsteps:  taking the same classes, often with the same instructors, and even sometimes doing the same projects.  Today, she was treated to these two preliminary paintings I did way back in my Painting I class my junior year of college:

The project, if I remember correctly, was to do a self-portrait in the style of a master portraitist from art history.  My choice:  Gustav Klimt.  In preparation, we created these two paintings:  a representation of one of our chosen artist's portraits, and a detail of our own portraits.  

Talk about a blast from the past!  I hadn't thought about these paintings in years.  I'm heading home to Cincinnati to visit my parents in a few weeks and now want to dig up and photograph the final painting I did for this project, a full-body portrait with lots of bright, smeary, patterny colors and only the face and hands in precise detail.  I also want to start doing more bright, smeary, patterny colors in my pastel drawings sometime soon.

Thanks to Emma for sharing this.  

Illustration Friday: GROUNDED

One morning she found an unusually large turnip... When she pulled it up she was surprised to find that it left a hole
through which she could look down upon the green earth.

For this week's topic, I decided to dig into my old work a bit.  These two pieces were created back in college to illustrate the folk tale "The Girl Who Climbed to the Sky."  The story tells of a girl named Sapana who is kidnapped by a porcupine man, forced to marry him, and kept captive in his kingdom in the sky--so she's grounded but actually far above the ground itself. With a little digging, a little ingenuity and the help of a few bird friends, Sapana makes it back home safely. 

She hung there for a long time, swinging back and forth above the trees..."Come and help me," she called to Buzzard. The bird glided under her feet several times, and Sapana told him all that had happened to her.

Books Read in 2011

Well, hello world!  I haven't done much in the way of artmaking lately.  Hopefully that'll change when the calendar switches.  But in the meantime, let's talk books.

2011 saw the failure of my hard drive and the loss of my many-years-ongoing "The Books I've Read in My Whole Life, Ever, All Time" spreadsheet (it wasn't really called that, but you get the idea.)  This was absolutely devastating, but a new account on goodreads and some powerful memory searching have allowed me to begin recreating that list.  As far as I can remember, here are the books I read in 2011.  I've bolded my favorites:

Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson
Forge, Laurie Halse Anderson

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall

March, Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Bud, Not Buddy, Christopher Paul Curtis

Game Six, Mark Frost           

The Red Umbrella, Christina Gonzalez

My One Hundred Adventures, Polly Horvath

Northward to the Moon, Polly Horvath

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit, E.L. Konigsburg
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, E.L. Konigsburg

Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

The Cardturner, Louis Sachar

Moon Over Manifest, Claire Vanderpool

The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner

Countdown, Deborah Wiles

One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia

And I'm currently reading Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and about a third of the way through Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.  Here's to good art, good books, good living, and good times in 2012*!

*That's twenty-twelve, not two-thousand-twelve.  I strongly believe it's past time for the pronunciation shift.  Are you with me?

Illustration Friday: UNDONE

Two years ago, I responded to the Illustration Friday prompt word "juggle" with a picture of a chef juggling the ingredients for strawberry shortcake. Maybe you remember?

Then this fall I had an art show at a local restaurant and sold that illustration. Hurray, right? Yes, but someone else wanted to buy that piece. So I was commissioned to do another drawing like... well, a lot like that one. With a twist, to keep things interesting. This is the result:



A recipe is just a finished meal undone, right? Broken down to its most basic elements.

For Sale

Been busy this week and last working on three different projects. Hopefully I can share the finished one in the next few days. Stay tuned! In the meantime...














A few months ago I made several of my illustrations available as prints through ImageKind. I've added a few more pieces to the gallery since then. I've also seen one of these prints in person now-- it looks quite nice. To learn more or to buy a print, click here.

More recently, I've set up shop at Cafe Press to get some of my illustrations printed on things like aprons, magnets, canvas bags, stickers, and more. I ordered a few of these items myself (see photos) and am very happy with how they turned out. To learn more or to buy something pretty, click here.

If there's an illustration you'd like to have printed (on paper or something else!) that you don't see listed there, just leave me a comment or send me an email. That's very easy to remedy.

Goodbye, baseball! See you in the spring...

I've been collecting a few baseball-related images and thoughts over the last few weeks, intending to post them here. As I say a lingering farewell to the 2009 season, this seemed as good a time as any to scrap them together into a post...

1. CURRENT WORK: I spent some time today sketching the greatest baseball player of my childhood, as rumors of his retirement continue to swirl. I may do this in pastels eventually. With apologies to anyone in Seattle, I'll be doing it in red.


2. FLASHBACK #1: The recent 10-year anniversary of an incredibly exciting game (and the equally exciting but ultimately disappointing 1999 Reds season) sent me foraging in the attic for this old drawing.

It's my 16-year-old take on a photo of second baseman Pokey Reese that ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer at the time. I called it "Twelfth Inning Triumph." There are parts of it I still really like (the treatment of the uniform and the arm, the title) and others I cringe at (it doesn't look a thing like Pokey! And that red and yellow glow...hmmm. No comment.)

3. FLASHBACK #2: Seeing my flashback Reds art led my Dad to do some foraging in the attic of his own, and he came up with this grease pencil and watercolor portrait of the great Pete Rose.

This coincided nicely with the recent release of this fantastic book. And it also gives me a chance to show off my artistic genealogy! :)

4. I LOVE PUBLIC ART: One of my favorite things about Great American Ballpark is these two beautiful mosaics. They're the first thing you see when you walk into the stadium, which just makes me all kinds of happy. I mean, how could I not love the intersection of baseball and art?

The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, first professional baseball team.

The 1975-76 Big Red Machine, last National League team to win back to back World Series.

5. A LITTLE CRAFTING: I don't really have any craft skills--all my creative energy gets used up in art and, to a lesser extent, cooking--so this is about as crafty as I get. After years of absentmindedly using baseball ticket stubs for bookmarks, I decided to be more intentional about it. Ticket stub+contact paper+ribbon=voila!


6. HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: 144 days until pitchers and catchers report. In the meantime, I can always watch this on a loop. Love that hint of a smile at the end. And love that team!

Well, hello there!

It's been nothing but crickets here lately, hasn't it? Maybe my longest creative dry spell since I started this blog and re-started my art production two years ago.

There were lots of reasons, but what do they matter now? I'm back in business! I don't know how many local Cincinnati readers I have here, but if you're in town, stop by Habanero in Clifton sometime in the next few weeks. Their salsa is divine, but their walls aren't so bad right now either: I'm exhibiting my illustrations there for the next month or so!!

I've shown work in a few collaborative shows in the last few years, but this one's all me--a first. The opening reception is Friday. Maybe I'll take some pictures so you can see how delightful it all looks. :)





















Updated! Scenes from the opening...

Prints for Sale!

I'm very excited to announce that several of my favorite illustrations are now available for purchase (at pretty reasonable prices, I think!) through Imagekind. Click the link below... to peruse, perchance to purchase.

If you see something on my website or on this blog that you'd like to see printed, let me know. Up next: printing on surfaces other than paper. Stay tuned!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Christmas cards are here! I used an illustration from last fall, but had to make my own envelopes because I couldn't find any to fit my 4x6 cards. No matter--another opportunity to creatively recycle is always welcome.

Meanwhile, things are slooooow at work, with students gone for the break--and many faculty and staff, too! I found myself doodling some seasonally-appropriate doodles during the slowest points...



I LOVE this time of year! So here's wishing YOU (and our neighborhoods and world) a beautiful holiday season and a new year of PEACE, hope, and joy.

Now off to write on these aforementioned cards and maybe make some Chai snickerdoodles if there's time.

Edited, to add: So the minimum order of cards I could order was way more than my number of family and friends--and I actually have a rather large family. So if you'd like a little holiday greeting from an aspiring illustrator in Cincinnati, email me a mailing address. (I'd do a giveaway so you could use the cards yourself, but I doubt many of you want to send Christmas cards with the Cincinnati skyline on them...)

World Water Week

This week, it turns out, is World Water Week.

In observance of this, Cincinnati and twelve other cities are participating in the TAP Project this week, "a campaign that celebrates the clean and accessible tap water available as an every day privilege to millions, while helping UNICEF provide safe drinking water to children around the world." Customers at participating restaurants in these cities are given the opportunity to pay $1 for their complimentary water, which will then get passed on to UNICEF who can put it to great use: for each dollar, one child can get clean drinking water for 40 days.

More information about the human right to water:
World Health Organization--Right to Water
World Water Council

and what you can do:
WaterPartners International
Journeys Within Our Community
WaterAid

Illustration Friday: EXCESS

We live in a country full of excessive lifestyles, excessive options, excessive waste, and yet so many have less than they need. I don't know any magic solutions, but I know there's something very wrong with that picture....

p.s. This is an old piece, from college.

p.p.s. Have you seen this? Improve your vocabulary AND the lives of others over at FreeRice. Thanks to my sister Anni for alerting me to this FABULOUS way to waste excess time!

Illustration Friday: GROW 2

Take two!

Ilustration Friday: ALPHABET (take two)

I was at my parents' place today and I came across this old high school art project. Our assignment was to create our own alphabet. I went the illustration route and made the letters from storybook moments. The drawing is pretty bad and the overall look is really sloppy, but I'm still pretty impressed with some of the designs my 14-year-old self came up with. Maybe I'll revisit these in my sketchbook....

Here's A, C, G, M, N, and W. I hope the stories are obvious, but in case they're not, their titles each match the letter they're forming.