mt swan

happy friday! 

i have lots of big news to share in the next couple weeks. it's

so hard to keep everything in. but one is a new portfolio site designed

by the lovely meg of ghostly ferns. 

on my list for today; going to the beach, gotta clean the house for my moms

visit, and work on some cute logo designs for a client. yep i have the

hard life! 

mt girl

doodling with some mt tape

beacon

a business card and shop sign i saw in beacon, ny.

I have such a hard time keeping up with my blog in the summer.  Julia Rothman's new book 'Drawn In' is really inspiring. I love peeking into other artists sketchbooks. 

july 4th

Intro to Illustration Project 1

I just finished taking the 1st class in the Illustration Certificate program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). I can't believe all the work that I actually completed in five weeks and I am excited to share them here. We worked on 4 projects out of the five weeks; editorial, advertising, institution/children's book, and self promotion. We crammed in a bunch of lectures, critiques and discussions about illustrators and techniques - and along the way I met 4 other amazing illustrators. I hope that we get to cross paths again in the next class. Our instructor was so knowledgeable and great at critiquing our work - the class only confirmed my love for illustration and I'm excited that I am kind of making it legit.

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook. I found that I enjoy making thumbnails however, it's usually the 1st or 2nd out of 20 that I end up using for the final. The editorial article I picked was from the New York Times about Memory and the Aging Brain - basically about how we process memory and that exercising is shown to be helpful in preventing memory deterioration.  

My teacher recommended writing down words and phrases from the article to help come up with thumbnails. It ended up being helpful - go figure!

Some very forgetful people.

Forget exercise, take our memory tonic and you'll never forget another precious moment again!

Ta-Da! My final piece.

Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls

I bought this book from the Printers Row Book Fair a couple weeks back. I picked it up because of the title 'Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls' - how could you not? Then I discovered the illustrations inside by Tomi Ungerer and I knew I had to add this to my collection.

The poems are pretty dark and twisted and probably not for little kids - even though I think it was put together for children. There are some greats in it by Shelley Silverstein, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, and Robert Louis Stevenson. I hope you come across this at a used bookstore or thrift shop - it's a great one!

Three Bad Ones

Tom tied a kettle to the tail of a cat,

Jill put a stone in the blind man's hat,

Bob threw his grandmother down the stairs -

And they all grew up ugly, and nobody cares.

english nursery rhyme