Cupcakes and Goblins and Gears, oh my!

Self-promotional piece for my portfolio.
Getting ready for the SCBWI conference in NYC this weekend!
Wee!

In the Court of Wolves.

Friend and author Peter Woodworth has been working on a new book - while not at liberty to necessarily discuss just yet, I have been coming up with some concept art in the hopes that he'll get it published and I'll illustrate it.
The real-life benefit of concepting while he's writing is that we're sharing and defining the story and characters together as we go. The imagery in the story thus far has been so fabulously quirky in that way only a story about Victorian magic can be, and that's resulting in some really lively characters and images that I'm happy to be surrounded with at the moment.

The Queen is one of them, and her wolves... well, I feel safer just having them around. :)

Lanterns.

I don't know exactly where this piece came from. I'm updating my children's book portfolio for the upcoming SCBWI conference, and today I sat down to do a 2-page spread that doesn't really need words. All of a sudden I was thinking about the paper lanterns set afloat (the Japanese Festival of Obon, I believe it is) to guide ancestors back to the spirit world after visiting during the Festival. I thought about how great a kids book this could be, and just started painting. I did this one in a sitting, a little more fast-and-loose than usual, but I really felt joy creating lantern after lantern.
Gonna start on an outline and script for this when I get back from NYC. I think February will be a month of scripting for dummy books. Looking forward to that.


Details:

New! Year! Resolutions!

Since 2012 is already slated to be catastrophic (you know, end of the world and all), 2010 and 2011 should be AWESOME, right? Right. So Happy New Year. The Mr. and I brought in '10 with three days of house guests (we call Dan and Jay "our baby birds"), games and good food and drink. I'm paying for it now with a terrible cold, but c'est la vie.

"New Year's Resolutions" have this doomed connotation, but I think it's all a matter of what you resolve. It's all about discipline and making sure you're making gradual and livable changes -i.e. don't "diet"... change your nutritional habits. Anyway, a couple "nutritional improvements" for my studio:

1. Sketch at least 1-2 hours a day. Aside from the current project I'm working on, getting my sketches together for the next projects and just sketching in general (even if it's studies of cupcakes and yaks) will keep the brain and hands feeling top of their game.

2. Remember that art is my job, and I can leave the office. I understand the old pseudo-adage of "the dreamier the dream job, the harder you have to work to get it." I am no stranger to the 80 hour work week. However, making sure I leave the office and, uh, live, is a struggle for me. (I'm so "all or nothing".) Sleep is my friend. I sometimes think it's my imaginary friend... so I guess it's good I'm going into children's publishing.


And so forth. Those resolutions will keep me busy, but they're reasonable and I feel good about them.

Aria, complete!

I finished the Elementi series of with "Aria", finally... I'm thinking of making them into a greeting card set for sale later in the year. Water, Earth, Fire and Air signs are an element of birthdays, and I think it'd be an interesting and possibly desirable way to say "Happy Birthday" to your favorite art-lover. Yes?

May Your Holidays Be Mighty ...

Wow! I was just informed that I'm featured in the "Lotus's Workshop" blog featuring different themed gifts every day up to Xmas (today is Yule-themed gifts, so my Odin cards have been included).
There are some really fantastic collections here, so I feel honored to be chosen to be a part of it. This has only encouraged me to paint a lot more Vikings.

Check it out!



Speaking of, the card sets are available for sale now, so I should probably put up my card to you all.

So, in honor of the Solstice and in case I don't get to post again before the New Year...

Happy Yule, Season's Greetings, and have a raucously good time with your cherished friends and family. Go ride an armored polar bear and drink Glögg and give boots filled with presents to those younger or less fortunate, dammit!

She's like the Wind. (RIP Master Swayze.)

Trying to record my process more, so I see what my patterns are and where I can improve and shave time (when appropriate).
So here's the sketch for the last of the Elementi series, "Aria". For now. I might want to do a whole different interpretation on the Japanese elements, or the five Chinese elements.

This is the second painting in a week that I've decided to execute in greys - I associate my "style" as being very tied to vibrant colors, so having a drab palette helps me focus on my execution and detail. I'm going to enjoy painting her.

Fuoco.

The third lady's done in the series of anthropomorphic elements, and I'm very satisfied with the radiant color happening here, so I can't wait to dive into the next. She's a bit more stylized, but I don't really mind. Firey salamanders don't really exist either, I've been told.

Cranking out work, huzzah.



The Mister and I are hand-making some of our holiday gifts this year, and working together on it is kind of nice - having art hobbies other than "what I do" is nice, since it's a break from art, WITH art. His big gift from me this year (a woodburner with full set of tips) was opened early, since he's using it on the gifts. The scent of the wood he's burning in the house is a great smell, and it makes me a little sad that we bought a house without a fireplace. Oh well... that much more of a reason to save our pennies and get a woodstove installed this year.

A friend posted a Facebook comment recently of "making Christmas, making christmas", so now I have the song in my head. It's kind of motivating, though, so that's fine.

I do have a finite amount of time I can work before needing a break just to stretch, walk around, have some coffee and so forth, but this week will be best used if I barricade the studio door, start the long and excellent journey through the first seven seasons of X-Files on DVD, and keep the pencil to paper. Oh, and block any and all social networking sites.

Making Christmas, la la la.

Updates, updates, jiggity jig

So, it's weird when the best reference you can find of a particular thing is a photo of "the Beastmaster" Marc Singer. It's not like I can find a hawk and do a photo shoot with it, so The 'Master will have to do.

Trying to find the motivation to work according to daylight/normal people schedules is seriously difficult. My most productive hours consistently lay somewhere between 11 pm and 5 am, every night. When it's daylight, I feel like I should be cleaning, organizing, making a pot of soup, that sort of thing. I suppose it could be chalked up to Pavlovian training of the art-school late night painting sessions. All-nighters equal good paintings. Odd.

I meant to take progress photos of this year's holiday greeting card from sketch phase, but I started painting and forgot until the base wash was down. So here's the sketch with the base wash:




And here's my very helpful cat, Jonas, helping me paint. Very helpfully. (That's his "emotional support" face, I think).

City Kitties needs your help!

City Kitties (the Philadelphia-area rescue organization I've written about before) is in trouble, and they need your help. I realize my blog is fairly under the radar, but every little bit helps. Please read the release from CK below, and consider skipping your morning lattes this week and making a small donation. Anything will help, even $5.

Thanks for anything you can do!

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City Kitties is currently facing a financial emergency: AT THIS POINT, CITY KITTIES IS UNABLE TO ACCEPT ANY FURTHER RESCUES UNTIL WE RAISE FUNDS FOR THEIR CARE.

In the past month, in addition to our usual rescue costs, City Kitties has taken on several cats who have ended up needing extensive vet care totaling thousands of dollars. The necessary dental surgery to remove 10 teeth to alleviate Hutch's constant tooth pain was nearly $1000. Twig, the kitten found by a local community member, has been in horrible condition with extremely painful infections in his bones, and has needed constant (expensive) vet care for weeks and is still not completely well. Bamboo, the starving young cat with the worst case of ringworm we have ever seen, currently has an ominous lump on his shoulder that is potentially cancerous and he needs very expensive treatment. It is not an understatement to say that these cats could have died horrible and painful deaths on the street without our intervention and care.

City Kitties relies solely on donations from our community. The weather is getting colder, and there are many more suffering cats who deserve loving homes and need our help. We hope that you will consider skipping your morning latte, and donate that $5 to City Kitties, or more if you can spare it. Your donation will help save the life of a real live stray cat here in your community. If you are looking for holiday gifts, donations can be made in someone's name (and you can print out our custom gift cards to give them). Very shortly we will have gorgeous 2010 calendars on sale at Studio 34 and on our website. Alternatively, please come to our Drink Beer, Save Cats fundraiser next Friday (the 13th) at Doobie's bar. ($5 suggested cover, 8-Mid, at 2201 Lombard St - List of raffle prizes at CityKitties.org)

We at City Kitties work to make our community a better place and stop the needless suffering of animals of who already suffered enough at the hands of humans- we hope that you will take this message to heart, reach into your wallet, and donate. All donations are tax-deductible, and can be made online at http://www.citykitties.org/donate.html

Our sincere thanks,

The City Kitties Team

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Clockwork Wings.

So, this was the big winner when I had a table at GenCon a couple years ago. Sold a lot of prints of it, and I'm working on ideas for the next of the series. If anyone has any thoughts of what you'd like to see done along the lines of clockwork and windup things or things that shouldn't by any common sense be clockwork or mechanical, but are... well, let me know. I've got a list but I'm wondering if I've missed anything!

Dia De Los Muertos: A Gallery Show!

Hey All!
I know October is always a busy month, but on Friday October 2nd (First Friday!) I will have a piece in a phenomenal group gallery show at Proximity Gallery (the reception is 6 - 9 pm, and I'll post when I'm going to be there closer to the time).
The show's theme is "the Dia De Los Muertos", or Day of the Dead.
I'm really excited to see all the skull-related-art, and maybe buy something for my own personal Halloween offering (as I do so love Halloween!) - If you're free and considering coming out, give me a shout.
Here's the flyer. The show was organized by the Autumn Society of Philadelphia.

Cheers!

Dia De Los Muertos piece (in progress)

So, this is mostly done, but I might take the background up to a mandala-level of filigree detail. We'll see, I'll test first. But her scary eyes freak me out more than her skellington-bones. :)

This is CLEARLY not for my children's publishing portfolio. It's just for fun, for the DDLM gallery show, and to exercise the anatomy muscles.

Circumnavigating Fairyland

I've recently had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with an extraordinarily talented author named Catherynne M. Valente. Putting aside the numerous other books she's written, she's now finished a young-adult novel-come-internet phenomenon called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making", and my goodness gracious, it's a wonderful story. I was in love the moment the Green Wind stepped in through the window of the main character's kitchen.
(EDIT UPDATE: Which has since been purchased and is due to be published by Feiwel and Friends next year, woo!)

After reading and discussing particular dreams and possible projects involving the story, I did a conceptual piece for it (which I was honored to have Miss Valente ended up using for her printed promo materials at WorldCon this year).

Drawing the dilapidated, quirky, wind-blown buildings of the cloud-city of Westerly was pretty fun, I have to say. I could draw domes and cupolas all day, truth be told.

I enjoyed it terribly, and you will too, whether or not you are a Heartless little girl like me.

Sketching September

Just playing with my ideas of September from "Circumnavigating Fairyland".