Cuttlefish Stickers!

Hey all! Pleased to announce my (small) part in the launch of a new chat sticker app, StiKey! The neat thing about StiKey is that you can use the stickers you purchase in it in a whole bunch of other messengers, rather than needing all your friends to use the same app you're using. (The reason I never get to spam people with my other stickers..)

I got free reign to make whatever I wanted for the app, so I thought I'd take the chance to draw one of my constant favorites- cephalopods! I went with cuttlefish specifically because I thought they'd fit into the square space of a sticker the most easily. It wound up being quite a challenge to express 24 different emotions without the help of a MOUTH, but I enjoyed finding other tricks - squishing the body, changing the color scheme, and so on.

I do have plans to do more with these guys, too - I actually just put in an order for a set of magnets! Time for me to finally make some physical merch.. stay tuned for more on that front!

But in the mean time.. go ahead and inundate your friends with squishy cuttlefish and more in StiKey!

Snail Stickers for imo

My latest sticker pack for imo has been released!

I was asked to come up with a love-themed pack, and in my research, I came across the factoid that snails fire “love darts” as part of the mating process. (Apparently they, ah, assist fertility?) There are theories that this behavior was part of the origin of the Cupid myth, weirdly enough.

That was enough for me to decide that making some lovey-dovey snails would be an interesting route to take, and here we are!

Tron Bonne for Light Grey Art Lab's BOSS RUSH Show

My piece for Light Grey Art Lab’s awesome Boss Rush show!

I wanted to to a tribute to Tron Bonne from Megaman Legends. The Megaman Legends games had a huge influence on me in my formative years. Enough so that I actually (still) have a notebook from about 6th grade with a section devoted to Megaman Legends fan characters. There’s something about the color palette, chunky but unique designs, and the fun fantasy/sciencey world that just.. got into my mind and stayed. I think this influence is directly responsible for some of the work that came through in even my thesis project at MIAD!

As for why I picked Tron over one of the terrifying Reaverbots... well, this lovable genius-engineer air pirate had her own spinoff game called The Misadventures of Tron Bonne which remains one of my favorite games of all time. (Just looking at my piece has me humming the music and remembering the taste of scrambled eggs & toast after an all-nighter playing at a friend's house...) You get to be an air pirate with an army of cute robots that goes around destroying and looting buildings and stealing cows!! There was no choice but her.

Prints are available from the Light Grey Art Lab shop, and of course, check out all the other incredible work!!

And as a bonus, I present to you... some 6th grade drawings of Megaman Legends fan characters, by yours truly:

What a difference 15 years makes!

Lizard – Sticker Pack for imo

As you can tell, I've been drawing lots of stickers lately! No complaints here, in some ways it's very relaxing to get to work on illustrations that actually don't take days and days to complete.. though happily, I have some larger-scale projects coming up, too.

These are part of a set of Lizards I completed recently for imo. Feeling some winter blues creep in, I thought it would be nice to incorporate some warm-weather activities along with the usual set of emotions. Happily, I can also report that with every animated sticker I learn another little something about how to animate effectively. Looking forward to playing with it in more and more ways, especially in my personal and sequential work!

Holiday Mice for Path

Happy Holidays, all!

I got the chance to create a sweet and warm holiday sticker pack for Path!

The challenge here was that it needed to represent Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years. To be honest, all I knew about Hanukkah when I started this project was what I learned from an old Lamb Chop's Play Along special as a little girl, so I had a fair amount of research to do!

I also felt that the color palette was going to be key. I wanted to be able to give a nod to the traditional Christmas colors without being cliche or excluding Hanukkah. Eventually, I decided that I really just wanted things to feel warm and a little nostalgic, so I wound up mixing earthy tones with a few fresh pops of color. (Took a lot of color inspiration from the incredible Teagan White.)

Brushes from Kyle T Webster were also vital to creating a hand-painted feel.

Alien Invasion

It's an adorable invasion!

I got to do another animated pack for imo- what a blast these are!

I thought this time around an alien in a ufo would give me a chance to let these stickers really focus on expressions. That way, I could practice creating a really memorable personality with very simple elements- which can be quite a challenge for me!

He'll be zooming into your imo app soon :)

Big thanks to my AD Brandi Kolmer, for giving me such fun projects to work on.

Media Playtime

Ever since participating in #inktober, I've been trying really hard to continue exploring traditional media. It gives me a nice break from the computer, and a chance to just play around and see what sticks! This is one such experiment. Normally, in my sketchbooks I tend to just draw figures and characters. However, in the children's art classes I teach (ought to write about that sometime) I often find myself drawing lots of background stuff- trees, houses, and so on. I emphasize the importance of a nice background environment to them, but I realized I'd been neglecting it in my own work!

So, one day, I took a scrap of illustration board and doodled a little house in the hills with brush pen. A few days later, I wanted to add color. Unfortunately, since I'd used a water-soluble ink in the pen, my options were limited. I wound up using copics, since I had some on hand from when I used to draw playmats. It came out okay, but felt a bit simple.. so I also layered in some colored pencils.

All told, I'm not sure I love how it turned out, but I at least enjoyed playing with it. I think it would benefit from gutsier color choices (I'm not sure I'd let my students get away with boring green grass!), which is at least a nice lesson for next time!

Swamp Monster Promo

  It's that time again- promo postcard time!

I confess, I find making personal/promotional work extremely difficult. I prefer working within the constraints of an assignment, I tend to psych myself out when I can draw anything I want! 

So, for this promo, I just thought to myself- what would be the most fun to draw? Monsters and kids! Then, as the sketch evolved I was struck with the idea to draw them making something together, a nice theme for a promo I'm sending potential clients. Add in some plant life, which I always enjoy, and there you have it.

For the back, I thought it would be good to show the little girl's face, since drawing kids is a big part of my job and she's not the star of the front:

swampy-back-web

Go off into the world, my postcards! Find me wonderful clients to work with! :)

(P.S. Many many brushes by Kyle T. Webster used on these illustrations!)

(P.P.S. Print available, too.)

Marie the Scientist - Sticker Pack for imo

Meet Marie!

I got to create another messaging sticker pack, this time for imo. And, as you can see, this time, it includes animated stickers!

This was my first time doing this kind of animation, and it was an absolute blast. I wound up going a little overboard and animated just about everything I could think of an animation for.. and now, I just want to keep going! What a fun new tool to have in my toolbox, and I'm really looking forward to getting better and better at it!

Meow the Cow!

Meet Meow the Cow!

This little cutie is the star and titular character of the second book I illustrated for Pin the Map Publishing. As you can tell from the illustrations, she's suffering a little bit of an identity crisis! It was a really fun exercise trying to make a cow feel like it was acting like a cat.

You can find out more about this and the other books on Pin the Map's Facebook page. They'll be coming out this fall, but in the meantime, enjoy this sneak peek at the interior!

Suggested Serving Size

I drew this comic last night.

Animating is fun. :)

It's Shark Week!

Shark week starts tomorrow! To celebrate, I'd like to share this freshly-released set of shark stickers I made for Path. :)

Behind "The Do-Good Squad"

Hey everyone! I had the pleasure (and challenge) of illustrating my very first children's book last winter and I'm finally able to share some of it with you! It's The Do-Good Squad, from a great new publisher called Pin the Map Publishing. Part of their mission is to support great causes by donating a portion of the proceeds from each book to a corresponding charity. This one will help raise money to bring fresh water to Haiti!

I thought it would be fun to share some of the process that lead to the creation of this book cover. When the art director at Pin the Map Publishing first contacted me, he asked me to do a test illustration so he could see my take on the characters - Jack, Jomo, Jin, and Frannie. That was over a year ago, and at the time, I was incredibly proud of it... and in that year (my first year freelancing full-time) my work has grown so much I almost cringe to show it to you now:

What a difference a year makes! The designs stayed pretty much the same, but the faces have somewhat different proportions, and things just look much tighter in the final cover. Also, Frannie got a total overhaul!

After the test illustration, when we started the project in earnest, I decided it would be helpful to draw up some character sheets to make sure I had details fully nailed down and kept everything consistent:

I referred to these sheets almost constantly while illustrating the book, especially whenever I drew Jomo's teeth!

After finishing the rest of the book, it was time to figure out the cover. This is when I went back to that test illustration and realized it needed to be completely redone.. after all, I'd had an entire book's worth of practice drawing these kiddos! So that's what we did, keeping the elements that worked and changing the ones that needed it. And that is how the cover was created!

Look for the book on sale this fall! You can get updates on that and the other books from Pin the Map Publishing.

Wisconsin Storytime: Farming and Agriculture

I got to do a piece for this lovely project called Wisconsin Storytime, a loving homage to Wisconsin put together by designers Josh Cox and Doua Vue. My subject was Farming and Agriculture, and when I signed up my concept for the piece was completely different than when I finally got around to drawing it! I guess that shows how much my work is evolving.

I absolutely knew I wanted to draw a cow no matter what, though - I adore them and they are everything Wisconsin to me. After I got her nailed down, I started drawing food and piecing things together to find the shape. Honestly, it was all a bit generic looking until my bud Chelsey pointed me to vintage produce ads, which became my color inspiration. Then I fell back in love with the illustration and I'm very happy with how it came out. It will serve as a reminder to me not to ignore my neutrals!

Prints are available at my INPRNT store for those so motivated!

And be sure to check out the other cool stuff in Wisconsin Storytime!

Creature Collection: Wurm

Happy to reveal to you another illustration for StarCityGames!

I actually painted this around a year ago, right when I knew I would be moving away from Roanoke. I love the Blue Ridge Mountains, so I decided to celebrate them a little by using that landscape for the background of this piece.

Outside of this, I am working on the last of 3 really big projects due out this fall, and I really cannot wait to share all of that work with the world! In the mean time, I am occasionally posting doodles and simple things to my tumblr. :)

Creature Collection: Panda!

Hey look! The Creature Collection is back!

StarCityGames.com asked me to do another round of illustrations for their line of collectible card game accessories. I guess Pandas were kind of an obvious choice for the next image.. :)

Mermaid Girl

After enjoying my holiday girl illustration so much, I thought I'd see if lightning would strike twice. :) And it did!

Not only do I love how this came out, I had so much fun working on it! It was wonderful to be able to try different things and see what worked best. I haven't had that with my typical work lately.

I am very excited!

Happy Holidays Card

I know, I know, it's a little early! I was just trying to put together a possible promo holiday card to send out.

This is based off of a rejected sketch for another project - I liked the little character idea so I thought I'd run with it as an excuse and opportunity to play more with pattern, texture, and combining dimension and flatness. Because of the subject matter, I also researched some Scandinavian decorative art - super inspiring!

I've been doing a lot of experimenting over the past few months, as I've started to feel a little bit pigeonholed into one approach and it's getting tiresome. Finally, I'm starting to feel like all of this experimentation is starting to come together into a clear voice that feels natural. Very exciting!

Matryoshka Pattern

I put this pattern together after learning some tips on building patterns in Illustrator from my pal Marisa. It really upped my pattern-making game, I think!

Up until now I've been constructing them by hacking away with the "offset" filter in Photoshop, and often having to flatten my document more than I'd like. This time, I sketched separate assets in photoshop and imported them into Illustrator to use with the new pattern tool. I moved them around until I had a working sketch of what I wanted to create, and then I went back into Photoshop to complete the art for each individual asset. Then it was just a matter of re-importing the new assets and I was done!

Happy Halloween: Wisteria the Witch!

Happy Halloween everyone! To celebrate, I get to share one of the projects I spent this summer working on!

Meet Wisteria, a quirky witch character I created for a virtual sticker pack on the social networking app Path. It's a neat service, designed to purposely be more private than facebook - I can definitely get behind that! They sell a number of different sticker packs in their store, which you can then use to add a little more emotion and personality to your messages. (Here are some others I really like!)

This was just a great assignment from start to finish. My art directors over at Path were just a delight to work with (special shout-out to Leigh Lucas!). You have to love the clients whose suggestions always improve your work. :)

I've never done a series this big before, so that was definitely a challenge. I learned so much, I really wish I'd had an assignment like this in school. It was also really interesting trying to condense a character and an action down into a very simplified image. Some were still a bit overwrought at first, but I was able to pare things down.

So check out Path, and if you'd like to buy the sticker pack for your profile you can get it here!