Towers Hall

So I've started my new Towers Hall painting that I mentioned in my last post. I prepped the board (that was graciously given to me by Steven Walker) Thought I would share the beginnings of this work. It's made with layers of newspaper with acrylic (treated more like watercolor), and pen. The pen is taken forever...I went into a little more detail than I had originally planned, but I think it'll be much better for it. I love using my new pens on it. Nostalgia is hitting me pretty hard. Towers Hall was a building on my Alma Mater's campus. I miss school.

le sigh.

Let me know what you think! I still have all the foliage to do and the remaining details/shadows of the building.

lists lists lists

So this week I've added quite a few of my things to my perpetual to-do list. I have the next two days off from my pay-the-bills job so while I was there today I wrote out everything I wanted to get done. And here we are!

1. run 4 miles (2 Monday, 2 Tuesday...3 on Wednesday)
2. complete Creative Best book - I'm inserting and working on the layout of the CB book. Columbus Society of Communicating Arts (which I volunteer for) has a huge contest every year called Creative Best. Everyone who attends the event to find out who the winners are gets a book with all the winning pieces and a bit about the judges and volunteers. This is going to take awhile to do since it's a 120 page book - mostly full of pictures!

3. prepare/start Towers Hall painting - I need to tape off parts and just get started!

4. paint elephant painting - a new commissioned piece!
5. eat sushi - CHECK! mmm

6. clean up sushi mess - almost check
7. complete a set of Christmas monster cards
8. complete 2 more spreads of dino book - this is going to be tough one
9. blog - CHECK!
10. clean bathroom - yeah, this is a little overdo at my place, gross!
11. get gas - gotta get some or I'm not going to make it to the park to run
12. play with Squarespace - I'm using this to recreate my website
13. clean out leftovers from fridge - CHECK
14. order postcards - I wanna be able to send these out in the next couple of weeks and hopefully get some professional commissioned pieces for magazines, etc. Anyone have a good suggestion for who to order from?
15. wake up and be moving by 9am! - I'm going to have to in order to get all this done in time!

Now back to work!

Work, Anniversaries, and other stuff

So this week has been yet another week with crazy working. I got a second set of poem illustrations to do and pay-the-bills-work I haven't had a lot of doing my own work. I've had a lot more ideas rummaging through my head - note cards, small monster canvas', postcards, calendar?, new website! So much! I've got one more poem illustration then I'm done with that set and I can send out the invoice and get paid! Hopefully someday soon I can afford to quit my pay-the-bills-work because I'll be able to pay the bills without it.

On that note, I did send in a couple resumes the other day. One for an internship (that I REALLY want, and one for a junior design position). I hope I hear from them soon - I sent them on Friday night so I'm not expecting anything till later this week. Either way, I'm going to make some postcards to send out my work to potential clients.

Tomorrow is a new day and it's going to be a busy one! My grandparents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. 50TH! Can you believe that? My grandma got married when she was only 16 and my grandpa was only 18. I can't imagine being with someone for that long. I'm so happy for them. Plus the party is going to be fantastic. We're going on the Queen Lorena Stern-wheeler in Zanesville (where I grew up) for dinner and fun.

After some thought I've decided that this year I'm going to buy all my Christmas presents for my female recipients from sellers on Etsy. Mostly just my female friends just because a majority of the sellers/buyers from Etsy are female and they market to other females. I'm going to try to buy for everyone from there - there are some really great geek gifts and most of my friends, male and female, are pretty geeky. Anyways,  I really want to be supportive of artists, like myself.

Crab in a Cab

Work should never make your neck/back hurt so much. After spending the last two days on the computer working on a new illustration gig my neck wants to kill me. Violently. And it seems to be succeeding. I have recently, as in today, realized that I have not spent this time on the computer since before graduation. Also, a word from the wise (or something like that), never use a chair you bought at a thrift store for an art project and then 3 years later decide to use it as your main work chair by simply throwing a pillow on top of it. It's not a good idea and your neck will try to murder you.

But to the important news, I got a new illustration gig. I'm being paid to illustration several poems that will be on a woman's website that helps kids learn to read. I'm not going to be able to quit my day job any time soon but it's a start!

Here's my favorite so far!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get much of my personal work done thanks to this new endeavor but promise I'll have some updates soon.

figure drawing

Believe it or not I was never required to take a figure drawing class at school. Today I went to Wild Goose Creative to figure draw for 3 hours at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. But I managed to drag my butt outta bed, grab a diet coke and ride my bike the whole 3ish blocks down there. I'm beyond happy that I went. It was the most welcoming group of artists I've ever met. We had a few 10 and 20 minute sessions followed by one 25 min. session.

Here are some of my favorites out of today's session.

This was my first sketch of the day. Our model was kind of downcast but she was still good to draw and an excellent model overall.