Happy Birthday Laundress

All you birthday fashionistas, take a LOAD off your feet and celebrate! This cheerful lass is now a birthday card in my Etsy shop here.

Laundress sketch

Here's a smudgy beginning of a birthday card I'm working on for the fans of the fashionistas. She going to wish you LOADS of fun on your birthday, get it? get it?
I thought about reversing her position to face the washing machine, but it didn't work as well as I thought it would. Here, take a look:



In this version, the washing machine becomes more prominent in your sight - since she is facing it, our eyes tend to take it in at the same time we view our lovely subject. But that is just the point, I don't want that washing machine to share the limelight, I want her to be the star. So for me, the first version works better, where she turns her back to the machine and it becomes less important. It's just one of those things where you ignore the rules and do what you wanna do - it's called "artistic license"!

Green grape catastrophe

Yesterday my dog Suzi-Q gave me such a scare! I came home to find her eager to see me, but she had vomited greenish puke all over the floor - and a single green grape lay underneath the coffee table. Yikes! Grapes are toxic, lethal, to dogs. On my way out the door previously, I had been carrying a bunch of grapes in my hand, and one (or more?) must have fallen to the floor where she found it and ate it in my absence.

She is fine today, but I think I may give up grapes (and chocolate) so I won't have any more accidents like this!

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Hybernate

What a perfect theme for this time of year!

Fall grasses

Every year I wait for the tassels to sprout on top of the prairie grass in my garden. From my window I can see them swaying in the autumn breeze, highlighted by a sun that is slowly backing away from us Northern climate folks, soon to abandon us to winter's austere presence. I love fall....winter, not so much!

Another sketch, another cover

Here's another peek into the advertising world, this time the front cover of that 2004 Target electronic catalog which was the subject of the previous post. It's always helpful for an advertising designer/art director to have an illustrator sketch out what the art director is envisioning for the layout. But sometimes, when they arrive at the photographer's studio to do the final photography, it just doesn't look right! Maybe there have been last minute alterations. Maybe new props are added, or the product is substituted, or the pose needs to change. So right there on the spot, the sketch becomes a starting point rather than the final say.

Aren't these models the cutest? (I am never given photos of the models when I am sketching, I just invent them, so it's always a fun surprise to see the final version). And I love the color combinations!

From sketch to cover

Pardon my lapse in posting, but I've been working working working, for Target on upcoming printed materials, so now that I'm in a lull, waiting for revisions to hit the fan, I thought it might be fun to show how a finished cover evolves from a sketch. This is the back cover of Target's 2004 electronic catalog. You can see how the position of the boy and his dad remained the same (although flopped), but changes were made in the product - from two to only one. It always amazes me to see my drawing become a photograph, no matter how it transitions. I also liked the Mid-century feel of the type/script, since I'm partial to retro!

Catalog work

I often do sketching for retail companies, such as Target or Kohl's, and my friends ask, "Yes, but what do you DO???"

Well, I sketch! Those circulars, or mini-catalogs that fall out of the back of the Sunday paper, the ones that have all the photos of goodies that you need to buy, SOMEBODY has to do the preliminary sketches of all the products. Otherwise, how would the photographer know what to do or how to photograph all the merchandise that is brought to the photo studio?

Here are some sketches from the kid's toy circulars from previous years. I just love drawing kids and toys, it makes me feel like I am seven years old again!

Birthday Fashionista

Do you know someone who is going to be celebrating a birthday? Here's the illustration that I began a while ago, available as a card from my Etsy online shop here.

Millenium Park

Nothing like getting spit on when it's a hot day in downtown Chicago! I visited my friend Marilyn over the weekend, and we toured Millenium Park, complete with this fun and popular wading pool. The rotating projected images are of the citizens of Chicago, and they are not static images..every so many minutes, they blink their eyes, or purse their lips and spit a fountain of cool water over the delighted kids.

Lorraine Fox

I am fascinated with the mid-century fashion illustrators, and Lorraine Fox is one of my favorites. She was one of very few women in a male dominated field, and she was very bold and experimental in her approach to illustration. When I look at this illustration from a Women's Day magazine dated October 1956, her figures look as if they could have been illustrated today, especially the older couple standing at the top. You can click on the image to see a larger version.

Adoring cat

Here's a little detail of an illustration I will soon post, an adoring cat. As a former cat owner, I can agree with that old saying, "Dogs have owners, cats have staff."

July Birthdays

I have so many friends that have birthdays in July - including me! Here's a page from my sketchbook, a future Fashionista birthday girl. I'll post the finished version, when I finish it! Rembrandt and I were born on the same day in July, a trivial fact that I relish. Who do you share a birthday with?

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Gesture

Whatever happened to that nice gesture of tipping hats to the ladies? It probably went the way of the dinosaurs when the gents stopped wearing hats and the ladies stopped wearing white gloves.

This is from a pattern design I created for Sleepyheads.com.

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Stay

I'm just going to the store. I'll be right back. Really. STAY!!!!

Retro Summertime

Summer is here and the living is....HOT! I thought I'd share some illustrations from a past fabric design in which the motif was fifties fashion. There is really nothing new under the sun..... these vintage style swim suits are popping up in current fashion catalogs, which just goes to show ya, what's old is new again!

Oh my, it's been SO long since I've posted - I'm working on a project that I'll add to my blog in a bit. But for now, I thought I'd share some sketches for an upcoming children's book about a little Pomeranian who has a love of Opera. It's odd, but this is the second project in 4 months with the theme of the Opera. (here's a look at the other.) Maybe that's because my great-grandmother was a Parisian opera singer, and I'm carrying on the legacy. If I can't sing in the Opera, at least I can illustrate it!

New Cover Illustration

I was fortunate to work again with Janna Netland-Lover of Local Design Group on the May cover of Minnesota Medicine Magazine. The theme for this issue's cover was the subject of organ transplants. Organ transplants are now able to be used on a much wider base of the population for a wider variety of situations than in the past. Janna envisioned an illustration of silhouettes and organs - so I got out my trusty Wacom pen tool and tablet, and away I went.

First I sent her the following three sketches, using the magazines template to position the elements to work with the type and label.


Version One: Patterned background, organs, which are illustrated in pen & ink style are highlighted in rectangular solid shapes.


Version Two: Plain painterly background, organs depicted in realistic medical illustration style, no backgrounds to highlight them.


Version Three: Another painterly background, but in warm colors, and organs are highlighted by rectangles.

Janna chose the patterned background, but preferred the organs without highlighting shapes behind them. So I went to work on tweaking the figures, completely changing a few, and here's how they came out:






I'll post the finished cover tomorrow.

Happy Earth Day, Happy Spring!

First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus -
Crocus.
-Lilja Rogers

LET'S GIVE A BIG HAND FOR SPRING!

Illustration Friday - "Bottled"

Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like a bottle rocket shooting out of the cake!