Edgewater

Favorite spot in Cleveland...

Happy Halloween!!

Oh what fun...

Hey all!  

Some of the cards I illustrated for the holiday season are now on cardstore.com.  It's American Greetings' online card store where you can personalize and order cards.  I know it's really early, and I'm a firm believer of no Christmas-celebratory-ness until after Thanksgiving, but they are on sale right now :)  You can check out the two sets of holiday cards here and here.

Ten Paces and Draw

I was so happy to participate in the collaborative illustration blog Ten Paces and Draw this week!  The theme of the week was circus and I received a lovely sketch from the talented Mika Nakano.  Check out the blog to see my piece as well as other circus-inspired work.

Thrift Store Fun

Snowy Morning on Lark Street

I finally have new work to share!  I created several illustrations for a sweet little story called "Snowy Morning on Lark Street."  These illustrations will be in the January issue of Ladybug magazine.  It was another fun assignment from the awesome people at Carus Publishing :)

Thanks to AD, Sue Beck for great art direction!

P.S.  I'm still in Cleveland working at American Greetings :) ... at least for the time being.  I've been working on some freelance projects for them as well, so hopefully I'll be able post some of those cards once they come out.

Muse and Cicada Magazine

The magazines came this week!!  The top four images are the Muse illustrations for the carrier pigeon article.  The bottom image is the cover and back cover for the September issue of Cicada magazine.  The theme was helping hands.  Both were really great assignments!

The Race to Home

I was really lucky with my first freelance assignment: it was a great article with a fun layout for an art director, John Sandford, who gives his illustrators a lot freedom and support.  These four illustrations will run along the bottom of the article, The Race to Home, in the September issue of Muse magazine.  The story is about carrier pigeons and how they have been used throughout history.  I was asked to illustrate this progression for the 6-page article.  I love illustrating for children and hope to get more work like this in the future :)  

O HI O

My poor neglected blog...  It's about time for an update.  I've been very busy this summer with my internship and other projects (that I can't show until later :) )  Overall, it has been a really fun summer: exploring Cleveland, meeting new people, receiving a real paycheck... I've also been enjoying my new running route, and I'd thought I'd share...

The stairs may be a slight exaggeration...

Cleveland Rocks!

Soo... after a few lazy weeks of summer back home I'm ready to start working again :)  I'm heading to Ohio tomorrow morning to get settled into my temporary home for the next 10 weeks.  I'll be completing a 10-week internship at American Greeting designing cards in their Alternative Humor department.  I'm pretty excited to start working and to get a taste of the corporate world of illustration and design!  Here's a little gouache painting I've been working on to send out as a thank you note to a few friends and family.  It's been a while since I've done something without any digital assistance.

Oh and I bought a new scanner... first receipt to put in my working-illustrator-tax-write-off-receipt-accordion-folder... Allan Comport would be so proud.  :)

Graduated!

I can't believe it's already been a week since graduation.  The above picture is from my commencement show.  Everyone's work looked amazing!  Below is one of the last projects I worked on for my thesis.  A silly little book about tofu.

Flash Cards' Packaging

My thesis is finally coming together.  I'm just working on a few last elements and then everything should be complete :).  This is the design for the front and back of the box that will hold the 20 flashcards that I designed.  I can't believe that a week from now I will be finished with all of my classes at MICA.  

It's A Dance Off

Soo... this is something I've been working on for book illustration.  I had to put my character, Gil, in a scene with a character that one of my classmates created, Catuska the chinchilla.  It's been a great excuse to draw lots of animals :)

Bus Pattern

Promo Materials

 Business card

Postcard

My promotional postcards came this week!  The postcard folds in half so the recipients can walk away with their very own English-Japanese flash card.  Thank you Gotprint for doing such a fabulous job.  

lo·qua·cious

For Illustrated Book we were given three to four adjectives/nouns and had to sketch up some different characters based on those characteristics.  My words are imposing, loquacious, retro, and Neverland.  I think I'm going to go with the Fresh Prince inspired crocodile.  

Citizen of Gravity

For my Illustrated Book class we had to illustrate a book cover for a nonexistent book.  We had a whole list of titles to choose from, and I chose "Citizen of Gravity" by Arthur Heller.  I have to say it was challenging designing a cover for book in which there was no existing plot, but here's what I came up with:

Also I'm now on twitter! :)

Chotto...

Itadakimasu!

Skunk Hotel

Well, I'm back in Baltimore after week at home for Spring Break.  Over break, my dad asked me to create an illustration for a short article he wrote for our local news website.  The article is about his current ongoing war with the skunks that reside under our porch.  Here's the link to the article and illustration:

http://elmhurst.patch.com/articles/deluxe-accommodations-at-the-skunk-hotel

Weather Wheel

Here's another component to my second semester thesis that I have been working on.  It's divided up into segments, (head, midsection, legs, and feet) so once it's constructed the student will be able to align the outfits to match the season.  

Possible Patterns

It's spring break time, and I've been working out some possible pattern ideas for the back of the Gomoku bus game.  Can't wait until I can start assembling everything.  

New Flash Cards

Here are a few new flash cards, along with some minor edits to some of the older ones.  I still have a few more cards to create, and then stay tuned for some other components to this activity set :)