Things have been terribly quiet here on my blog lately, but that’s not to say that work has been quiet as well. In fact I’ve been quite busy, and it’s been wonderful! The past few months have been spent working on a few illustrations for children’s magazines, which I will be able to share with you closer to their publication dates in June and October.
Grandma Sylvia, 2010
One project that I recently finished and am able to share is the above painting that I created for my Grandmother. She lived with my family from when I was two to when I was fifteen, and she had a big hand in my childhood and my upbringing. She is the mother of my father and yesterday, together with my uncle’s family, we celebrated her 92nd birthday. It was a wonderful day where we all cooked dinner together, and shared stories of Sylvia’s life and family over good food and good drinks – and boy does she have some stories! This is a lady who lived in Afghanistan for five years when my dad was in college. She traveled all over the world, from India to Iran to Guatemala, collecting goods for an imports store that she ran, all while raising three kids – two of which were rambunctious boys who were very into mischief making (speaking of great stories, my Dad and Uncle have them… but those are for a different post). She was a “Badger Beauty” as a college student in Green Bay Wisconsin, and when asked what her secret to reaching 92 years is, she responded “milk,” like a true Wisconsin girl. At 92 she is incredibly sweet, and has a serenity to her that is hard to find in others her age – to me, my Grandma is the epitome of graceful aging, and the picture of a life well lived.
A few months ago she requested a painting of herself gazing at the moon and a star from her bed, and the completed piece was my gift to her for her birthday yesterday – in the interim time, I got to spend the weeks painting this thinking of my Grandmother’s life, and remembering the memories we have shared. In that way, although I don’t think she knows it, her request for a painting was a gift to me.
Happy New Year!
I have just returned from ringing in the beginning of our new decade with family and friends, and I thought this might be the appropriate time to post one of the last pieces of 2009. Fittingly, the subject of this illustration is a party scene.
This illustration was commissioned by Saint Mary’s College of California, and art directed by Bob Ciano, who was a pleasure to work with once again. A couple of months ago Bob contacted me to create a theatre poster for a Word For Word production of three short stories by Virginia Woolf at Saint Mary’s. Each story takes place at a party, and they were presented together on the stage as selected moments from the famous fictional party of Mrs. Dalloway.
Being that I am a literary-minded person with a great interest in theatre, this project was exciting to me on multiple levels. It was my first chance to read any of Virginia Woolf’s work, and I was entranced by her use of language, particularly by her repeated references to water. Each of the three stories center around a different woman’s experience at the party, and each of the women is at some point caught in a struggle, swept away in a social situation that rises out of their control, and left struggling – almost drowning – in a sea of necessary propriety and social expectations.
The entire story created a wonderful opportunity to play with watery colors and an aqueous environment, and I really enjoyed exploring all of the possible concepts in the sketch process. Sometime in the future I may come back and edit this post to share some of the thumbnails. The final piece was well received, and ran as a theatre poster advertising the show’s run during the end of November.
Well well, it’s time for an update! It’s been a while since the last post, but I was working on a few projects that I didn’t want to share until the clients introduced them to the world first. One of these projects went live just the other day, so I can now unleash it on my blog!
The first of these commissions was a logo design project for a new toy shop in Mill Valley, California. The shop is called “Henry’s Toyshop” – Henry being a big friendly bear – and the store has a terrific old-fashioned flavor to it, with wooden and natural toys rather than modern gaming systems – this is my favorite kind of toy store.
This job was exciting on so many levels, and I absolutely loved having the opportunity to be truly playful and childlike when creating Henry. Lastly, this job taught me one new thing about myself: drawing sweet little animals, all dressed up and looking dapper, makes me seriously happy. Meet Henry!
And here are a few early versions of Henry; these are the sketches where I played with facial shape, age, size, and gesture. As you can see, the client and I had a pretty clear idea of what the logo would be (bear + wagon), and so the journey to the final was mostly character design. What fun!
The Grand Opening for Henry’s Toyshop is on November 7th, and I’m so excited to go see Henry up in his natural environment!
This was a recent project that I completed for Barnyard Theatre Company. It was my third year working with them on their summer poster, and I’m really excited about this particular show!
“Picked” is an original play created in the style of a Grimm fairy tale, with some modern language elements and a delicious storybook flavor to it. To sum it up in an incredibly vague manner: girl meets wolf, story unfolds (but it’s actually so much more interesting than just that). This was a very easy project to get excited about; it’s a great play on the page, and I can’t wait to see it in production.
For a look at the process, here are some of my initial concept sketches:
Just finished this piece up last night – it’s a gift for my cousin who is graduating from Stanford tomorrow. Congratulations, Kate!
