Colonel Windpipe's Musical Brigade

Meet the color guard for Colonel Windpipe's Musical Brigade. Colonel Windpipe started out as a project on a blog in which a few illustrators were drawing members of a fictional marching band. Then, they received so many submissions they moved to a flickr account, where you can see the hundreds of characters people have posted. The only requirements are that the characters have a red jacket, gold buttons, be marching to the left, and be on a white background. Any one can submit, so, you should! Yeah, you.

What's Up? Annapolis

It happened again! This week is, and last was, so, so insane. I liked the ideas for the sketches I submitted to What's Up? Annapolis in Publications, but I had hoped to spend more time gussying them up.

The first is for an article that they described as questioning if there is a gender gap in math ability, and the second article shows that kids who have later school day start times are more successful in school. Good morning, zombie. We were given short descriptions of the articles rather than full text, so we really had a ton of room to play. They picked 12 illustrations from our class. Here is the one I got to take to final.

Bay State Parent

It's the second year of grad school, and that means it's time for the Publications class. In this class, a magazine sends a request for an illustration--often for a particular article--to our professor, and everyone in the class submits a sketch to the magazine. The magazine then chooses which illustration they will use in the magazine and then that person takes their sketch to finish, and their illustration is printed.

On the first day of class everyone sat down, ready to receive our syllabi and run, only to find out he had received a last minute request from a Bay State Parent magazine and needed our sketches submitted that day.

I frantically kicked out a couple of ideas and submitted two sketches. I don't know how, but they ended up picking it, so I got to take it to finish and it will be in their next issue! Above is the sketch and below is the finished illustration.

BrianneFarley.com

I have a portfolio website now! Check it out if you have a chance. Thanks!

Brianne Farley Illustration

A Modern Reader

One day this summer, I met M. Rebekah Otto at Cafe Mustache in Chicago. Bekah needed an illustration to accompany her monthly Rumpus column "A Modern Reader," and had gotten my name from our mutual friend Eliana Stein (a killer graphic designer, p.s.). She was in Chicago from San Francisco to see family, and we decided to meet in person to talk about ideas for the drawing.

She walked in the door and immediately told me this hilarious story about, in her first day back in town, running into her kindergarten teacher in a grocery store and I thought, I like this girl. It turns out Bekah is also an Editorial Aide at Atlas Obscura, a regular contributor to The Believer, and a savant regarding quirky San Francisco facts and where to find the best biscuit and chicken sandwiches (Bakesale Betty). Check out her fantastic writing at any one of those three amazing publications.

Here is the final work for her column, a little character navigating a sea of words. It should be up in a couple weeks!