summer schedule

The one thing I forgot about, when I went back to school, is SUMMER BREAK. I can't believe I get summer breaks again; it's incredible. The pace is so different than the rhythm of school. I am working four different jobs.

First and foremost, I got an internship with The Post Family! The Post Family is an art and design collective made up of seven guys who share a studio space and a passion for art that walks the line between commercial/functional and Art with a Capital A. All of them have design-related day jobs, so their studio is truly a labor of love. I am there with two other interns (Brittany and Garret) spackling gallery walls, arranging lead type, building shelves, and screen printing. And, you know, arting.

In addition to this neat-o yet (duh) unpaid internship, I'm bringing in the dollar bills by babysitting, working at Fleur, and doing some freelance illustration work. Babysitting has been great. The little girl is three and she named her cats Meatball and Dirt, so obviously she is the coolest three-year-old on the block. Fleur is looking hot, having updated their look since I left in September. Their arrangements are a lot more woodsy now, which I love, and Kelly has started carrying vintage goods. And, bumbadabum! I just finished some freelance medical illustrations for Thompson Surgical Instruments. It had been a long time since I shook hands with that wily character, the Illustrator Pen Tool, but by the final illustration I was flying. Below is the table mounted set up for a mitral valve retractor. It is orange because this is my blog and on my blog medical illustrations can be orange.

boring store posters

This is what I came up with for a poster set assignment: posters for my favorite non-profit, 826CHI aka The Boring Store. The first poster is for their fund-raising event, Scrabble for Cheaters (it's hard to see on the screen, but that "A" is mysteriously worth 500 points). Check out the information about the event here. And check out the 826NYC chapter's Scrabble for Cheaters event here. Their web design is fantastic.

Almost done with the second poster!

in the works

For something a little different, I'm going to show the process work behind the final illustration for my current project: the World Record assignment. I chose to illustrate the World's Largest Ball of Yarn--not to be confused with the World's Largest Ball of Twine, which is either in Darwin, MN or Branson, MO depending on your source. I'm rooting for the one in Branson because it was supposedly built by a millionaire in Texas using a "system of pulleys," and I like that "a system of pulleys" is in quotes on Wiki (here) like, hey, that's all you really need to know.

I don't know where the Largest Ball of Yarn is. The internet has failed me for the first time.

Anyway, here are some of the thumbnails. For each project I come up with anywhere from 12 to 20 2" x 3" thumbnails. Here are a couple of them (click to zoom in):


The idea is to emphasize how very large the ball of yarn is. The ball of yarn in space and the circus-freak yarn-ball-head characters crack me up, but there was something about the expression of the girl drowning in scarf that I couldn't pass up.


Because I'm working digitally, I'm sort of skipping some steps. Normally I would do a larger black and white value sketch, followed by a color comp, but for this one I'm steam-rolling ahead and just blowing up the thumbnail in place of the b&w sketch.

idiot savant

This is another illustration from first quarter: Willem Dafoe plays the title role in Richard Foreman's "Idiot Savant" (read the NY Times review here and here). In the play, Dafoe plays a man who plays with language as with paint on a canvas, rather than as noise connected to meaning. (I'm roughly quoting the original Goings On About Town article on the play, but heck if I can't find it in the NY Times database anywhere.)

I began this illustration by drawing Dafoe's face a jillion times (creepy) and then doing a quick sketch in pencil on Arches paper. I then colored it using watercolor, gouache, and India ink. The long tail of the speech bubble was added digitally as the first was way too short.

circus folk: oldies but goodies

These character sketches were created at the end of my first quarter here, and were my first all-digital illustrations. They're so deadpan, it cracks me up.