day 2: recent Amazon impulse buys

 Encaustic is painting with melted beeswax. I've done some entries about it in the past so click on the encaustic tag if you'd like to see more of it. But suffice to say, I'm maybe a bit obsessed with it, and must have any and all things encaustic. It's not too overwhelming of a feat though. When I started there were maybe three books available. Now it's up to eight. 

This book above is the latest by Daniella Woolf. I've taken two week-long workshops from her through R&F Encaustics. She is a fabulous teacher. She puts together beautiful books and DVDs.

 

 

 This next batch all have to do with building shadowboxes. Which I have not done for years. I have a project in mind that combines a shadowbox with automata. So far it has been stuck at the sketch stage for months and I avoid taking it any further by buying books tangentially related. Guess I need to get on that.

I love folk art. The latest batch has been more early Christianity-related but I also really love Mexican folk art, especially Day of the Dead. Lately I've been loving the large statues made for Semana Santa (Holy Week) and I've started working on a large (for me) encaustic painting of the Virgen Dolorosa. A couple weeks ago I had the face just about finally looking alright, and I overfused it! One eye melted down to her cheek. D'oh. Scraped the whole thing off.

Not sure what the endgame is with any of this, but this is reminding me to stop buying books and just sit down and paint.

day 1: 30 day blogging challenge

Hello vast tubes of the internets! I'm going to try something new. I am going to post a new entry every day for the next 30 days. The posts will be art/illustration-related, but that's about as far as I'm going to worry about structure. I figure I'll post what I'm working on, what I'm thinking about, things I find interesting or inspiring. We'll see where it goes.

Why do this? Mostly I think it's to help me get into a routine of making time for inspiration and personal projects. I get so busy with the full-time job and freelance projects that I don't make time to just be creative.

How'd this come about, you wonder? It started over the weekend. A friend of mine is heading off to grad school in few weeks, so we decided to have a tiki party before she left. I was in charge of decorations. And if I was having a tiki party at my house, I of course needed a giant tiki head with glowing eyes and smoke that billowed from its nostrils.

 It was a busy week, so I didn't get started until Saturday morning. Lots of trial and error, but I love the process of troubleshooting and making it up as I go. Sadly the dry ice billowing smoke part did not work on first try, and I ran out of time to fiddle with it, but I think it turned out pretty fun nonetheless. Best happy accident: the spray paint disintegrated the top layer of foam and gave it a cool rough rocky texture. Sweet!
 

I spend the majority of my time sitting at a computer. All of my illustration is digital. Half the time I can't even find paper or pencils. While I enjoy Photoshop and Flash and After Effects, I do miss the act of making a mess and actually creating a physical object. Things like this tiki project get me re-energized and excited to create more stuff! So I've got all this energy, but was not sure how best to channel it.

I've been working on animating the song Pin Pón (a traditional Spanish kid's song.)  This morning I had to make a couple fixes and was re-rendering the intro. The render ended up taking about an hour, so while waiting I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Great little book full of inspiring ideas. One of the suggestions is to keep a logbook, which I'm planning to do analog-style. But many of Kleon's ideas synthesized for me with another...

Last year, good pal illustrator Jim Madsen told me about this Ted Talk by Matt Cutts. It's a quick 3 minute talk about trying new things for 30 days. That concept has been floating around in the back of my head for a while, but until today I didn't have a strong conviction of anything I wanted to try. So for whatever reason this 30 day blog idea hit, so that's what I'm gonna do for the rest of the month.

Wish me luck!

MrJakeParker does Kickstarter

 I finally got mine, have you ordered yours? If you've never heard of Kickstarter, it's a pretty awesome vehicle for getting creative projects funded and produced. It's been fun to follow Jake's project and watch the dollars add up. He's a super talented guy, so order your copy of The Antler Boy and Other Stories now: only six days left!


This concludes tonight's public service announcement.

Imagine Learning Pic Spam

It's a Friday afternoon and I just finished a big project, so how about an Imagine Learning Pic Spam (tm)? I haven't posted any IL stuff for awhile, so this should be swell. A couple months ago we did a whole pile of illustrations for some little books. These were all about how to do them as fast as possible, so lots of shortcut experiments were done. Below are some of the less horrible results...

And then one of the books is a biography of ME. Actually there are two books about me. One is an example of a memoir, which I then illustrated. The other is the biography, but uses photos so won't bother posting that one.

Me making crafty things at the foot of my mother's sewing machine.

 

Visiting Disney Feature Animation and deciding I don't really want to be an animator.

At my desk at Imagine Learning! Please note I have since quite drinking Diet Coke. Really. It'll stick this time, I swear! Also, I now have a lovely 27" iMac. So pretty.

Have a great weekend! I am off to Park City for a two-day encaustic painting workshop with Jeff Juhlin. Good times.

Wax Show this weekend!

A few weeks ago I submitted two encaustic paintings to this juried show (see postcard above), and both were accepted! The opening reception is this weekend, so if you are in the Santa Cruz, CA area, you should drop by. I'll be going on a whirlwind California trip so I can be there. I'm quite looking forward to it!

New Year's Check-In

Happy New Year Internets!

Was thinking I should post some artwork, but don't really have anything I feel like showing, or am allowed to show, or have access to at the moment, so here is a drawing I did when maybe I was, oh, four? That's the last time I had long blond hair, so thinking then. Though one doesn't write with cursive at four and I don't remember being a genius so... hmmm. Mystery.

And here is my New Year's weekend project. I rearranged and organized my studio for a better workflow. Put up those shelves, and my encaustic space is ready to go. Just need to catch up on some other things, and then I will be a paintin' fool!

And finally, I was going to include a screenshot from Maryn's Laser Adventure, but looks like the DVD won't let me. So here is a drawing of what it looks like. Oh man did I stare hard at that little red light. My Merry Christmas gift to myself: Lasik Eye Surgery! It's been a week and a half, and it's fantastic! At last check-in my right eye was 20/20 and my left was 20/25. I do not for one second miss my glasses. Hooray for shooting laser beams into my face!

And that's it for now. I have a few projects percolating, work at Imagine Learning as usual, and my sweet encaustic set-up calling my name. Things to do, things to do!

Here's to a busy year!

feliz dia de los muertos!

Hope y'all had a fabulous Halloween! I took a couples hours off from freelance to paint a happy skull. This is my latest encaustic painting, an experiment with accretion: basically lots of layers of drybrushing.

I've been taking an online encaustic course from the lovely and talented Judy Wise, which has been fabulous. We're in the middle of four weeks of daily lessons, which makes me super excited to go home from work and paint every night. Unfortunately the freelance has to come first, so haven't done much for the class. Hopefully I will have some more time to paint soon.

Here's another I did last week for the class. The assignment was color mixing and carbon transfer. I only had white saral paper, which didn't show up well, so I tried a bunch of other things... blobby lines as a result, but it's fun. I quite enjoy the idea of Gary the Chicken Whisperer.

Feliz dia de los muertos and a happy november to you all!

Booster's Costume Creator

I better post this before it's actually Halloween! I did the artwork for this fun little ecard deal at Imagine Learning. Pick from two of the Imagine Learning characters, then click to change their costume and background. Then send it to a friend! Or lots of friends! Or casual acquaintances!

I always love doing these flipbook sorts of things. It's a fun challenge to get all the pieces to work together properly, plus, gotta love making costumes. We decided to make it a little "educational" - each character got three historical figure costumes plus one halloween-style costume, plus one Imagine Learning character costume. So much fun to make.

The rest of the Marketing team did a great job with the opening sequence, the site design, music, programming, writing, they are a great bunch to work with. Thanks guys!

halloween sneak peak

Six years in a row I had a super out-of-control Halloween Party. Last year I was too swamped with work and still recovering from gallbladder surgery that I decided to take a year off. This year, the schedule is still full, I recently moved and have no time to even think about excavating all the Halloween decor from the depths of unpacked boxes... so another year off. I will be in some serious Halloween withdrawal by next year. So plan for quite the extravaganza in 2012. Unless the world ends first. Then we'll all be enjoying the Zombie Apocalypse together.

But I got a pretty good Halloween fix this year. I got to work on a super fun Halloween-themed project at Imagine Learning. Here's a little sneak peek. Stay tuned, the rest should be out next week.



ps: for pics of Halloween parties past, check out The Two-Headed Goose blog.

TIKI KABOOOOM!

Tiki Kaboom! It's live! My first iPhone game is now available on iTunes. Some genius friends of mine designed and programmed this super addictive game and asked me to help them with the artwork. So I got to draw some tikis. Never a hardship.

So if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, click HERE for the free version.

Or click HERE for the full version with more levels and features.

Still not sure? Here's the Facebook page to check out.

Have fun!

summer vacation over

Hello friends out there in the internets! How have you been? I've been swell, thanks for asking.

So what have I been up to lately? Oh lots. Moved, tried to take a break from freelance while I got settled into the new place. That didn't last very long, and I am once again up to the eyeballs in work. Always a good thing, especially since now I think about things like: I need a new fence! Got to save money for a new garage door opener!

Above is an illustration I did for The Friend Magazine. Always happy when they call with an assignment. They are great to work with. Mostly what I remember about this illustration though, was hurrying to get it finished and sent off before heading out to see U2. Awesome concert!

Currently working on lots of different things, two of which are new types of projects for me. One is an interactive book for ipad, iphone, etc. I'll post a link when it is released. Another is an actual game for the iphone. Also will plug the heck out of it when it goes live.

Speaking of promoting stuff... new book to be released Sept 29:

new house!

Oh yeah, I have a blog. So I've been a little busy lately. I bought a house! My first ever house. It's fabulous. It's a simple little 1961 brick rambler, with a walk-out basement. The basement is essentially a crafty arty wonderland. I have a great office space with an adjacent patio, a workshop, and a room for encaustic painting. Oh the projects I can make! Will update as spaces become functional.

sweet pea benefit boutique

Want to amaze and impress your friends by owning an actual encaustic painting? Or how about all five Sugarplum Ballerina books when the fifth book isn't even out yet? You can do these things and more at the Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique!

The Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique is a charity auction whose funds will go to help pay for fertility treatments for a couple of folks, one being my pal Devanie. Go check out all the cool things for auction! Bid lots! Devanie needs a baby. :)

hmong rhymes for good times

Things that rhyme in Hmong:

Hawk. Net. Frog.

Fish. Car. House.

dueling banjo pigs: the exhibit

Come check out Dueling Banjo Pigs: The Exhibit. Opening reception is this Friday! Between Guy and Stacy they'll have about 40 banjo pig paintings there. I'll have 7, plus lots more from folks from all over. Hope to see you there!

Dueling Banjo Pigs: The Blog

happy st patrick's day!

hiring artists at imagine learning

Howdy out there! We are hiring for two art positions at Imagine Learning (among other things) - a full-time senior illustrator and a part-time junior illustrator. You can check out the job listings and descriptions here.

Feel free to pass the word along - thanks!

Oh, and the my little pony version of the taj mahal has nothing to do with the job hunt... just part of my latest project at Imagine Learning. :)

imagine learning office + art!

 
Ever wonder what the Imagine Learning offices look like? We moved to a new building about a year ago and it's pretty fancy. We just hung up 6 foot prints in the halls, which was interesting since the original artwork was originally done at 600x800 pixels! The picture above is of encaustic paintings of the level one characters I did for the lobby. That was fun. In the article you'll see other art done by Jim and Nate for the lobby. Nate's "bronze" booster is pretty awesome and Jim's portraits of the Level Two characters turned out great.

All this and more at the Imagine Learning Blog:

The best-decorated classrooms and a tour of Imagine Learning

season's greetings (from imagine learning)

Another Imagine Learning post! Here's a little video I helped the Marketing Department put together over the past few days.  


Season's Greetings!

how to draw booster + interview

I've recently had two little articles/features at the Imagine Learning Blog. First is one of those how-to-draw deals. I tried to make it so it wasn't step one, step two, step three, then something magical happens and step four it looks all finished.

So head on over here to learn how to draw Booster!

The second blog post is a short little interview. Every month they are planning to spotlight one of the writers or artists or someone, so it was my turn this time around.

So go here to read my very important thoughts about important things.