Still Competing

About two weeks ago I received an Email from the Ella Sharp Museum of Art and History about a portrait show that I had entered in the spring.  Though I haven't thought about it much, I am starting to get excited about it now that the opening day for the show is coming closer!

I entered 3 portraits and 2 were accepted into the competition.  I'm pretty content that I have had 2 pieces excepted, but it will be exciting to see everything hung up on January 12th.  Though I doubt that I will receive any awards, I thought I would share what pieces actually made it into the show with you:

"Tell Me I'm Pretty" and "The Rewards of Time", an old piece from Drawing 3, that period of time where I feared that art and all the love that I have for it might just be sucked out of me.  Thus, no post about it from the past—however, this piece was in the end of semester show that year, and it even made an additional appearance in my senior show (seen among photos here).

"Tell Me I'm Pretty"

"Rewards of Time" (originally known by it's pet-name: "Botox")

Though I never really cared about names before, my final show at the Arborshire taught me to consider them more carefully (the judge put a lot of weight on the titles! So for the future... it can't hurt to have better names, right?)

Christmas Rush

Now that I'm officially "in" the business of designing and illustrating, things have grown rather hectic with the holiday season.  Some of it is just a coincidence, but there is plenty of work that is purely Christmas related.  I'm currently working on a gift for my uncle that has consumed the majority of my morning (one day, I will be a fast designer... but that day is not today unfortunately...)

Obviously, still in the works.  But THIS designer needs lunch, so I'm breaking (also, I am behind on landry and I want that "wife of the year" award!
But while I'm at it, here's a Christmas card design that I did for one of the students at SCS last week:

I don't really like it at this point, but you can be the judge.

Wedding Pictures {Finally}

For those of you who were not able to make it to our wedding, here is a glimpse of the festivities for you to enjoy now!

 The boys enjoyed playing on the Wii and eating snacks while waiting for the ceremony to start

The girls: 4 sisters and 2 of my best friends / college roommates and 1 me :)

The boys: 2 brothers, 4 best friends and 1 stud of a groom

 The flashing decoy ring that they handed us first—so funny!

All of our home-made desserts at the dessert bar! (minus the cake, we didn't make the cake! lol)

The cake to match our invitations, and the last minute topper!

(I found it about a week before the wedding to replace the monogram that Todd hated! lol)

 Camp family—wouldn't have happened without them!

 Taking the "plunge" into marriage—gift from our sister, Shana

 All of our "bling"

And of course, Superman had to show off a little :)

I wasn't about to let them leave me out ;)

The wedding was great—but so far, marriage has been even better!  Hope you enjoyed the photos!

©PerryPhotography

Friendships

A lot of difficult adjustments have been made over the past few months.  Sitting in my 3rd–going–on–4th month of marriage, my 1.5 month with my new job(s) and heaped in as much crazy as I can cram into my planner, it has been just as challenging as it has been exciting.

The biggest struggle is not really knowing anyone in the area.  When I moved in, I knew my husband, our landlords (who are great, by the way) and 10 people that Todd worked with (and only 4 by name).  Though the circle of my acquaintances has grown, deeper friendships have been slow to come.  But between our schedules—work, cross country, freelance, Todd's grad class and more cross country—there are not a lot of opportunities for us to spend time with people our own age.

The hard part is that even if we did have time, we don't have those friendships in place yet to even take advantage of...  Though I am getting to know the teachers who I work with, it is slow going.  I don't work very closely with any of them and my lunch hour is different every day (of my 3 days there) so I rarely see the same teachers each day.  However, I am getting to know them, slowly but surely!  And I have the most wonderful husband to spend time with—really, he has been an answer to even the smallest prayers in so many ways.  I depend upon him a lot, and I love him bunches.  I also love him enough not to expect him to fulfill all of my needs—even my people needs.  And I need more people than he does! lol

I would feel a lot more pathetic if it wasn't for the fact that these girls are really wonderful.  Above is a photo of some of the cross country girls and myself right before one of their races.  I love them, and will miss them a ton next year (those in the pictures are seniors this year).

Still Working

Here is a recent illustration that I did for one of my freelance clients.  There is an event commemorating the last Liberty Tree that fell in 1999, and I was asked to design the bookmarks that they are handing out as gifts at the event.  I felt an illustration fit the subject best (and I honestly was itching to get the good ol' colored pencils out again!

This design is directly taken from the final tree that fell (something that the client appreciated, so that was nice) and then further enhanced by the addition of the roots and the liberty bell mock among them.  "Rooted Deep in Liberty" is what keeps running through my mind as I was creating this.  Also works well because the top of the bell itself is created from "Liberty Tree" wood. The client is now considering buying the rights to the piece to use for other events, or to even buy the original drawing!  Fun stuff, we'll see if anything comes of it.

It was great to break out this style again—it is really developing into my default for hand illustration and I am loving the fact that I can be literal, but can break the rules of nature to play around with my ideas.

The teaching hasn't kept me from creating!  I am enjoying both my days with the students and my days at home, surrounded with little house-work things and with graphic design / illustration.  More to come shortly—I am currently working on a new personal identity system—now that I have a new name to play around with :)

Coded Love Notes

S-H-M-I-L-Y
A simple, seemingly meaningless phrase that means more a piece of chocolate to me.

Okay, maybe not quite THAT far, but it means a whole lot to me after reading this story together and having 2 months of marriage to live it out.  After reading that story, we both threw ourselves into the creativity of hidden codes with admirable gusto.  Both of us, as later confessed, were wondering if the new trend would last very long.  Because this hits at a particular love language of mine, I knew that I would probably continue to add the code to the end of little notes or to the mirror via dry-erase markers after a hard week—but I did not have a large expectation for it continuing from the side of my husband as much.

Apparently, I have underestimated the powers of Superman!  Below I have attached some of the SHMILY notes (that I remembered to take a photo of) that I have found in various places over the past two months.

 

 A good SHMILY makes even the sock drawer exciting :)

 Dry-erase markers have become an important aspect of our marriage...

I found this one this morning during my shower—completely made my day

See How Much He Loves Me? :)

It's great!  A way to show that you were not only thinking of the other, but that you took the time to find a good hiding place for the code to sit until discovery.  (and the nice thing about it being "in code" means that I can hid it all over his classroom in little ways without worrying about his hormonal students finding one—because if they do, it doesn't really matter, does it? :) )