A Little Bird Told Me...

Here are some of the illustrations that I have been working on over the past few weeks!  Lots of little birdies and plenty of tea-themed ascents to keep the cravings down.  These pieces will soon be available for sale in my etsy shop!

Once I get that all set up... heh—there's a lot of legal stuff that goes along with selling merchandise!  But in a few weeks there will be 8x10 prints available of those posted below along with some of what I have posted already.  If there is anything that you do not see here than you think I should include/create, let me know!

My first commissioned piece in this style

 No bird or tea, but it was the night before my sister's grad party so I was just killing time between getting ready

Please don't judge my hummingbird! We fought for a long time but I couldn't seem to get him to turn out any better.

He's... special... (another commissioned piece)

No bird, but my teacup is in there along with the roses that grow along the path to our little apartment.

Superman will sometimes pick a few for me :)

My most recent... the plate still needs some more work, but here it is so far.

This One's For the Birds

I'm in the mood to draw birds, birdsa and more birds!  I think it might be because a few of my students are doing projects that have to do with birds / creative birdhouses.  Their theme paired with my own love for birds and the new hummingbird feeder in the backyard has given me the push I needed to draw again.

Here's another that I began working on this week:

Again, poor quality from my iPod, but when it's complete I'll take a better photo.

Prismacolors at Tea Time

I don't work at the school on Mondays so I typically spend the day doing house-work and preparing for the rest of the work week (when I don't have a freelance job breathing down my neck).

Today I really wanted to get something done for my mom but I don't have my watercolor paper at the apartment and my first attempts at drawing did not turn out well—let's just say that I will not be posting them.  Frustrated and tired I reached for my pastel paper.  I'm not sure exactly what I was planning to create because I had not thought past opening the pad itself.  Out fell a series of drawings—still in the sketching phase of life.  I had entirely forgotten about them—I can't even remember when I actually started the project, but some point during the great series of illness that I ran into this winter.  I was particularly drawn (hah, pun totally intended) to the sketch I did of a stack of teacups.

Why not?  I hunted down and opened my beautiful Prismacolor pencils and got started.  After about 3 hours I have the familiar cramps in my shoulders from bending over, I am covered with pencil shavings, and I am loving it (but I am still taking a break, lol).
Here's what I ended up with today:

Better quality photo coming after completion—this one was taken with my ipod

Obviously, I need to finish up the handles and decide what to do with the background (and get the highlights to really pop), but for one afternoon of work I am pretty happy! I think I might need to tone down the contrast in my little birdy so that it doesn't grab all of the attention, but the background could fix that by itself.

I am considering making prints of this piece and selling them—if that would at all interest you let me know!

Graduation Invites—Sister Edition

My baby sister is graduating...

I'm not sure if I'm excited or just heart broken.  I am excited about the adventures she will get to have at one of my favorite places—the Arborshire—but I am also sad that she will be moving away.  Now that I'm finally close enough to see her once a week or so, I'm used to it and it will be hard to adjust back to the once a month (if that) visitations.

While it has been hard to get used to the idea, designing her graduation invitations sure helped!

(Name and address changed)

Went with a chalk-board theme.  Not only is it pretty popular now for other areas of life, but it just seems to fit well with an academic based event.  Originally I had little chalked flags hanging but at least for now I have removed them.  I tend to prefer less "clutter", though it did add to the playful side.

Critiques are welcome as always!

I'm an Illustrator

Sorry I have not been posting very regularly... Life has thrown me for a loop and I it rarely even occurs to me to update the blog!

One of the major reasons I have recently fallen off the face of the blog world has been my increased work load combined with a raw immune system among 250+ germ-y elementary students.  When I haven't been sick or racking my brain for lesson ideas, I've been drawing and working on the design jobs that have been coming in.  In January I spent the majority of my time in bed or with these floral illustrations (one of the series posted below).

While the work was difficult (mostly because of the short deadline and the sickies), I really enjoyed getting to draw again—before this my freelance work was largely digital, though now I am asked to illustrate more frequently, which is great.

It was also cool to research the event that the illustrations were displayed—the National Floral Show in Philadelphia.  This is the largest flower show in America and my work was seen by about 300,000 people!  Talk about exciting!  Below is an image from the specific exhibit that my work was in (you can see my drawings on the posters in the back).

Photo stolen from here

Anyway, that's what I've been doing, or at least one of the major reasons I have not been posting very often.  When I finally get some free time, I find that I would rather spend it annoying my husband.  I'm not sorry.