Butterfly Tease!

Every year I paint something for my parents for Christmas. This year the painting I did was inspired by a funky frame I found. It interested me because it was a window frame, and I thought it would be a cute idea to paint a cat sitting in a window, looking at a bug outside. Because I was working to fit a pre-existing frame, it made me work backwards (usually I get a frame to fit the work). As it turned out, the butterfly looks more like it's inside, but that doesn't really bother me (though it does mean that the poor thing probably won't escape Mia's wrath!).

I always like to include little personal details in my work - the background is my memory of my parent's house, and the blue bowl is one that my father got in Europe when he was young.

Here's the painting in progress:


And the finished piece (without glass):


Close up:

Henry!

Here's my Christmas present for my brother this year:




He just got a new apartment, so I thought it would be nice to make him a little painting for it. I decided to paint Henry because... he was in front of me? No, really it was because I wanted to paint something I knew Jay would like, and I had a feeling he wouldn't enjoy a fairy. Plus it was actually really nice to paint something REAL compared to all my recent fiction characters who have consumed me over the past few months. I really like the way it turned out :)

Fairy CD Mix!

I just finished another CD cover (it's been a while), so it was fun to do. Holly loves butterflies, so I made the little fairy have butterfly wings instead of my usual bird-like fairy wings. I really like having to work with the compact circular space of the CD cover because it means I have to contort the figure a bit to fit it in. It's more interesting to me than just working with a rectangle.


Here's the playlist. Of course I included Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam, as he is still one of my favorites. Plus that Sia song is pretty amazing (but is even better live!) :)

Photo Shoot!

I've been meaning to post these up for a while, but alas - I've finally remembered!

Here are my favorite shots of my dresses done by Rute Photography:





Click on the photos to see them close up :)
To see more work by Rute Photography, check out their website: www.rutephotography.com

Saint Kitten Logo Design

Here is the logo I designed for my Saint Kitten Series:I based it on Mia's favorite pose and wanted it to look sketch-like and painterly at the same time.

I use the logo for my greeting card designs and probably anything else I can think of! :)

More More More!

Here are a few more sketches I did for www.centerpointedu.com:

Penn

Lehigh

Darmoth

While doing these sketches I tried to convey the schools from more of a distance, as I had done in some of the previous ones. I also realized that it was important to remain in the same style of sketching so that all of the illustrations on the site are uniform. Now there's only one more to go!

More College Sketches!

Here are more sketches I did for Center Point Educational Consultants. I did them all in black pen and briefly outlined in pencil first. The schools I chose to sketch were based on both their location and their interesting architecture:

Penn State

Penn State

La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA.




MIT - Frank Gehry dorms