ART DOLL Quarterly - Tulah

Some time after creating Tulah, I decided to be brave and send off photos to the magazine ART DOLL Quarterly. 

It has always been one of those magazines I loved to look through while in the bookstore, wanting to see all the inspirational artwork and stories from artist I admired. "These are the people who are doing what I want to do" I always thought.

For once, as I held a copy of the magazine, I looked for their submission policies and got to work with putting together what was needed. I had to be quick because it was literally the last week to send in work for consideration. I rush to the post office and realized I needed to do a rush delivery, having to spend $20+. I hesitated for a moment when I was standing to pay for it - but my mind kept going "But what if it does get in?" Don't stop!

Many months went by and I started to believe that it may not have been received in time. "At least I went for it!" I decided. So I pushed it in the back of my mind.

Today, as I was working from home, I heard the mail drop in and went to go see what came in. My heart stopped because it was a copy of ART DOLL with a note attached that said I was published.

I held that magazine and I did one serious Happy Dance.

It went from being the one who only browsed the artist magazines to finally being a part of it. It makes me want to shout to all artist that you shouldn't just keep "looking", decide and then go for it!

Look for Tulah in ART DOLL Quarterly
in the May/June/July issue!

New project!

In my spare time, in between work and illustrating, I've been working on a fun project which requires me to create characters!

Looking into pixel art and animating sprites. Taken an animation class which is a nice step but I am looking forward to trying it out on subjects that interest me more. Like princesses, dragons, and burly old cantankerous Scottish men who drink tea.

Here are a few of the concept pieces:

 

Grand St. Stompers, part 2

Continuation of the album cover, working with color! I have times where I need to scrap color I've been working from and just start from the beginning.  Hard to do but necessary.

I am including this piece in Illustration Friday as the coloring has definitely been a "journey" as well as all grand adventures should include a train ride -cheers-

 

 

Newsletter graphics

One of the fun parts of working at my day job is helping to create the newsletter images each month. Which means I get to practice with Illustrator! I have started to feel a lot more comfortable with designing with this tool. I am use to hand drawing everything (working with lines) so my brain had to make a switch to drawing with "shapes" and then molding into the desired form.

Here are some of the images, you can see where I was still awkward with shapes in the earlier ones. Starting with my most recent:

A header and a closure image.

A mix from two different newsletters. 

For some reason Font is really intimidating for me. I think it's because I am working with someones hard work (the font) and wanting to use it appropriately. I am pretty sure font experts will laugh at my attempts but here they are. I have fun, like the growth image, where I can illustrate off it.

And my earlier ones. Learning, learning, learning. So much more to improve on. I think I kill myself at times with all the different software knowledge I have in my head. I want to do it all! Hopefully I can do more like my April Bunny.

I wish everyone a happy April and bunny month!