It Snowballed

I had some time during a webinar at work today to doodle and ended up doing a little self-portrait for a new Facebook profile image. Two of the DJs at work fell in love with it and asked for their own.

   

Reddit Gets Drawn

I recently joined Reddit (woohoo, time waster!) and discovered a subreddit in which people around the world post photos in the hopes that one of the artists in the community will draw them. It’s a surprisingly good drawing prompt. I wish people posted more pet pictures though.

Warm-Up Doodle

La la la, I haven’t drawn in forever… la la la…

#whatiworetoday

Process

Two of my sisters are getting married this summer, and my twin has involved me heavily in the graphic design for her invitations and wedding information website.  She’s planning on an all-weekend throw-down badass camp-out wedding in the woods, and she asked me to draw some pictures illustrating the dress-up theme for each day of theweekend.  Here we have Happy Camper day, Crazy Hat day, and Solid Color day.

Molly Cottontail Puppet

Despite my long-lived passion for puppetry and toy theater, I haven’t made many of my own puppets, and none of them were very sophisticated. Recently, however, all that changed when I ran into Andy Furgeson of Red Yarn Puppetry, a local one-man wunderkind whose folk music/puppetry/education performances are growing steadily in popularity in the Portland area.  He needed a new character for his pantheon and no time to make it, so I stepped in to create Molly Cottontail, the female counterpart to his main character Bob Rabbit.  I’m completely stoked that I managed to whip her out in just three days, considering that I’d never made a moving-mouth puppet before, and I hadn’t even busted out my sewing machine in a couple years.  My dog loves her, too.

I started with measurements from the pre-existing Bob Rabbit and sort of winged the rest.  Andy and I decided that she should be a lighter color than Bob and have rounder ears, but he left the rest up to me.  To make her, I used faux fur, reclaimed upholstery velvet swatches, felt, deerskin, floral wire, found plastic sheeting, and corduroy. She’s stuffed with polyfill and rice, to make her feet heavy.

I had a blast making her, and now that I’ve learned how to make moving-mouth puppets, the sky’s the limit!

You Can Talk the Talk, But Can You Wok the Wok?

I’m pleased to announce the release of my first t-shirt designs for sale on Redbubble.  I had a great outpouring of love for these particular pieces when I posted them on my Facebook page, so I decided to try out this whole merchandising thing.  They’re available as stickers, kids’ clothing, and tees and hoodies for adults.  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have more control over pricing, but RB’s gotta make their buck too, c’est la vie. Enjoy! Buy!

Send in the Clowns

This is a quick piece I did for Scott Foster’s Good gallery’s most recent group show. There were some really amazing pieces this time! I knew Scott was going to dress up in full clown regalia, so I stopped by the party store before the opening and bought a dozen red foam clown noses. We put them in a bowl next to the wine and they were a huge hit. My pug clown’s nose was a real pompom that I glued onto him.

Cartoon Faces

I’ve been having fun with this exercise lately.  Fill a page with odd, random shapes and make them into faces! I got the idea from a post on Tumblr lambasting the fact that so many artists draw every face the same. I’m often guilty of that myself, so this is a useful way to spend time sketching.  I grabbed a couple of my favorites and threw some color on them in Photoshop.  My friend Joe got in on the action and did the vampiric little number near the bottom.

And an update on my new tattoo… it’s finished! Lawrence Edwards of Industrial Ink in Vancouver, WA did such an incredible job, I’m proud and flattered to be part of his growing portfolio of awesome work.  I love it.

Goat, Goat, Pug

I recently invited several friends over for a wildly successful watercolor party, a theme that will definitely be revisited in the future ’cause it’s just so damn fun.  I wasn’t the only one who turned out to be completely inspired by the event.  It hoisted me out of the unenthusiastic art rut that I’ve been in for the past few weeks.  I started a couple paintings just for me that will eventually be shown someplace, once I get them finished and framed.  I’ve also adopted a 2-year-old male pug named Charlie Beauregard into my little family.  He’s such a dear!  I had a lot of fun drawings his breed ’cause they’re dripping with character and I think I might try to hop on the pet portrait bandwagon soon.

Getting Ready to Rumble

I have a fantastic series I’ve been waiting to post, just you wait.  For now though, here’s a little swordsman.