"Laraba" gouache and pen.

Piece for Blooms of Nigeria, http://bloomsofnigeria.tumblr.com/

Beautiful project where female illustrators were names of the abducted girls from Nigeria to illustrate with a single flower.
I had "Laraba," which means "Wednesday daughter."

Ten Paces and Draw - Circus

It's been a while!

My finally submitted my first piece to Ten Paces and Draw this week!

"Ten Paces and Draw is a blog about collaboration and illustration. As artists we thought it would be fun not only to catalog inspiring work by others, but to start an ongoing illustration project to which we can all actively contribute."

This week the theme was Circus and I received Rachel Dougherty's sketch to work on.

Check out Ten Paces blog! -  http://ten-paces.blogspot.com/

Pinocchio 1 and 2...complete!

Just one more and I'm done!!!
The final is the finale...where you finally see Pinocchio as a real boy.
I'm a bit stuck...because it's finale, I want it to be THE END, where fanfares and explosions happen everywhere
but then again
I want a simple, sweet tone to finish these series.
So more white space?

What do you think?

Pinocchio - 1

My first Pinocchio piece is complete! But the pieces are due by the 30th of September. Do they mean it has to be post-marked by that date? I'm confused. It's all in Portuguese.

Regardless, I'm going to send all 3 in this Friday. Which means I have to have it all printed, at the latest by Thursday so I can package it and send it correctly by Friday morning... hmm, tight schedule, but I think I can do it.

1 down, 2 more to go in 3 days. Go.

Oh, so my first piece. Thanks for the comments! (I had others via facebook/email). I took the suggestion of using limited palette.
Thanks again, now I know which direction I'm heading to, so the rest should be easier!

Illustrarte competition

I think I mentioned earlier that I am illustrating for the book Pinocchio because I've never drawn for an already written story before.
So I decided to motivate myself in drawing one by applying for the Illustrarte competition!
It's a biennial children's book competition held in Portugal, and the deadline is September 30th.
I'm pretty booked with school and work, but I hope to complete 3 illustrations for this.
I'd like to at least be able to apply and say I was part of it in some ways.

Here's a link for more information:
http://www.graphiccompetitions.com/illustration/ilustrarte-2012-children-books-illustrators-contest

I've completed one illustration so far. I'm working on the colors right now and boy am I hating it.
Please help!

For Dad's work - princess series

Last but not least, and definitely my favorite working on these series: Princesses!

I had trouble figuring out how to make a green castle look good...I suppose I managed.

Next project is to work on my Summer thesis. I'll talk about that more next.

For Dad's work - fairy series

So these are the 2 other girls as fairies.

Any comments welcome!

I don't show all 4 because, well, you get the idea once you know what all the girls look like. I just change the color around for each haha.

For Dad's work - ballet series

Summer's here!
Now that school's over, it's time for me to show the world what I've been up to.

My father works as an craft manufacturer and he needed illustration series for the girls.

So here's my first one's. I have 4 girls in total, but I'll just show you the 2 for now. Here they are!

All done in Illustrator

If you like, check out his website: http://www.sakuracraft.com/

Art Market!

Last year I sold 2 different screen prints:

"Under the Sea"

and

"Into the Woods"

These are both on white background, but I sold larger prints with tan colored paper, which were beautiful!
I still have more to sell if you're interested.

Okay fine...

I give in.

Let me retreat myself back to the internet world,
and show you all my works:


But to begin with,
I just got an e-mail from Anna M.!
She is a wonderful and sweet lady who has commissioned me to make 2, 8"x10" art work for her 2 year old daughter.
So what do I draw?

A flying pig and sheep of course!

Here they are:

Both done by gouache, but the pig was altered just a tad with Photoshop.

The assignment for this was
 2, 8"x10" images, appropriate for a 2 year old daughter for her room decorated mainly in pink and green.

So, for Concepts....

"Because I Fell and Scraped My Knee"

I FINISHED THE BOOK!

It was a long long process of me drawing and coloring... but alas, I'm done with it!

9 spreads in total. I haven't drawn end pages, but I might not have to with this book just because they're almost appropriate for card-board book. Hmm... Although I don't like that idea because in my mind card-board books are kinda... geared toward younger audience that I intend the book to be for.

I'll show you the first couple of pages, and I am planning on printing them awesome quality and hand bind them for Art Market, so if you like the story, shop-away! Woohoo

Hope you liked them! :)

New Story!

Hello hello,
So. Illustrated Book.
I finally decided instead of continuing my work with "On the Way to School," I am going to start a whole new book called "Genie the Giraffe."

This is Genie:

A special kind of giraffe called Superlongoneckaraffe and that means that she has an exceptionally long neck. With that neck, she noses around other animals' business at the zoo.

 

The class decided the red Genie is the best. And with Jamie's suggestion, I'm going to use the purple Genie for a night scene. 

I want to make the story a pup-up, but with the limited time, I'm gearing toward the slide/interactive book. 

We'll see how it goes. 

Some color scheme studies:

Class decided on the one at the very left.

Any feed back would be great!

children's book...now in color!

So with Nick's help, I finally got my "On the Way to School" to be in color!

I'm not quite done with them, but I'm going to start inking up my other ones tonight.

Snow's crazy, but it's really pumpin me up to do more work. woot!

Check it all.

Suggestions or critiques are welcome. 

:)