I am excited to be one of the artists featured in the Good to Know Zine’s #6 issue at Pikaland! The Good to Know Zine at Pikaland.com is an awesome collection of thoughts and advice from illustrators based on a theme for that particular issue. This issue’s question was about jealousy:

Do you get jealous/envious when you view other people’s work? Does it make you a better artist? How do you get over it?

You can purchase the zine via PDF or get a physical copy, and if you’re interested you can answer issue #7’s question!

Check it out Here!

(This is a loooong post. Good to read if you’re looking for a fine art printer or masochistic!)

As I said in my earlier post– I ordered an Epson R2880 to start making prints of my own. I’m definitely still going to order from iprintfromhome as well (they use the same inkset and paper as I am) but I wanted to be able to make archival, museum-quality prints on demand. The printer arrived earlier this month and I’ve had some time to test it out.  I must say: IT’S AMAAAAAZING!

I ordered it refurbished because it was a LOT less expensive, Epson guarantees their quality, and will replace it if something doesn’t work. It arrived with absolutely no scratches or blemishes to show that it’s a refurb, and was just like new.

It was easy to set up and I was ready to work on making a print about an hour after opening the box. This printer made stunning prints straight out of the box, but I did end up purchasing a monitor calibrator since my screen was way off for printing. I won’t go into what calibrator you should buy (I’m not an expert), but I will say that this is a vital part of professional printing to get your monitor colors accurate.

I bought the Spyder3 Express Calibrator which worked great after some trial and error, and for paper I purchased Epson Watercolor Radiant White paper for test prints (it’s thinner at 190 gsm and is wood pulp, not cotton) and the more expensive Epson Velvet Fine Art paper for final prints (thick at 260 gsm, 100% cotton and totally archival) which produces the most beautiful textured and rich prints I’ve seen so far.

I wish I could accurately show how nice the prints look, but all I have are bad photographs. In any case, you can see the depth of color and the great texture of these prints– in person you really can’t tell that they are not my originals without a magnifying glass!

I am no kind of expert when it comes to printing, so I can’t write up an educated review… But I have been doing a ton of research about what people look for in prints and I can describe my experience for anyone else thinking about purchasing a printer for artwork.

Choosing a Printer

Basically, my needs for a printer were this:

• It needed to use pigment inks, which are much more stable than dye ink
• It needed to print 13×19″
• It needed to handle thick matte fine art paper
• The color print quality needed to be freaking awesome and professional (which means it would probably use at least 8 inks to capture all those colors)
• It needed to not be absolutely enormous

I did some research within the Canon, HP, and Epson brands. My initial list that seemed to have many of these features looked like this:

• HP Photosmart Pro B9180
• Canon Pixma Pro9500
• Epson R1900
• Epson R2880
• Epson R3800

Some quick research showed me that the Epson R1900 was not what I wanted– it is an excellent printer, but aimed toward glossy printing and unable to handle heavy fine art paper well. Good. One down!

Next, I ruled out the Epson R3800 (kind of a larger 2880) because it’s crazy big and prints up to 17″.  It was also too expesnsive. I hesitated a bit, because the R3800 has ink cartridges so large that it ships with over $500 worth of ink, but space is an issue and I did not want to go crazy. I can always order 17″ prints online if I need.

Deciding between the rest was more difficult. The Canon Pixma 9500, HP B9180 and Epson R2880 all seemed to be great printers, with fans of each. Each could print the same size with at least 8 archival pigment inks. Each had different pros and cons. I eventually decided on the Epson R2880 because it definitely had equal-to-better reviews in terms of print quality, it’s smaller and faster than the HP and Canon, the Ultrachrome K3 inks are drooled over, it can use one of highest reviewed fine art papers (Epson Velvet), and the main complaint for it–the fact that you have to waste ink swapping black cartridges for glossy vs. matte paper–wasn’t an issue since I will never use glossy paper anyway. It uses the same inkset/paper as they use at iPrintFromHome, so I already knew the prints would look awesome.

The Canon and HP did feature larger ink catridges (Epson’s are ridiculously small… another con) but since I am not yet a high-volume printer, I was not too worried about this. Basically, the Canon and HP didn’t have any outstanding positives to outweigh the Epson.

If you’re an artist like me looking for a high quality printer, all the ones I listed would be great. I chose the R2880 because it had the qualities I needed, but the others might be perfect for someone else! Just make sure the printer uses archival inks and can handle archival paper, so that your customers will have prints that last for decades.

If you guys remember my review of iPrintFromHome, I totally love them. This week, they are having a special that I thought would be great for illustrators. Check it out below, and visit them at: iPrintFromHome.com to order!

If you sign up and say I referred you by typing “Tweet - jadefrolics” in the referral box, you’ll get a $10 credit to start out your account, too.

This Week’s Tweet Treat (valid October 23rd-30th): Free 4×6, 8×10 or 16×20 Somerset Velvet Giclee Fine Art Print: You Choose!!**

You’ve spent hours, and days, and weeks working on your paintings and now you’re ready to turn them into prints.

But, I bet you’re a little nervous about how much it’s going to cost and you may be worried about managing an inventory. You’ve probably heard that many Giclee printers will charge a setup fee in addition to holding a minimum order requirement.

You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff when you order from us. No minimum orders. No set up fees. And, our prints are always 100% guaranteed.

(Sometimes we have minimum order requirements associated with promotions like this one, but there are never minimum order requirements on standard orders.)

To help you get started, we’re offering you a free Giclee Fine Art Print with your order this week. So go ahead and take that leap. We promise, it’s not that complicated.

Your Tweet Treat offer will be based on your order total (not including shipping), with the following breakdown:

$10 order total - eligible for one Free 4×6 Somerset Velvet Giclee Fine Art Print
$20 order total - eligible for one Free 8×10 Somerset Velvet Giclee Fine Art Print
$75 order total - eligible for one Free 16×20 Somerset Velvet Giclee Fine Art Print

Instructions:
1. Place an order at iPrintfromHome.com that totals $10 or more by midnight on Friday, October 30th. Be sure to add the corresponding Somerset Velvet Giclee Fine Art Print to your order, but remember that the Giclee Print does not count towards your order total. (NOTE: Your Tweet Treat offer will be based on your order total, not including shipping or the Free Giclee Print)
2. IMMEDIATELY after placing your order, send us an e-mail (here) with “Tweet Treat – Free Giclee” in the body of the e-mail.
3. Once we receive your e-mail, we will adjust your order total to account for your Free Giclee Fine Art Print.
*Offer does not include shipping.
**Limit: One Tweet Treat order per customer/shipping address.
***Tweet Treat orders are not guaranteed to be completed within our standard turnaround times, but every effort will be made to do so.

Awesome, huh? You have til October 30, so check it out if you want!

I wrote a post a while ago about using Lulu to create a children’s book dummy. I was really pleased with the quality and affordability of my dummy book, so I’ve gone to Lulu for another project.

Chronicle Books is my favorite independent book publisher, and the third Monday of each month they are open for full portfolio reviews. I’ve been meaning to apply for months now, but I didn’t want to send in the usual Itoya black portfolio with letter-sized printouts. I love Itoya– just wanted a change, y’know? I decided to use Lulu.com again with the same options I chose for my dummy book. I set up this portfolio layout in InDesign, and ordered the book last week. It arrived pretty quickly!

I’m really happy with the quality of my new printed portfolio, and I’ll have no qualms about sending it in to Chronicle. I only wish I could swap out images when I have updates without ordering a whole new book!

If you’re interested in making your own portfolio book at Lulu, for reference I chose the paperback perfect-bound option in an 8.5″ square. I think the glue of perfect-binding looks a lot nicer than the stapled books. (And it costs the same.) You have to have at least 32 pages for perfect binding, but I found that using mostly one image per spread (16-20 illustrations) made the book flow nicely and not appear cluttered.

P.S. My printer arrived as scheduled and is AMAZING! I’ve been testing it out and will write more about it soon. Hooray!

I love October, and especially Halloween! I don’t know if it’s because of my heathen childhood or just the huge piles of candy and pumpkin seeds, but the whole month has always been my favorite.

I decided to get into the spirit by popping out a Halloween illustration featuring some mutant kitties. I couldn’t decide on the color scheme, so I kept a couple variations.

They are available as Halloween prints: Purple Version or Orange Version!

I find that creating digital illustrations is a good way to work through artistic blocks… with the paint bucket and a tablet I get instant gratification and I don’t have to deal with setting up a workspace or wonder how to successfully paint tiny bits and all those other traditional worries. Very relaxing.

In other news… I’ve made a rather large purchase (for me) of a professional printer of my very own. It should be arriving on October 6th, and I am super excited! I decided on an Epson R2880 for various reasons. I’ll write more about why once it arrives! (Soonsoonsoonsoonsoon!)

Since moving to Florida, my whole workin’-on-stuff schedule has been totally out of whack– including my blog, of course! (Man, please don’t let this blog become one of those blogs whose only entries consist of “Sorry for not writing, teehee!!!”)

I (Actually, my dad) did succeed in solving a long-time frustration regarding the name “Jadefrolics,” though! Years back I was dumb enough to let jadefrolics.com expire, after which a domain hoarding company immediately snatched it up and started using it for random ad garbage. Rather than going into the whole boring story, the good news is that my dad signed up for an expired domain-grabbing company himself and got it back! Now  jadefrolics.com is mine again (it will have to be pried form my cold, dead appendages) so I’d like to ask anyone who is linking to the site from jadefrolics.net / blog.jadefrolics.net to update their links to jadefrolics.com / blog.jadefrolics.com! Woohoo!

I also tweaked my logo a bit, just to make it a bit more polished. I didn’t like the irises and position of the eyes in the old logo, and I thought the eyelashes were too garbled when shrunk. I’ve given it some slight changes and just general editing.

Old Logo (Above)

New Logo (Above)

I’ve also been delighted with the shiny-candy icons the Mac uses, so for fun I decided to make a shiny cat in Illustrator. While looking for inspiration on logos I found this awesome tutorial on how to recreate the Firefox logo, which is really fun to read about– though it uses Photoshop rather than Illustrator.

My last update for the site so far was to create a commission request form, so potential clients could give good, organized information and also to weed out serious requests from, er, not so serious ones ;). I used JotForm.com for this and integrated it into the site. It was really easy to do, if anyone else is looking for a form builder to stop spam and keep organized!

I’m moving my site to a new domain (the domain I have been coveting for years since I was stupid enough to let it expire) but the process has been tricky. I realize there is no navigation bar, but I should be back to work finishing things up tomorrow then I will write some proper posts. Hooray!

I’ve been working on some new notecard designs which I thought I’d post– some new fruit bats and adorable snails. I like to take a break from painting to work digitally sometimes, as I feel I can focus more on the lines and characters without having the watercolors overtake things. I’m also working on painting The Deer and the Snail. Hooray!

I hope I don’t sound like a salesman now, but iPrintfromhome is starting up an ongoing promotion for new customers. Unfortunately I already have an account, so I can’t grab the $10, but their giclee prints are seriously pretty amazing so anyone who hasn’t tried them out will have no reason not to with this new promo!

They’re offering a $10 starting credit for any new customers who sign up and write “Tweet - Referrer’s_Name” in the “Referred by” box. Hopefully you’d be kind enough to put my name, if you’re checking out the promotion here! So, when you sign up, just write “Tweet- Jade Nellans” in the referral box and you should be all set with your $10. (I think they might manually add the $ to your account though, so give it some time!)

This is awesome, because $10 will pay for a 4×6 Giclee print AND shipping, so you can easily check out whether you love the quality without spending anything.

You can read my review of them here. If you want to try it out, feel free to sign up!

Where have I been? MOVING. It was hectic and awful, but it’s now all over and I am safely in Miami, Florida.

My blog updates have been woefully lacking, not just from the move but also because all the work I have been doing has been your basic logos and things– nothing too exciting! I do have a few sketches to show now, however. Heck, I’ll even show some of the less glamorous stuff I’ve been doing.

I’m working on a painting for a woman in Canada, for a baby’s room. It’s based on a Filipino folktale called “The Deer and the Snail.” It’s pretty much the Rabbit and the Tortoise… but with, you know, a deer and the snail. Snails are freaking awesome, so this will be a lot of fun.

Next up is another foray into international illustration. WTS Productions in Britain needed an update to their poster for “Father Christmas and the Magic Fir Cone.” A girl and the forest creatures discover a magical fir cone, but a nasty black cat and Baba Yaga want to steal it for themselves. Oh no!! I believe the story is based on a Russian folktale.

Like I said, I’ve also been doing a lot of pretty simple, quick jobs for people. This is the kind of bread and butter work I’ve been doing to practice various skills and just keep making money as I seek out the big jobs.

Mascot Design of girls with lollipops. This is my attempt at, um, “sassy.”

Green Goddess Logo, which is still in progress as the client is out-of-state.

Golden Beet Yoga Logo Design

Tattoo design - Client wanted a Meeple (from Carcassonne) riding a catfish in the style of those Koi tattoos you see all over the place. This was ridiculous and fun, and a good way to brush up on my Photoshop skills.

This was a really small painting for a client who wanted to “look toward the future” after some life issues. She wanted absolutely nothing weird in it, so it might not resemble my usual work.