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!)

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!

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.

I normally don’t ever buy art, because I don’t have a permanent home right now and buying original art is often a big investment. I couldn’t resist though, when I saw that Susie Ghahremani of www.boygirlparty.com was offering mini original art commissions! I’ve always admired her and her artwork for its consistency, simplicity, and the way she has branded herself in such a professional and successful way. Seeing all the new products she comes up with is so inspiring and keeps me motivated as well!

She posted about her new DRAWsome project via twitter, where she would be offering 3×5″ pen and ink commissions through her Etsy shop. The first batch sold out immediately, but I snagged one from the second batch. I wanted her to draw my pet cat “Kitten,” (yeah, original I know) because she is back with my Mom in Michigan and I miss her like a maggot misses dog poo. So I sent her a few pictures of the glory that is Kitten, and received this totally awesome work of mini art literally within the week!

Photo and art © Susie Ghahremani, her photo looks better than mine would have

She captured Kitten’s essense wonderfully… from her tufted ears to her rather manly frame, and her constantly-staring eyeballs. The best part is the portrayal of how Kittens tail got chopped off… YES! (Kitten disappeared on a 2 week hiatus, and returned with half her tail rotting off. It was literally held on by a miniscule bit of dead skin, so my mom– wait for it– cut off the rotting part with scissors. Susie did not know how the tail came to be removed, which makes the fact that she threw scissors in there even more awesome.)

Anyway, I’m delighted

It’s been a few weeks now since sending out my most recent mailers, and since I have not received any bites yet I am getting increasingly antsy and wanting to expand into some other means of marketing. I know a few weeks isn’t a lot when it comes to getting responses from promo cards, but that– combined with the fact that I never received anything from my cards in December (and that the only response I ever got from my dummy book was one rejection)– is just a little disheartening. I don’t want to sit around sulking though, so I’m considering some other avenues for promotion.

My goal until now has been to spend as little as possible on marketing, simply because I don’t have a bunch of $ floating around, but I am finally understanding the whole “you have to spend money to make money” thing and I’d like to try it out with a paid portfolio site (not right now, but in the semi-near future when I feel my portfolio is as strong as it can be). The trouble is finding sites that are actually worth it. It seems better to spend more on a successful site, then spend less on a site nobody goes to, but I am having trouble finding out which ones those are. There are so many! I’m listing the ones I’ve seen… let me know if you’ve heard of any other promising ones!

The I Spot - I heard a lot about The I Spot during college, with professors (don’t remember which) saying that once you can afford it it’s important to get there because everyone goes there, and every big illustrator has a portfolio there. When I checked out the site, though, I found it to be extremely lacking in the navigation area. I wanted to test how easy it was to find images, so I decided to put some terms into the search box. When I searched “cat,” I got 0 results. Seriously. Whaaaaat? So I searched “animal” and again got 0 results. I honestly thought I must have been doing something wrong. Next I searched “woman” with 0 results, and I was further confused. When I started typing “people,” though, a little box came up under the search bar that offered to finish the word for me. With that search I got over 5000 results. After a while more of tinkering, I learned how the I Spot handled search, and that it was completely counter-intuitive. It appears that what they have is like 25 keywords which you can use to label your images. If someone happens to search for one of these 25 keywords, they get results. If you search for the other zillions of words in the english language, though, you get absolutely no results. How does this make any sense? If you only have an option of 25 or so keywords to look through, why is there is a search bar at all? Why not just categories you can click?

I can’t imagine how anyone would ever find my work over someone else’s, with such a horrible labeling and search system. I can’t picture myself spending $750 to be on such a poorly designed site, unless all the art directors already know something I don’t about searching The I Spot. If anyone reading this has a portfolio there, please, let me know if you get jobs from it! I’m really wary from what I’ve seen, even with the rave reviews of my professor.

The other sites I am looking at are ChildrensIllustrators.com, Picture-Book.com, Altpick.com, and FolioPlanet.com. But how on earth do you determine which one art directors go to most? The only thing they seem to have in common is being expensive.

I know this is something I want to do fairly soon, but with the cost and the risk it’s hard to make a choice. I know that just one good project would pay for the whole year of hosting at these sites, but which ones actually get you projects?

I’m thinking about waiting a bit to take the plunge on sites SO costly, and starting out with one of the less expensive, but still paid, sites. I’ve got a few nibbles from my free Creative Hotlist portfolio, and for $70 a year they offer better stuff (like actual pictures) and improved search ranking. They are run by Communication Arts, so people trust them, and it might be a good place to start.

If any of you guys are paid members of ANY portfolio site, I’d love to hear your thoughts about whether it’s been worth it! This stuff is so overwhelming.

*************************

In other news, I ordered some awesome rounded postcards from OvernightPrints.com to use as notecards to sell. I used the coupon code BC100 to get $10 off the order, so it was super cheap. If any of you guys need to order your summer mailers or business cards or something, these postcards came out amazing. They are really thick, and the satin matte finish is gorgeous. Also, rounded corners = automatic awesome. I have more on the way of 5 or so different art pieces, and I think I’ll be back for my next promo mailers, too. I’ll be selling them here, and at the Market Bazaar!

(Update…. I won! YAY!)

Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh… OKOK.

For the pre-graduation thingy in Forsyth, soon-to-be grads were invited to decorate these paper umbrellas for a contest. The umbrellas were all varnished and glued and such, so watercoloring them was totally out of the question. I decided to give acrylic painting a shot, without high hopes because I am a dismal acrylic painter. I almost gave up in the middle cause it looked so bad, but once I finished it with black outlines I fell in love. She’s an adorable little trash mermaid!

I used acrylic airbrush paints rather than normal acrylics, and I think it helps a lot to make brushstrokes disappear.  They are very thin and smooth. I highly recommend that stuff!

The winner gets $500, so wish me luck! ( Unless you did one too )

I have no idea what to do with a big ol’ umbrella I can’t fold up after the competition, though… I was thinking of hacking off the handle and hanging it up.

While bidding on different jobs in Etsy’s Alchemy page, I have plenty of sketches drawn for clients who ended up going with something else. So I’m going to go ahead and turn them into logos anyway for my portfolio. I’ve changed the names of the companies, but I figured there is no point in letting a good sketch go to waste!

I did this one today. Can you guess why I was interested in this project?

I’ve been working with the ladies at Art Beast, a nonprofit children’s center for homeless kids. They needed a mascot/logo for their organization, and it was a lot of fun working with them to create the perfect beast.

The original sketches. They liked number two, so we went with it with some revisions (simplification, etc)

Some of the colors we contemplated (we ended up with a combination of these for the final one, though!)

We ended up going with this beast, but they also wanted a version with texturing, which spawned this guy….

Thank you John Foerster for the demo on texturing in Illustrator!

Phew! It was quite a process, but a lot of fun.

Ack! My poor blog has been neglected recently– I’ve been focusing my efforts the last couple weeks on making a bunch of stuff for the craft fairs that were coming up, and the new SOI shop at the Savannah Mall.  I made so many dolls and was scared they would not be bought, but people seemed to really like them. An unfortunate side-effect is that I’m totally sick of sewing tiny legs and cat ears, but hopefully that will pass soon.

I’ve been wanting to practice my vector skills and expand my portfolio in that area, so lately I have been doing freelance work creating logos/mascots etc. for various Etsy members as a good way to get some new pieces. The fun thing is that via Etsy’s “Alchemy” request section, I can only bid on the requests that actually sound like fun… mainly adorable things! Once I’m totally comfortable with designing little characters and logos in Illustrator, I hope to move on to doing some graphic design projects as a way to get a design portfolio necessary for book design fellowship I REALLY want to apply to this December.

Here are two I just finished, with another on the way!