I’m participating in the Uppercase Gallery’s “Old School” project and the deadline is Tuesday. Although I’ve know what I was going to do for a while and have been collecting pieces here and there, I sat down today and started playing with the layout and see what new items I could find. I made the background look like an old school desk and am going to collage items on it. Everything looks a little bland and although they are vintage, I still need color so I’m playing with how to punch it up.

One of my favorite finds for this project is an old school photo album of my Grandmother’s. She dated it May 24th 1936 on the back. Her picture is inside but she would have been 19 at the time so this book may be filled with students she taught then. I’ll have to ask her about it. I am including one of the photos in the piece but I’m reproducing it and then using it. Check back on Tuesday to see the final piece!

here are some more gouache pieces I’ve worked on. I’m pleased with the little boy but I think the beaver is a little dark. For him I also used a new graphite paper to trace my drawing and the line came out too thick and waxy. Overall I’m really loving gouache ut am unsure if I’ll add it to my illustration medium yet. Maybe it could be my picture book style since picture books tend to use more traditional mediums. Who knows…

I hope (HOPE!) to get back on track with Woogie Wednesdays today. It seems like we’ve always been busy or out the past several ones. I think today’s theme will be space so we’ll see what we come up with. Check here later today for it.

*Our project is up now!

My new intern came by last night for a meet & greet with the family and I’m really excited to have him on board. He’s an inspiring illustrator with a totally different style than mine. I could never do what he can do! Here he is, Josh Cassidy:

And by the Woog’s request, she keeps wanting to see this one:

Check out his blog and later I’ll show you his website when it’s done. One of my first things to do in helping him is getting him a website up – Josh, if you’re reading this, did you buy that domain yet?

Wow! That blog break felt good. I haven’t blogged or really showed myself online at all in over a month. May was insane for me. Probably the hardest month of my illustration career. I did a workbook project with about 800 illustrations, finished a cute book project and a few other small jobs. I was tired and I think I’m all caught up now. Luckily it has been a little slow work wise the past few weeks which I really needed. I received about 5 jobs last week so it’s time for me to pick up and go full force again (I work better like that anyway).

This month is almost over and I really wanted to get some licensing and personal work done. Not all that has happened but maybe I can work on things and hour here and there to get things done. I have been experimenting with gouache lately. A couple of years ago my rep suggested I try some traditional work after she saw a piece I had done with the background all in acrylics and the main object in clay. I’m not big on acrylics and have had tubes of gouache sitting around for about 3 years so I’ve brought them out again and started playing.

Here’s one piece I worked on yesterday:

Also, my new intern starts today. He comes over tonight to meet us all so I’ll officially introduce him tomorrow.