A Doodle in my Jill Bliss Journal

That super cool matchbook cover from Mexico City I was talking about. I love it!

Some collages I started several years ago, I was making an altered book with all the ephemera I had collected on my various trips to Mexico, over the years visiting family and friends in Mexico City. Checking out Puebla. Exploring Manzanillo, Barra de Navidad, Taxco and Cuernavaca and popping into Acapulco. Those experiences inspired a lot of my art projects during college. I plan to add some drawings and color to these, layer them up even more. I always have tons of works-in-progress for my easily distracted-self to work on. Ok. Now back to my last day of work in NYC, then finishing up packing and saying goodbye to my life in NYC and hello to my new life in Boston! See ya from New England!

Yeah, looks funny right? Spring flowers, Hyacinth and Tulips, sticking out of the snow. Poor little flowers, they felt the 70 degree weather, sprouted out, then had to deal with the blizzard last week. I have been wearing rubber rain boots for over a week because of all the snow, slush, and rain. Anyway, I am going to take a little blogging break to finish packing up my life in NYC, design the last round of spring shoes for my main freelance gig here in NYC, and then drive North to Boston next week. I’ll be back when I get to New England with photos, a clear head, a new domicile, and hopefully, finally, a new look to this website too! Take care and see you soon friends. XOXO

Ehhhh, well that was a nice two days of upper 60 degree weather! Now I guess it’s time for snow again! Back to winter-wear.

We just got these samples back, I love seeing my print patterns developed and in the details of my footwear designs! I designed the apple print as well as the shoes. Don’t wear the patent peep-toe sneaks in the snow though!

These strappy little numbers will perk you right up!

Ok a little sassy peep-toe patent wedge with cute buckle detail. We all need a pair of these!

Not all the prints we use are of my original design, this one was a nice plaid fabric we turned into a screenprint for a kids rainboot.

Yippee! It’s 70 degrees today in NYC! Wow! I swear we are having bizzare weather. One day, it’s 9 degrees and snowy. Then a week later, it’s 70! Freaky! But I’ll take it, cuz it means I can wear my new poetic license funky flats I got in California! Wheeee! No socks, no down coats, no gloves! And it’s still light out when I work late, and leave at 6:30 or 7:00 at night! Yay!

Oranges and Grapefruit on the Upper East Side and Animals at the Central Park Zoo! I also saw this exhibit at the Met last weekend.

I got this blue Micron pen the other day, and I thought I’d give black a break for a while. The evolution of this drawing goes something like this; I start by drawing what I know for sure I want in the drawing. In this case, I have been dreaming and thinking about the polar bear silhouette quite a bit. The polar bear, is, without a doubt, the cutest silhouette of any animal. It’s instantly recognizable. And he looks like he has a big butt, I think it’s funny, contrasted with his pointy little head. I like them so very much, it would be my dream to go somewhere snowy and look at them in their habitat. They are, visually, my favorite animal, and have been since I was a kid. Anyway, I really love animals a lot; drawing them, watching them, even just thinking about them makes me really happy.

So I drew the big polar bear, started filling him with other various animal friends and gave his paws a few patterns, and then set about creating a background. I knew the composition needed some sort of pattern framing it, because it is turning into a somewhat symmetrical composition, so I started with the tent-like striped curtains and drew in the wavy curves down below. I was looking at some old vintage mugs on ebay and found inspiration from a nice pattern on one, and created a sort-of wallpaper effect in the background. I went in and started drawing the thin lines in the wave-like shapes below, then I shaded some of the wallpaper shapes, and then decided to fill the grid in on the polar bear.

I’m really excited about this one. I did use some pencil to lay some of the shapes out before filling them in, just to be a little more responsible and try to solve some visual situations before permanently marking them in. I can already see a companion drawing for it… a penguin with a walrus and maybe a snow owl. I love arctic animals, just love love love them so much! Big fat seals and walruses, ooooh so cute! I think I just like things that are sorta fatty and chubby, they look really cute.

We got lots of snow on Wednesday! Now, it is all gone. That’s the the Long Island Railroad that runs behind the apartment building, I hear it all night and day. It sits behind what used to be a donut factory, thank goodness that closed down because the smell of donuts was a bit much in the hot summer months. It’s a pretty cool looking building though.

Anyway, It snowed a lot on Wednesday, and since I’m still recovering from Bronchitis (pesky little nagging cough acts up in the cold) I stayed in and worked from home. At one point I took a walk to the corner store, because we had run out of olive oil and we all know how important it is for cooking; I mostly use it to pop popcorn over the stove with. Some day I’ll start cooking real food again. Home-cooked popcorn goes great with my various netflix selections. The walk was beautiful, the snow was powdery and fresh, lots of untouched snow to trample on, but alas, the pesky cough came back so I had to cut it short.

I’ve been catching up on a lot of movies lately. I told you I watched Rocky 6 at Christmas-time, but had never seen 1-5. So I watched all of them. I liked 1 & 2, but 3 - 5, eh, kinda silly. The music in Rocky 5 was terriblie, too many bad guitar riff’s. But I have to admit, I am still rooting for the Italian Stallion. I wonder why Adrienne didn’t want to come back for Rocky 6, and instead they had to kill her off? Hmmm. She’s such a strange character that Adrienne. Also, I had never seen Risky Business (because I really loath Tom Cruise) but it was on cable so I watched it. I also watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show (not as good as I had hoped for), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (wonderful), and next is Grease. I’m not much into musicals, whether on Broadway or the screen, but I will watch Grease because it’s a classic after all, and there are so many references to it, and honestly, I like that TV show with people trying out for the new Grease broadway musical. I can’t believe I like the show, and don’t really like musicals. Some of these new shows, they just trap ya I guess.

My most recent delightful movie-watching experience came from seeing what has become one of my new favorites, The Science of Sleep. It is from the same writer/director (Michel Gondry) who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was also very clever. The Science of Sleep is an absolutely hilarious and innovative movie-watching experience, please check it out! I connected with it so much, because I get so many of my own wierd ideas from dreaming, whether at night or just daydreaming. If you have a chance, watch the making of, it will blow your mind how much of their own blood, sweat and tears the team put into literally making the set. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you watch something and you respond to it instantly, like it’s something that could have come out of your own head? This is it for me! This movie is really creative, and funny and I really value the artistic production of it. It’s nice to see something clever once in a while, really inspiring!

Another bird head. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. I will be leaving NYC in about two weeks and moving to the Boston-area! I’ve been planning it for many months, and suddenly, the time is so rapidly approaching! I guess it came out in my drawing, I’ll be moving so close to the ocean I will see it daily. I am excited for the new phase in my life, but also, a little curious as to how everything will work itself out. Hmmm. We shall see. Stay tuned and you can come along on my new journey with me!

A couple of weeks ago I tagged along with a friend of mine on one of his photo shoots for a work project. He is a freelance illustrator and along with editorial illustrations, he works on a lot of harlequin-type book covers. An interesting part of the project is having a professional photo shoot, complete with model, giving him something to work with when he goes home to create the narrative that surrounds the image. Some of the book titles are pretty hillarious, this particular one was called Dog Days. The story is about a magical miniature doberman pincher. Don’s art direction to the model was, I kid you not- I wrote it down, “So you will be standing there, looking concerned but not pissed off. Okay?” Haha.

Here you can see the photographer, the model, and Don, working with different poses.

Then they look at the digital proofs, and re-strategize some of their poses and go back for more shots. This goes on for about an hour. And then you can see the finished product, Dog Days, with cover art by Don Sipley.

The photo shoot was fun, and Don is very talented, seemingly creating a whole mood and world, out of some shots of a model in front of a grey background. So just another day in the life of another NYC freelancing creative person, another reminder that there are millions of people out there finding a way to work at home (mostly) and using their creativity to make a living. *** Oh, and Don really is more professional than I gave him credit for, I swear.

Well. Back to civilization for me! That was a very unexpected week off work and everything else, but I’m back to the grind again. One of the only things I managed to complete while sick was deciding on and finishing a new graphic header for my updated website (coming very soon!) I was going to draw it all by hand, for that, well, hand-drawn feel, but I decided on something else. I spiffed up this little owl character I drew a while back, and went for something alltogether more simple. Fun, but simple. Don’t ya think? Maybe you need to see it on the new website then you can judge for yourself.

I also made a little “about” button. Wheee! Looking forward to seeing it all come together, the new site will be cleaner, and with a few minor techy updates, and a less obnoxious color than the current screaming blue. Jake is working on it amongst his many other projects, but he said soon.