Another drawing in progress. I recently had my eyes checked and have to wear glasses for distance and a astigmatism. The Dr. asked me three times why I don’t wear my glasses anymore (from a Rx I got back in ‘99) and I kept saying because I haven’t driven in over 2 years, but now I’ll start driving again so the glasses go back on again. Better eat more carrots.

Still working on this. Taking my sweet time with this and everything else in life! Enjoying the summer and the puppy, etc, etc. I am still in the (long) process of interviewing but hope to hear something about my next work endeavor soon!

We are throwing a cajun creole party for Memorial Day weekend, and after doing lots of research on all kinds of lovely things to draw for the invite (crawfish, gumbo, cocktails, shrimp, fish, trombones and other brass instruments, beautiful wrought iron details in architecture) I settled on this image of a perspective view of New Orleans house, complete with decorative wrought iron. The bottom half is going to list the menu in handwritten letters, as well as the other important info. Should be fun! And now, I must get to work drawing shoes in Illustrator for my latest footwear freelance assignment here in Boston.

A nice person introduced herself on my website and asked if I was going to be making any Mother’s Day drawings/cards. What a great idea! She said she really likes birds, as I do, so I came up with a Mom bird wrapping her wing around a baby bird. I came up with a background, that slightly represents to me, a warm comfy quilt. Hugs and warmth, Moms are famous for them. Although I’m thinking of drawing an actual woodgrain in the background instead of what this sketch shows, cuz it would be nice if the birds were sortof in the trees. Well, if I can resolve the image, I’ll be offering some cards for sale ASAP so they can get to you and you can get them to your Mom. This will be sortof a pre-shop sale, as I will be launching Funcupcake’s online shop within the next few weeks, and offering prints of my original drawings for sale! Yay! Be sure to let me know if you want to be on the email list for updates about the shop, or you can just check back here.

The other day while eating pizza I overheard a loud, Italian Boston accent exclaiming “I smell a rat!” Obviously, the guy meant somebody was lieing or cheating or otherwise untrustworthy. It was really over the top and it made me laugh a lot. Later, I saw this Rat image in one of the Boston weekly papers. So I cut it out and scribbled around it a little with a few other unrelated things, and now I have immortalized that moment of overhearing somebody say “I smell a rat.” Like straight outta a movie I tell ya. Very entertaining.

Yellow Cotton Eyelet, a lamp, and a rooster. See the connection? You don’t? Well there is no connection, just teasing you. My laptop screen died this week, so I’m posting some old little sketches from last month I had on flickr. But I’ll be back next week with new photos & drawings when I get my computer back from the computer doctor. I miss it, can’t live without it!

The last month or so I’ve been spending a lot of time packing up my old life, transporting it, and then unpacking and setting up my new life! I haven’t been drawing, we just recently bought and set up a table and chairs to work on. Even though I haven’t been producing any drawings, I have been maintaining a mental sketchbook of ideas. And luckily, I feel very inspired in my new life. I have collected a lot of ideas along the way, and now I’m in the perfect (calm & bright) place to work some of those ideas out!

I used to draw at night a lot when I lived in NYC because I often suffered from insomnia, something I’ve never experienced before in my life. Now the insomnia is gone! Yay! I bought a nice recycled, natural paper sketchbook before I left New York and here’s the first page in it. I’ll get back on track next week, but first am heading to NYC for the night for a friends birthday celebration.

Oh, and welcome to my new website layout! What do you think? Thanks to my friend and webhost Jake for making it all work!!

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!

I love to work with color. I have this tiny sketch book, it’s 3.5″ x 5″ and it’s a great little place to try out color combinations and capture little bits of things. I did two of these on the plane and even though they are small, I’m counting them in my list of drawings for the year. For as much as I love color, I find it really satisfying to work tonally, and in black and white, and I am going to continue on with my black and white series because I think there is something very liberating about working in just one color. Drawing #10 is almost complete and ready to share, and it is drawn in black and white, in the same vein as the first 5 of 2007.

We purchase fashion magazines for work. International and Domestic, and we pour through them for inspiration. We tear out the pages that help us put together our themes. Once we have our themes, we put together our mood boards that the sales team then utilizes to showcase our collection and sortof explain our inspiration. And we design our lines featuring said inspiration. For example this past season we chose for our Spring/Summer 07 themes; Very Metal, Jungle, Cruise, Pretty Lady, and Brights. Because I now have to do this for work, it’s sortof taken the leisurely enjoyment out of magazine perusal. As much as I try to just enjoy reading magazines, like on the airplane, let’s say, I find myself searching for fashion themes, noting details and always looking at the shoes. I find myself working, not just reading or browsing. So this trained mind of mine has a different attitude about magazine perusal as a hobbie now. However I still devour the catalogs that come in the mail. Specifically, the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Bloomingdale catalogs. I also like the International magazines (specifically the Japanese/Asian Accessories mags and the Italian fashion magazines) because i can’t read them so it’s a totally visual experience. And also because they seem to have more creative layouts. But there are also a lot of exposed nipples to deal with. Does that sound prudish? I’m not a prude, but hey when I’m looking for cool textures, I’m not talking about body textures okay.

Anyway, when I look at these catalogs and INL mag’s I can easily look at the nice fashion styling and photography, and not care that I won’t be buying any of it. I’ve found another purpose. I tear out the pages that grab me because of an interesting texture, pattern, detail or overall silhouette. Then I draw from these pages. Sometimes I just draw a piece of lace or only the outline of something. I’m doing homework in a way, but it doesn’t feel like mandated homework because nobody is telling me what to do and nobody is checking it the next day! I definitely need to continually practice my drawing, I need to be good at it for work. I need to be efficient at it so that I can easily and accurately communicate visual ideas, personally and professionally. And it’s just a personal goal I have. I want to be proficent at drawing because I’ve always been scared of it, yet admired it. Most people say you need to draw every day to get good and stay good. Ideally, over time, I hope to master line control, proportion and detail. I get sick of drawing shoes, and I am bored with landscapes and portraits. I’m not big into realistic artwork. It’s nice, but it doesn’t motivate me personally. I like drawing details, like fabric trims, jewlery, and print patterns, and nice silhouttes in which case I usually forego most of the details and focus on the overall shape. I like shapes. I like details. Mostly I don’t care about trying to represent anything specific or realistic.

So here are some random textures and patterns I found in the Mothers Day Bloomingdales catalog. And a woman wearing pearls. I much prefered drawing the pearls to drawing the woman, really, she’s just there so that the pearls are not floating in space. A holder, if you will. Often when somebody at work has a shoe that has some irregular, organic detail they need, they see me. I love drawing sparkle glitter fabric. My co-worker Lydia (Happy Bday Lyd!) loves the symmetrical projects (she’s such a Virgo… they like order!) I love the random textures found in a cork wedge, or a laser-cut lacey leather strap. In drawing class in college, I think I was the only one who actually liked doing the exercise where you draw the entire still life or model without lifting up your pencil. I think because it almost created a pattern and stylistic look of what we were drawing. It was not the most realistic rendition, but it had a certain distinct style. So anyways, take another look at those catalogs in your mailbox, anything good to draw?