Time to share the news!  We’re expecting!  Here’s a little illustration for the baby to be.

The poor jelly fish could no longer struggle to visit the daylight…

I’m in the midst of listening to Tara Reed’s Wordpres Call from yesterday, and wow, what a huge help.  I’m a designer and unfortunately I haven’t done enough wordpress to really educated myself with the ability it has.  I think wordpress is my new love.

Thanks Tara!

A client of mine asked me to draw up a political style strip to promote some work he’s selling.  Here’s the work in progress.  Not what I normally illustrate but I’m enjoying getting the practice to use different styles.

I’ve noticed for some time now that bartering is becoming an everyday sort of way of life. One hand washes the other, right? At the beginning you think, “Hey I could be making a couple hundred dollars doing this website why would I want to do it for free?”  Well think of it like this, for instance, a friend of mine has his own tile business, a website really isn’t on the top of his list, but he does want one.  I need a new back-splash in my kitchen, between materials and labor it cost me just about the same as it would to design a website.

Instead of going through the hassle of budgeting for a kitchen I am in need of, or stressing out learning how to do it myself, I’ll be designing his site and he’ll be designing my kitchen! When you start to think about the things that you need and what you could offer to those who can return that “favor” it works out perfectly, cause in the end you would be spending that hard earned money anyway.

During the past few weeks working on my illustrations for my portfolio I’ve gone through many changes in ideas and styles.  Yet I always seem to fall back to the same similar style.  So I’m guessing that I’ve found my illustration niche and I’m going to take it and go with it. I’m working on an idea for a book, Dino Dinner.  The writing of this book will be worked on shortly but I had to come up with some illustrations I would like to eventually add to my portfolio.  I have my main character set, Rex the Dinosaur and Roy, a little boy. I don’t want to go too deep into illustration because obviously the story should be written first.  But I think that Roy could probably have a few books.

Here is my main cover, undecided on if this should be it, very simple cover.

This is another illo that will be part of the book, which is Roy sitting with Rex during Dinner.

We’re into week 6 of the 12wc and boy is this kicking my **s. I’ve only gotten 1 illustration complete (well almost complete) and we should be onto #5&6.  Anyway, I’ll catch up at some point I always do The good thing about all of this is I”m really starting to feel out where my designs skills are and where I want to be.  So with out further ado here is my almost complete illustration #1.

So we’re week 5 into the 12 week challenge and I decided that what I was working on just wasn’t in my heart.  So I’ve switched gears and I will be illustrating a series of pieces that I’ve had on the back burner for a while.  Really these pieces are designs that will be sold as prints and cards for now.  Perhaps they will develop into  something more later on.

OK so everything is still in its rough stage blah!  I’m having a little bit of a struggle with my lines.  I started sketching my girls and ended up trying a thicker line and now I’m confused with how they should look.  I really liked my bully and tried the same method on my girls but for some reason it was looking really off. But looking at them side by side…  I think now I’m steering away from my original plan…