Daily Art Practice: Mad Men Red

Happy Friday! The last two days I have been keeping up with my daily art practice of sketching small, usually in the morning before diving into work, but haven't had the chance to share on my blog.

One of today's illustrations is this retro style redhead on pink paper. I have really been having fun with opaque inks and colored pencils on the colored papers. I think it helps to bring in an added layer of creative to my pieces, since the color paper tends to dictate the doodle.

 Here is a quick snapshot of my redhead in progress. I love how fun it is to play with an idea and not no where it goes - I had thought to stop at the opaque ink, but the addition of the color pencils brought it to a more finished level.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll be playing in the gorgeous weather we have been having around here!

Daily Art Practice: Lemon Studies

This morning's art practice was a quiet and soft. The light wasn't as golden as I was expecting at my little table. After watering my plants I grabbed two bright and sunny Meyer lemons from the kitchen produce basket. Meyer lemons are thought to be a mix between a lemon and a orange - slightly sweeter in flavor and a deep yellow and I was inspired to create a fruit still life.

Playing on colored paper I couldn't help but try to different techniques. Opaque white ink, black ink and colored pencil brought them to life. I started with the lemons on yellow first and followed with the lemons on green paper. Here is a side by side comparison:

Daily Doodles: Taylor Swift Inspired

Feeling a little uncreative lately and looking for a fresh way to start my days, I decided to dive into a daily art practice. The concept is simple - paper, some fun pens and pencils, and a free sketch of whatever I choose. I am deeply inspired by the daily art practices of my Santa Barbara illustrator friends Tad Wagner and Molly Hanh who's blog posts and Instagram snapshots of their doodle brighten my day and I thank them for inspiring me to do this.

Today's kick off doodle was inspired by the adorable Taylor Swift on the cover of Elle Magazine. It was on my table, right next to my pens and I couldn't stop myself from a quick sketch inspired by her  in that that mod style Louis Vuitton shift.

Happy week everyone!

Autumnal Insta-Roundup

 I, like most people these days, have an unwavering love/obsession/sickness for Instagram. It's fricken genius - don't try to deny it (even if you did try to deny it and it were right on any sort of level I would still strongly disagree with you because that's just how obsessed I am with it).

That paired with an intense passion for Halloween-esque happy times I find myself

1. gathering/making/surrounding myself with all things cutesy-fall 
2.  proceeding to take pictures of it

Enjoy!

Nourished - A Book Design Experience

I haven't been keeping my blogging up with the rest of my life these days. It's actually quite funny because I blog often for the marketing agency I work for ( check out the blog posts I write for Web Marketing Therapy) and for clients as a ghost writer, and perhaps that has sort of dampened my enjoyment of blogging for myself. Or maybe I just kinda forgot about it - which seems like a common theme ever since I started this thing. Regardless, I am here today and sharing with you a project I worked on for quite sometime and finished back in April - book design and layout for a cookbook!

I met cookbook author Luna Paige Smith last fall through a fellow designer's referral. I found Luna's passion, compassion and creativity in both her recipes and cookbook ideas to be inspiring.

 Nourished - The Art of Eating and Living Well; is a collection of all natural, gluten-free recipes, insights and information for a fresh, feel-good life. Some may call me biased, but every single one of the recipes I have tried in her book is truly delicious (and healthy!).

Nourished was a labor of love and a melding of minds between each of us working on the book. The beautiful photography by Spencer Weiner really brought the book to life. It is self-published, was printed through an on-demand publishing company called CreateSpace and is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Below are some of my favorite elements of the book.

Back and Front Cover 

The title page showcases the collage look we incorporated into the book and helps to introduce the reader to the illustrations hidden amongst the pages.

Inner recipe page - highlights the simple layout and use of the gorgeous photos by Spencer Weiner.

This is an example of one of the inner chapter pages - it helped to break up the book into specific categories.

Some recipes did not have photos and that was ok, because simple custom illustrations were created by me and peppered the book in fun little nooks and crannies.

Illustrations were simple gestured line drawings in a soft grey.

Yum.

One of the most special things about this book is that Luna Paige Smith is donating a portion of the proceeds of every cookbook to select organizations devoted to providing hunger relief and sustainable living skills to those in need around the world. You can read more about Luna and her cookbook at her site Nourished By Life. I hope you buy a book and get cookin!

If Bewitched Had a Sister

If Elizabeth Montgomery's Bewitched character Samantha had a naughty sister, or maybe in this case, a granddaughter, I imagine she would look something like the witchy chick below. I haven't given her a name yet, but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. 

Born from a doodle on the phone, I couldn't help but give this witchy lady a nice wash of color to bring her to life. It also helps to have Halloween on the brain with it quickly approaching.

An Ode to Santa Barbara Fall - Princess Illustration

There is something about the transition into fall here in Santa Barbara that gets me excited and drawing again (usually fall related illustrations and richly colored patterns and watercolor experiments).

I can't really say its the sudden changes in weather or the massive landscapes of changing leaves that do it, because (quite frankly) that doesn't happen here. Don't get me wrong, we do experience a fall - of sorts - but it is a slow and gradual shift in more than one way. The first sign is the shortening of days and the odd change in light as shadows appear and disappear in strange ways, followed by what I have deemed as "spider season".  Then the pumpkins begin appearing at my local Trader Joe's. The fog slowly starts to creep back in the Santa Barbara morning air. My apartment turns into a freezing cave of despair and the fuzzy slippers come out of hiding.

Fall in Santa Barbara is mild and it's beautiful - so I drew a mild and pretty Fall Princess that represents the seasons subtleties in color.