Embellished Closing & Pierro Gallery Opening

March is flying by, and the Embellished Art show at the 1978 Art Center closes this Saturday, March 30th with an event from 2 - 4pm. The opening night was amazing, with a big turnout despite the crazy rain! I was delighted to sell two works and raise money for Turning Point Community Services, supporting women with independence and stability. Being in a Women’s History Month show with the stellar art stars Chrissy McIntyre and Erin Pickering was fabulous!

In April, I am excited to participate in the group Spring 2024 Show: Showcasing South Orange for the new Pierro Gallery at the South Orange Baird. The new gallery space is stunning, and the opening is Wednesday night, April 17. Thank you to Blake Smith, the Manager for Arts & Cultural Affairs in South Orange, NJ, for organizing the show.

Meanwhile, I have been working on an Embellished bust. The Queen of the Anthropocene who has evolved over several years, and I will be posting about her journey from a hat stand in a rummage sale to a glittering queen who will soon be featured in an animation. It will be a busy summer!

Anthropocene Queen

Art Exhbition

The day is finally here! It is the morning of the Embellished Art Show for Women’s History Month at the 1978 Arts Center presented by the Maplewood Arts & Culture.

It has been a long time since I have exhibited in anything but a group show or art fair so it is an absolute honor and thrill to be in a three-woman show. Being in such stellar company with Chrissy McIntyre and Erin Rogers Pickering is awesome!

A portion of the sales will go to an extremely worthy cause Turning Point Community Services.

Summer Camp Art Class

Teaching a kid's art camp this summer was an absolute joy. The main project I prepared was making a paper clay keychain critter. A few steps are involved, and perhaps the project is more suited to tweens and up. With a mix of ages, some as young as seven, I added other options, including a table full of recyclable items so that they were inspired to do other creative work when the main project had drying time. Seeing how each camper used the available materials to occupy themselves creatively was amazing. Each camper left with at least one key chain, and everyone had other projects they had worked on. It was an extremely inspiring experience, especially facilitating each camper's interests. I am looking forward to doing more classes and hopefully one for adults. Thanks to Kent Place Summer Camps for adding Sculpting Critters to their Enrichment classes!

More on creating a Graphic Novel

Secrets in the Garden - Pitch in progress.

It's almost a year since my last post! I've got to do better at this!

This post is also about creating a Graphic Novel. I am finishing up the same Graphic Novel Intensive course I did last year, and I am thrilled I'm submitting something for review. I didn't get that far last year.

The Graphic Novel Intensive is run through Kids Comics Unite.
Rivkah, for the art and craft, and Jana, for the business of kid's comics, including Graphic Novels, are excellent teachers.

It seems like an eternity that I have been working to create a viable pitch for a Graphic Novel. "Comics? That must be easy." Absolutely not! What a grueling art form, but I love Graphic Novels, especially the arty ones, and I have wanted to make one forever.

I highly recommend the course to anyone interested in making a Graphic Novel. Besides the information and the challenge of putting together a story summary and pages for a pitch, the community is fantastic.

Work in Progress - Graphic Novel project

The process continues of writing a story for a Graphic Novel. The story is ever evolving but I wanted to share some progress illustrations I have done on the way. They may never end up in print so is nice to give them a space online. As a child I was fortunate to spend a lot of time at the beach. Also as a kid I got dumped by waves many times!

I acknowledge the Carigal People of the Eora Nation custodians of the land and connected to the country for millenia.

 

Graphic Novel Project

Dotty McDermott is Fierce & Bold - Multilit Illustration

Dotty McDermott is Fierce & Bold - Multilit Illustration

This year I am working on writing a story about a profound experience I had as a child. More than halfway through my life, I am still called to tell this story. I hope to illustrate it as a graphic novel.

For a short time in 1975, I went to a small school in a dusty wheat belt town in Western Australia. In retrospect, it was a simple situation about trying to fit in and avoid conflict. At the time, it was a shock in more ways than one for a tall tomboy from Sydney's northern beaches.

I look forward to making sense of all the ideas whirling around in my head!

Animation - Special Mention

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I recently entered Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells video competition. Whilst I didn’t win I did get a mention in the list of entries that they loved and that was awesome! Below is a link to the MATS Blog entry with the winner and select entries. Congratulations to the winner Sam Rudd who will be super busy doing a year of Art School with Lilla a fantastic prize!

https://makeartthatsells.com/drum-roll-please-find-out-who-won-our-huge-video-testimonial-competition-plus-watch-your-gorgeous-films/

Heartland MAP - a labour of LOVE

For the past couple of months, interrupted by breaks, I have been working on a big picture!

The image contains musings about a land of love and I’m sure I will want to add things in the future. Perhaps a different LAND OF LOVE image may brew?

With this image I started off doing a big pencil sketch and thought I might hand paint it. However as I tried to dive in with colour I knew that a digital approach was the only way to realize my vision and all the detail I wanted to include.

My plan is to make some printable items from the image. Who doesn't love a big colorful tea towel or maybe a tote bag? The print part I have yet to investigate.

The over riding motivation was, as a wise teacher has said many times, ‘Do the work you want to get’ so here is HEARTLAND.

Graphic Novel Page Project

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As part of the Make Art That Sells 5 month Illustration Bootcamp I created a graphic novel page. Lilla Rogers provided us with some miscellaneous prompts and we could use all or none. I incorporated/interpreted the following mage prompts in my piece - a  photo of a lady and dog, vintage photo of a man, picture of a small toy car and alligator, a blue bat and a toy dollar note which I had lots of fun reinventing! 

I have included some initial sketches to see where I start and where I finish. 

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Sketch to finished art

Here is a window into my process creating the Multilit reader series illustrations. Below are very rough sketches which were the starting point through to approval sketch and then full color printed image. The "very" rough pencil sketches were snapped with my iPhone and used as a guide to redraw in photoshop on a wacom cintiq. This project required a lot of illustrations over a short period of time so using a digital process was invaluable. What I love about working digitally is having the layers and being able to cut and past to move things around. It is also a lot quicker to color digitally and the process works well if you set your color palette at the start of the project and pretty much stick with it. I use the Adobe library tool to keep track of colors and graphics. 

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Illustration for Multilit

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Like many visually creative people I am supremely slack at promoting my achievements. It's almost a year since I finished a fantastic 6 month illustration job for a company producing Learn To Read courses, Multilit. I did 182 drawings in 6 months. It was intense but I LOVED every minute of it! In an effort to be more organized and productive with my marketing efforts I will endeavor to create a few posts covering some key points about the project. You are welcome to call  me out if I fail in this mission :)

Learning Never Ends

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Recently I completed (well sort of) my second Lilla Rogers, Make Art That Sells Illustrating Children's Books course. I thought the second time around I would be very prepared and stylistically nail all of the five week assignments - Character, Emotions, Poses, Environment and Cover.  I'm not sure if it was the detox diet I was on during the course or just letting life get in the way of concentration but unfortunately I did not do the course justice this time around. Each of my assignments were stylistically different which was the exact opposite of what I was hoping for. Since the course finished I have been reworking my assignments. Pictured is an image combining the Emotions and Poses weeks. My take away from  the course is that whilst I can draw in many different styles my challenge is to maintain stylistic consistency. Lilla Roger's course are a fantastic way to improve as an illustrator. Whilst you may feel you do not do your best work during the course you will definitely reap the benefits as time goes by. After completing the first Illustrating Children's Books course I was lucky enough to get an illustration contract working on a Children's Learn To Read series for five months. It was such a joy!

Creating A PDF Portfolio

LizMunro_MoonGirl

Here is my downloadable PDF Illustration portfolio.

It's always a challenging to decide what to put in and leave out.

If you work in more than one market I think it's a good idea to be able to quickly amend your PDF to suit a client's needs.

Heart & Soul = THIS

Here is my Round 2 Global Talent Search competition entry.

It was such an intensive delight to create. The prize is a beauty, representation by the Lilla Rogers Studio  for 2 years. An absolute dream prize!

You can VOTE HERE for me.

Or cast a vote for another very deserving and keen to be represented artist.

http://www.lillarogers.com/gts-2016-assignment-2-semi-final/

One artist gets through on votes and 5 others will be picked to go through to the final round by an awesome group of industry judges. The winners create another illustration in response to a brief. It's a grueling process but really my idea of heaven on earth so be prepared to see me spruiking my fingers off on social media this week!

Lilla's courses are the best. The amount you can learn and grow is out of this world! I highly recommend them to any artist aspiring to Make Art That Sells.

 

A wonderful gift!

GTS16SemiFinalist

I am so excited and really grateful to have made it to the semi final round of Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search Competition

See my submission in my previous blog post.

In the past couple of years I have done several of Lilla's courses and the amount I have learned is just mind-blowing! The knowledge and insight Lilla and her team bring to the process of developing your art to the goal of Making Art That Sells is awesome! The artists I have met online are so talented and truly inspiring. If you are looking to develop your portfolio and style I highly recommend doing any of Lilla's courses. I am really looking forward to Lilla's next and new course Illustrating Children's books!

Making it to the Semi Final round is a real treat for me and I am going to enjoy every minute of this next assignment. I look forward to sharing it with you when it is posted in the Top 50 voting gallery on August 31st.

 

 

Spot the difference!

Submission

Amended post submission

The last two weeks I have been working on a submission for an illustration competition. Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search. The crux of the brief was to create a design for a tea cup, saucer and paper napkin. Like I am sure all the other entrants did, I agonized over all the details and composition. I really thought I had covered all the tweaks I needed to make but... having a look post submission I had a revelation about a change I think has made a huge difference. I am sure only to my eye of course! Significant others wonder about sanity but I know all you artists understand. Here are the two options the submission and the amended version. Can you spot the difference? 

Let's get serious!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an Understatement = "Planning is not my strong point at the moment".

With 2 kids, 2 cats, a puppy, a fish and a husband (not in order of preference :)) and add to that a ripened age count, my brain is somewhat scrambled like a carton of eggs headed for a jumbo omelette.

Pre the circus menagerie that is now my life I was rather organized. I kept lists, was scrupulous with my time management but now, "meh" (I do love that word). Most primary care givers of human and/or animal varieties will probably get where I'm coming from. The planet of so many excuses not to get Sweet Honey Instant Tarts done -  for yourself!

I think you can tell my brain is not in a great state let alone being in the remote town of being a productive, financially compensated, working artist.

So it's time for that line in the sand, the leaf to be over and my head to return from the nether regions of planet excuses.

It's monthly calendar time, no not just a jumble of digital diarizing but a hard copy of a calendar. I made one in Adobe Illustrator. That's a good start, right?

Month Calendar template > DOWNLOAD and  Get your AUGUST on!

Please feel free to download this PDF. Scribble all over it and reprint it at will. That's what I'm going to do. I made it at 17 x 11 in for my big printer but it will print nicely at US Letter or A4 for the rest of the world.

Thoughts and comments are very welcome.

Line art to finished art

Here is my latest Make Art That Sells project to design a note book cover featuring the JONQUIL flower. Each student had a different flower theme depending on their birth month. My last post was the initial line art version and here is the developed image. It is always an inspiring process doing the MATS projects. It is wonderful to see all the other artists work.

For the Love of Line Art

The process for most of my illustration has been the same for years, start with a line art drawing. I envy illustrators who draw with a brush and create beautiful color work with watercolor and gouache. I keep telling myself to try this approach. The truth is I love pencil and being able to erase and I love the look of line art.

This featured work is a Make Art That Sells  project - a notebook cover with lettering and flowers. My flower name - Jonquil. I scanned the line art into Photoshop amd gave it a gradient background. I may print it out on watercolor paper and paint it or maybe paint digitally.