New Work: I'm Already Gone

2012 is off to a bright start with this piece that started off as a doodle in a soon-finished sketchbook, I layered color over texture to create the warm glows and effects. 

You can see more work here

Website: here

On: My Big Art Sale, an Update

Silk-screened cards

Soon after coming back from Spain, I got a crazy idea - sign up for an art fair. I had no art ready, no supplies, but a lot of drive and inspiration and an endless supply of past-projects that I knew could be re-tooled for sale  in a flash.

Right away, I saw that I'd missed the deadlines of all the big shows by months but had just a few days to apply for Bucktown's 13th Holiday Art Show. So I did, got accepted, forked over a ton of cash and suddenly had to do something about that.

BUTTONS

And since then I've been accumulating projects and, when a smaller art sale suddenly popped up, I've been frantically buying supplies, printing, cutting, gluing, assembling and sleeping little and eating poorly. But it's all almost over. The BIG art show is this Saturday and Sunday and I am almost ready. If it were tomorrow, I'd be OK even. That in itself is a tremendous accomplishment for me and I am thrilled at the challenge this project has presented over the past 3 months.

Prints!

This weekend, I will have 25 8x10 prints, 40+ 5x7 prints, 80+ 4x6 prints, along with buttons, round and square magnets, magnet sets in gift tins, pins, bookmarks and silk-screened cards. It doesn't look like I'll have the book bags silk screened in time, but that's ok! There is plenty of other work ready for sale.

The best part, for me, is that I at last have arrived at a concept in which to wrap all this work. It has a name, a logo, and soon - an Etsy store and website. More on that when I get to it, maybe after the sale, maybe 2012.

Until then, I have just a backdrop to make, some risers to paint and maybe make more cards. Also Mom is driving in from Ohio to help me and that is a huge bonus and reward - I get to sell art, meet people, talk up myself AND hang out with my wonderful mother! Until then, I am taking it easy and thinking ahead. I got a lot done, but there's just as much still to do.

On: Life; an Update

Oh my.

So much has changed since I was last here, that it's hard to remember how life was before I moved to Chicago. It hasn't been easy, but it also hasn't been dull.

Where to begin? What to say? Since moving last May, I have been working in the wedding industry, in catering, then venue sales. Then, I started getting paid to Facebook for small businesses and then I moved into food retouching and cleaning product package design. Dabbling in product comping, I then spent two weeks in Spain. And now, I am moving into some serious marketing, PR-type social media campaigning for a large national brand. It is a thrill.

But I am also re-discovering myself as an illustrator and that has been a true gift. As such, I am reviving this place as another venue to show-case the many ideas, sketches and thoughts that filter through my brain daily. I've been quiet so long, my voice is very rusty, but I am looking to fix that.

Won't you join me?

Back to Drawing

For any and every other illustrator, drawing, in some form, is a natural, expected thing that you do all the time, that is a simple requisite of your profession. For me, it's not so simple and drawing and I have this Lifetime-movie of a relationship, where drawing is my high school sweetheart, but I'm the one who makes a terrible mess, leaves dramatically, swears to never come back, but at the end returns humbled, with a Faith Hill song playing over the credits. This is how it was all through college for me, but now we're back together and although the credits may not roll any time soon, I have pages and pages of drawings for the first time in years and just maybe, I can call myself an illustrator again.

~V