Blah, blah, blah.

Love Catch My Party! Jillian, the CEO of CMP, is fantastic to work with, and I love the premise of her site. The atmosphere is fun and festive and very bold, and I’m excited to watch CMP grow by leaps and bounds. They’re holding a contest to win a Le Creuset casserole dish, and asked me to design a simple, retro-feeling ad to promote it on their homepage. I haven’t done anything retro in a long time, and it was a nice change of pace.

I’m sure it’s going to be a popular contest! Be sure to check out the Catch My Party website, and take the opportunity to enter their contest while you’re there.

I’ve been working on building my portrait portfolio and doing dogs has definitely been my passion lately. Probably because I am obsessed with my dogs! What I like best is how as an owner, I know my dog’s personalities, and the challenge for me in painting a portrait of a dog I’ve never met before is capturing that personality that the owner is sooo familiar with. It’s so important for me to get a handful of good photo references so I can try and imagine what that dog is like in person, and then from that I draw inspiration and try to do something I feel like best captures the subject.

This is Rambo, a Boston Terrier loved by Sakura Minamida; and she was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to paint him.

I loved working on this piece – I love his striking black and white pattern and felt that it was best complimented by a solid red background. Definitely a different style of portraiture then those I’ve done previously of my dogs Duke and Lady, but something that I felt matched his personality best.

Looove working with Kristina, she’s super fun and has a passion for cute and flirty. She’s starting her freelance photography business and asked me to work on a logo for her company, Sugar Snapshots. Isn’t that a cute name?! She wanted to use an aperture as part of the imagery and let me have at it. Here’s the final product:

I gave her a couple of different layouts depending on the space the logo would be used it. Here are some samples of other logo designs I came up with:

The process was a lot of fun and I am glad to have been able to work with Kristina on creating her business identity!

We had this wonderful opportunity to work with Kim creator of Cook It Allergy Free, an iphone app that allows you to easily find recipe substitutions for any recipe within the app. So if you have a gluten allergy, nut allergy, are lactose intolerant – this app is for you! Kim approached us to work together with her on creating her blog, a haven for allergy sufferers everywhere. Offering up new recipes and substitution ideas, her blog is a great resource. We were happy to design a blog that reflected her bright and healthy personality, the mom-on-the-go who really does it all!

Definitely one of my favorite projects, because it was fun and colorful, soft and feminine, and Kim was just fantastic to work with!

Be sure to check out her blog and download her app!

So I finally finished my portrait of Lady that matches Duke! It took me a while, I found her more difficult to paint – though painting her went fast, it was deciding on what sort of accessories suited her and the theme of the portrait. I was slightly apprehensive about a hat – it was important to find the right style and draw it at an appropriate size, also one that wouldn’t cover up too much of her features. Liz was right though, hats on doggies are cute/funny

Ordered some fantastic frames – can’t wait for them to get her so I can put the portraits up! They should look proper on the fireplace mantle – though perhaps they may also suit my desk, once I wrap up refinishing it ;P

I did change Duke’s up a bit – different color frame and removed the “le.”

So CS5 came out and I was so excited to try out some of the new features in Illustrator. I work primarily and Illustrator, and even though I am a traditionally trained artist, I don’t consider myself a “painter.” I just never enjoyed or had the patience of watching paint dry and for some reason painting in Photoshop just never seemed attractive to me. I decided, I was just a different kind of artist that “painted” in Illustrator. So when CS5 came out with it’s bristle brush features, I said alright, I gotta check this sh*t out!

My first painting was of my dog Lady, and I was pleasantly surprised.

My next portrait was of my dog Duke – whom I call the Duke of Davenport. He’s got a very regal look to him so I always imagine him with a monocle. I really enjoyed doing this one and am quite pleased at how it turned out as well – so much so that I think the Lady of Davenport also needs a matching portrait – with a ruffled Elizabethan collar perhaps? Lol.

Lol I love this portrait – just brings a smile to my face, and seriously – it captures his personality.

So I’ve been working with Red Watermelon, creating iphone games as well as other design pieces. We recently redid the Red Watermelon website, so be sure to check that out. And they’ve released their second game, Frosting, which is now available in the app store for download. I came up with the look and design of the game, created all the cities, characters, foods, everything you see!

I’m really proud of it, I think it’s ridiculously cute – and the food look amazingly tasty, if I do say so myself. It was a crazy fun project and I look forward to doing more games – which there are more of currently underway! But be sure to check out the new website, fan Red Watermelon on Facebook, and above all – download Frosting and bake away!!!

So I’ve been doing work for Red Watermelon since October. It’s been my biggest project lately. I’m designing and illustrating games for the iphone. The company is very new, but we’ve been very successful with Runway which currently has over 1.6 million users. That is really amazing. I’ve been working on the logo and creating an identity and website. So far we can check off logo and business card design and I’m almost finished designing the website. Currently the second game we have planned takes precedent and that is taking up approximately 125% off my time I enjoy it though, and I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to not only develop my illustraton skills, but my game design skills and teamwork skills, project management skills, etc.

Here’s the logo and my business card! I’ll have more news about our upcoming game sooner then later hopefully

I did some new illos for Bop – I love doing their “Your Yikes” section, it always gives me the oppoturnity to be more creative with expressions and situations.

So recently I’ve had to develop a new style – somewhat more “teen” then pre-teen. It’s fun to have something challenging like that, so I was totally into it but kinda nervous cause I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it to my liking. I need to do some more pieces, that maybe have some of the detail I like to put in it. But these are what I’ve got going on that I did for Bop magazine.