Taking home with you

This is my second challenge for the Square Carousel Collective. The theme was "Home away from Home". Initially, I really wanted to illustrate the opening scene from The Hunger Games when Katniss is in the woods she hunts in. However, upon my re-read of the first chapter, I realized my illustration would have been kind of forced to fit in the scene and also, that wasn't the scene from that chapter that I would really like to illustrate. For a while now I've been planning to illustrate the Hunger Games chapter by chapter and after re-reading the book, I am now in the thumbnail phase! So you can expect to see that going on over the next couple of months.

Anyway, back to this challenge. After realizing my first idea wouldn't work, I had to go back to the drawing boards. When I think of my "home away from home" there are some locations that definitely fit the bill, but I really didn't want to take the concept too literally. Then it hit me! Whenever I travel, I like to bring anything and everything with me! I'm prepared for any situation and basically like to bring my home with me wherever I go. So I took that to mind and came up with an editorial piece of a young woman traveling with a ton of luggage.

Be sure to check out the other artists work on the theme over at squarecarousel.com! There are some really fabulous artists on board.

Announcing the Square Carousel!

Hello everyone! My small hiatus is finally coming to a close as I close the show Once Upon a Mattress this weekend and I wrap up my last week of teaching summer painting lessons! I have a lot of exciting projects coming up that I can't wait to share with you guys. The one on the forefront though is the Square Carousel Illustration Collective that I started a couple of months ago with a couple of my talented illustrator friends. Though we got started on this a while back, it took some time getting everything into order and we have finally made our big "launch"! The site features the work of myself and 9 other illustrators. We compete in bi-weekly challenges selected by the artists in turn, and we post updates and news on the illustration world. For the first challenge, we thought it most appropriate to do a carousel animal of out own. I chose to do a noble lion (a unicorn was a close second though, haha).

I have a couple other projects going on, some personal, others that I can't speak of at the moment, but I'll let you know as soon as I can! One that I can speak of though, is that a local theatre has just hired me on board to do paintings to be projected as the set for an upcoming production of the Children's play Pinkilicious! The play is adapted from a popular children's book. Though I haven't read the book before, this definitely sounds right up my alley, so I can't wait to get started!

So be sure to check out www.squarecarousel.com and add us to your bookmarks! We have a lot of great content in store for you guys!

well hello from a recent college graduate!

Hey all! I promise I am still alive and well, and busy working as always! I have to apologize for the month and a half absense! What with college graduation and moving and taking on three part times jobs I had about zero time for the last couple of weeks.

So as I mentioned, I graduated from SCAD at the beginning of June. Looking back on my four years there, I have to say that they were truly the best years of my life so far, and I think it will just keep getting better! I grew so much as a person and an artist at that school and made some of the greatest friends I will ever know, so here's my thank you to SCAD for every opportunity that they have given me and the many more that await because of that!

So, since graduation, I have moved briefly back to Louisiana for three summer jobs I was offered. I teach painting lessons to children for four hours every morning then I am choreographing a musical and helping with some set and costume work for another show. In between I had a three week stint as a secretary for a local government office. That last job reminded me a lot of Parks and Recreation, for those who watch the show, so merely pretending I was April in the office got me through that haha. Luckily now, all three of those jobs are winding down. I also designed the posters for the children's productions being put on by a local theatre this summer! I can't share all of them because some copyrighted material had to be used in the posters due to contracts with the production company they are being licensed from. Here are two of them that I can share though:

I have a couple more weeks with the painting lessons and the show, but the temporary secretary job is now over and my free time is starting to open back up thank goodness so I can finally get to work on some real work! Here's what you guys can expect from me over the next few months: a huge load of work coming in! I have so many techniques and so much subject matter I am just itching to get my hands on. I'm vamping up my portfolio to get ready to apply for grad schools for next fall some time around the end of this year. You can also expect some revamping of my portfolio site as well as the blog and my other social media aspects. Importantly, on the blog, I will now be making weekly blog updates. If it comes to a point where I'm making a lot, I might end up setting up a certain two or three day a week schedule for it, so stay tuned on that. Also, for the first time EVER! Get ready all of you convention goers because i'm making the transition and I'm going to be attending cons this year! It's such a great social networking opportunity, and honestly they all just look so freaking fun, it's about time I finally made the plunge and started traveling to some!

Lastly guys! I have a VERY exciting project that I will be announcing somewhere around the middle of the month, involving some very talented illustrators along with myself. So get ready to have your socks blown off!

Thank you all for sticking with me through the small quiet period and get ready for a lot of upcoming work!