Moyo Magazine interview!

Hi everyone! Just a quick post here today. I wanted to let you know that there is an interview with me in the latest issue of Moyo magazine! It is free to read online so be sure to go check it out. The magazine is filled with great information and interviews on surface design so you definitely don't want to miss out!

Best wishes!

Joshua

Returning! and Learning vector

Hi everyone! Long time no see! Firstly, I must apologize for my absence and hiatus. Shortly after my last post in August I took a new job and moved to Chicago. I am currently working as a graphic designer on the picture book imprint at Sourcebooks publishing house! It has been a crazy, but exciting time moving and transitioning both to a new city as well as to life post grad school. I took some time away from illustration as I settled into my new job and explored my new surroundings. Being in Chicago now, I had to act quickly before winter set in, which it now has haha. At any rate, it's time to get back on track and back to illustration business! I have some projects I'll be working on in the coming weeks that I'm looking forward to sharing with you all. In the mean time, I thought I'd share my foray into using Illustrator for designing some patterns I created for a work project. These were primarily exercises for myself to get a better handle on the program, and I definitely plan to employ it more in the future.

Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Water Rays

Among other current projects, I am also participating in Make it in Design's three week summer workshop created to establish a networking community for surface designers as well as deliver prompts for generating work. While the summer session may already be in progress, they offer courses throughout the year that are really valuable to anyone entering the licensing industry! If you missed the post earlier on my blog, I actually was one of three scholarship recipients to the full four courses earlier this year. The second section begins in October, so I am looking forward to that. Be sure to check out Make it in Design's website and check out the other participants in the course's work as well! For now, here is my quick response to the week one prompt: "Water Rays"

Joshua

CLAMP Fan Zine

Hi everyone! Above is my piece for the first of two fan Zines I am participating in this month! This one is in celebration of CLAMP, and you can be pre-order the zine here. There are a lot of really lovely illustrators participating in this one with me, and many fellow MICA alumni. Of course, I had to draw my three favorite CLAMP heroines from Magic Knight Rayearth! (We all know I can't resist any opportunity to draw a magical girl, haha). For those who aren't familiar with it, Magic Knight Rayearth is a really amazing story that was one of the many to shape my childhood. I really recommend giving it a watch, because it really is so much more than your stereotypical magical girl story! (Not that I don't love those just as much!)

Coming up next will be a Powerpuff Girls Villains zine! I'm really excited about that one as well. As for who I'm illustrating, I'll let that be a surprise. I also have some more fun children's narrative pieces on the way as well as a few new pattern collections! Keep your eyes peeled for those in the near future.

Best wishes,

Joshua

Promo materials

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer weekend! I can't believe we're already breaching mid-July. Where is the time even going? Anyway, I wanted to share with y'all a promo piece that I recently created. I'm just waiting for the postcards to arrive to send out =). I'm also working on a story and picture book dummy to accompany this piece along with to other stories I am putting together. I look forward to sharing some of that artwork with you as well in the near future!

I don't want to give too much of the story away yet, but I've named the leading character Jenny Li for now, and I'm really excited to see where she goes! Keep an eye out for some more pirate themed work from me in the near future, perhaps some patterns? 

Best wishes,

Joshua 

Summer greetings!

Hi everyone! I have to apologize for neglecting this blog for a while. Shortly after my last post my hard drive crashed and I lost everything! I was pretty crushed about it of course and hit a bit of a slump. Additionally I graduated in May and since have been doing a lot of traveling and moving! But I've finally picked up the pieces of my sadly lost thesis and gained the momentum to keep moving forward! I'm working on some new projects at the moment, but before I proceed with sharing those, I wanted to do this quick post to share just a few more pieces that I completed in the spring before losing my files.

Firstly I was working on a retelling of the Jabberwocky poem set in an India inspired fantasy world.

Additionally, I did a little doodle for a background piece in a good friend's stop motion animation. When I can grab the link to that, I'll be sure to edit it into the post.

And lastly here is a quick sketch that i first made for one of the new projects I'm currently developing =).

I'll be reporting back within the next day or so with some actually current work, but in the mean time, best wishes! And thank you for sticking with me through the lull! 

Joshua

Thesis Exhibition!

Hi everyone! I have to apologize for my absence post thesis completion! It has been a hectic month filled with my installing and de-installing, travel and many projects! Without further ado though, I'm happy to share a few photos of my exhibition! It was so crazy to see the culmination of my thesis work all on display this way. As you may know, there was a lot more work and of few other thesis projects scrapped along the way, but I'm really pleased with what I developed and where my work has gone. I can't believe that in just three weeks I will be graduating with my MFA! It has been a wild ride, but I am so grateful to have gone on this journey. Over the next few days I'll be updating with a few other projects I've been working on, as well as some doodles. But for now, here is my exhibition!

Best wishes,

Joshua

Exploration and Tea

Here are the final two spreads from my thesis collections. My exhibition opens tonight and as stressful as it has been, I am very excited! I'll be sure to post pictures after the weekend and my visit with my family. I'll talk a bit more extensively about my thesis over all and the exhibition in that post. So for now, enjoy the narrative spreads for my air travel and royal collections!

Best wishes,

Joshua

I'm Almost There! (Cue singing swamp animals)

In just one short week I will have the thesis exhibition, and I could not be more excited! Though it will only be representative of a particular body of my work, It is really the culmination of all of the growth I have experienced in grad school, and I am so thankful to the amazing mentors I have had to guide me.

The final component of my thesis involves taking the series of characters and patterns I have created and using them as a jumping point for narrative imagery! I've got two down and two to go, but rather than blast you guys with one insanely long post, I figured I'd split them up and share the first two now!

This next week will be rather nuts as I prepare for the exhibition, but you'll be hearing from me soon either before or after with the last illustrations and many pictures! For now I will leave you with the doodle I created of sketch dailies theme "My Cool Little Shetland Pony"! 

Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Silja

So I took a little break from thesis to doodle my character for Lucid which is an amazing game being created by Jabari Weathers, so be sure to check him out! Her name is Silja and she has magical arrows and a companion bear that she rides. She's pretty cool ;) 

Joshua

Jewels and Jems

Still busy busy as I'm heading into the final three weeks of my thesis! I'm currently working on my last set of patterns which is themed around royalty, and I thought I'd share some variants of one of the first patterns with y'all! Also for my morning warmup I participated in sketch dailies 80's week and drew Jem, which I've been meaning to do for ages!

Best wishes!

Joshua

Thesis Continues

Hey everyone! It's been absolutely beautiful here the past couple of days, and if it has been by you as well, I hope you've been enjoying the weather! Unfortunately we are to get another arctic blast, but hopefully Spring will be on its merry way afterward! Good weather or bad weather aside, I'll still be working away in the studio haha, but I'm really enjoying it. It's hard to believe that my graduate school experience is coming so rapidly to a close! I only essentially only have two months left! Crazy right? It has been one heck of an experience, and when it truly draws to an end, I'm sure I will have an elaborate post on the subject. For now though, there's still much work to be done so I thought I'd share some of what I've been working on with you guys! I have another pattern for the air travel series, and some characters for both that series and the upcoming pattern collection as well. Once the patterns are complete (likely by the end of this upcoming week), I will be moving onto the final stage of my thesis which is narrative. I will be telling stories within the worlds of these patterns with each cast of characters. In the mean time, enjoy! 

Best wishes,

Joshua

Characters and Patterns

Well firstly, I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's day and for those of you in the Northeast, I hope the nor'easter didn't get y'all too badly! Frankly, it dropped way too much snow on us here in Baltimore for my taste. Hopefully I'll be escaping this climate soon enough though, haha. The cold has certainly made it easier to keep inside and keep working though, so I thought I'd share the patterns from the air travel series so far with you guys as well as some of my work for my character design course.

So for my Character Design class we were all split up into two "gangs" and were given random names and a random weapon to create a character for which we will be battling with throughout the semester aside from our regular homework. I got "Apollo" and his weapon is a machete.

Keeping with the Greek names, I also whipped something up for Sketch Dailies' Valentine's Day theme "Aphrodite" 

There is a lot more work on the way, so stay tuned guys! Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Air Travel Fun!

Hi everyone! It's busy busy busy around here in the race to the finish as the date of my thesis exhibition (March 28th) draws near! I don't like to go too long without updating the blog though, so I thought I would share some of the imagery for the prints and patterns I'm currently working on alongside my dummy for The Little Merprince. I'll also have some work from my character design class to share within the next couple of days.

Anyway, the series I'm currently working on is under the theme of travel and exploration, and I'd love to hear what you think! I was planning to do land, sea and sky, although I may just stick to air at this point and move on, but we shall see!

Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Collaborations

So I've taken a part in a couple of collabs in the time before revving up for school. The first was a Hayao Miyazaki twitter collaboration put together by @Jmieldesigns. For those who aren't familiar with the character, I illustrated Honey Hatter. She is Sophie's mother in Howl's Moving Castle. The second batch is for an elf zine put together by a fellow illustrator at MICA, Jabari Weathers. The artists were all given randomized prompts and these are the result. Both were a fun little break from thesis work, but now let the madness of my final semester begin! Happy Hunger Games...

Joshua