Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! I wouldn’t be where I am today without the love, support, and encouragement of my own mother. Love you, mom!

In honor of the day, here’s another client piece from the holiday series I’m drawing for Cactus. I don’t know if they actually made banners like that in Victorian times, but the client wanted it.

Wow, I thought I’d updated this blog at least once since the new year. All the more reason for a little fiesta to kick things off again! And on Cinco de Mayo, one of those holidays which has outgrown its origins, but what better excuse for a party?

This is another client piece I produced for Cactus to promote scratch-off tickets for the Colorado Lottery. I’ve missed posting a few of the holidays, so I’ll be playing a bit of catch-up. The project is almost done and I confess I’ll miss it. This was a fun one.

The Cinco de Mayo art is a bit brighter and more colorful than the rest, partly keying off of the traditional costumes and decor, and partly because it’s one of the few holidays on my list that doesn’t come from the Victorian visual tradition the rest of them do. We played around with the idea of making this art in a more graphic style reminiscent of Mexican poster art, but ultimately decided on greater consistency with the rest of the series.

More artwork to come soon, I promise!

Ordinarily I try to wait and post my holiday card artwork after they’ve all been received, but a welcome overload of freelance work meant they were printed late and those heading to recipients are either in transit or being hand-delivered this weekend.  Because of this you can probably tell from the caption, I’m sort of thinking of them as “New Years’ cards.”

This year’s artwork is a bit sillier and self-indulgent than usual: a portrait of our older cat Tinkerbell and our new “teenager” cat Simon. The only meaningful difference between this picture and the daily situation at our house is how static and quiet it is. In reality, this tableau would be immediately followed by yowling and a pair of furry projectiles rocketing through the house. The two cats are actually getting along rather well after two-and-a-half months, except when Simon really, really wants to play… whether Tink does or not.

This artwork was drawn with Micron ink pens on bristol paper and colored digitally.

Here’s wishing everyone out there a wonderful holiday season!

So what’s up with this somewhat…. unusual picture? Well, one of the things I’m grateful for has been an increase in client work, but it’s been cutting in on my time for making “for fun” work. As a result, instead of something more personal I’m posting a recent piece I produced for Cactus to promote scratch-off tickets for the Colorado Lottery. It should be only the first in the series for a campaign called “Celebrate the Season,” which is already shaping up to be a lot of fun. They wanted an old-fashioned look, so I drew it in ink to simulate an engraving and added subtle tints to color it; the rest of the series should be in a similar style. I produced this one in record time for the complexity of the drawing, and I look forward to taking a little more time to lavish details on the rest of the series.

I wish you all home, health and happiness for this holiday… have a good one!   

I saved the most colorful of my little house-gryphons for last. I think these are my favorites from the set. If you missed the previous installments, they’re here and here. I hope to make some little notecards with these after the holiday, but I’m not sure whether to leave them with the watercolor pencils or recolor digitally… I have the scans of the uncolored ink drawings just waiting on my computer. What do you think?

Here are a couple more of my little sketch critters, dubbed “house gryphons” by a friend. These were so much fun to make! Check out the first batch if you haven’t already. I’ve also been getting some great sketches from the other artists in the trade.

There’s just one more set left to go…

Hopefully I can get this posted in time for folks to take advantage of the  amazing coupon sale at Zazzle: 50% off of shirts, cards, calendars, necklaces, ornaments, phone cases, and more, through 4pm PST on Friday, November 18 with coupon code FFHSHUGEDEAL  If you miss out, the coupon is still good for 20% off for the rest of the weekend. And remember, everything at Zazzle can be customized, or you can make your own from scratch, and still get the same discount.

Originally, Zazzle only offered the Speck Fitted fabric-backed case, seen here.

“Dragon of Autumn” on the Speck Fitted case

This is a hard-bodied clamshell case with rubberized edges and a fabric cover on the back, which is printed. It’s a very solid case, with good access to the buttons and feels like it can take a blow. There’s also a nice bezel around the screen to protect it from damage. The rubber edges make it the most comfortable style to hold, and it snaps very tightly together. I had to search YouTube to figure out how to open the Speck case back up again to change it. The buttons are easy to get to, and I was even able to use it with my docking stations without removing the case — without the docking adaptors in place, anyway. The colors printed nice and bright on the fabric, although not as brightly as the other cases, but because of the grain of the material my ink drawings lose a lot of sharpness and detail. I’m a little concerned about keeping the fabric clean, but so far the trimmed edges seem nicely sealed down and unlikely to fray any time soon. I bought this a little while ago, and at the time it shipped by itself in a small zipper bag with no other packaging, which might be a concern if you’re getting it as a gift for someone else.

Speck Pros:

• Secure
• Comfortable to use
• Impact protection and screen bezel

Speck Cons:

• Not as much detail in the artwork
• Concern about the longevity of the fabric back
• Does not come with box

“Dragon of Winter” on the Case-Mate Tough case

Recently, Zazzle started also offering Case-Mate brand phone cases, for many different kinds of phones. There are a few different styles available for iPhones: “Tough” and “Barely There” Both have a lightweight plastic body with a glossy finish that reproduces the colors gorgeously. The printing is crisp and bright and wraps around the sides. They ship in a display box with a screen-protector kit. Although in my case the boxes were not factory-sealed and had gotten a bit squashed in shipping, they are still nice if you’re buying them as a gift.

Above is “Dragon of Winter” on the Case-Mate Tough case. This case includes a soft rubbery liner that protects most of the buttons and also provides a bezel to protect the screen. It seems very solid once it’s in place, and has a pretty good feel in the hand, but I find the plastic surface harder to hold on to. (Personally, I find the iPhone 4 by itself hard to hold onto, and I’ve been relying on my cases to keep it from leaping out of grasp like a live fish…) The buttons were easy to use through the rubber coating. I just got these cases in yesterday so I have yet to see how they hold up to scratches and scuffs.

Case-Mate Tough Pros:

• Impact protection and screen bezel
• Bright, crisp printing

Case-Mate Tough Cons:

• A little slippery to hold

“S is for Sunflower” on the Case-Mate ID case

The last case I have to share today is the Case-Mate Barely There ID case. This clever case includes a slot that can store 2 credit/ID cards, but is otherwise identical to the other Barely There case Zazzle sells. These cases have the same printing as the Tough case above, but are much more form-fitting to the phone so they’re very compact and take up hardly any extra bulk.

As you can see, the plastic is very thin, and does not include a bezel around the screen. All the ports are very open and while the bump of the card slot may cause some docking issues, I can’t imagine any docking station having a problem with the non-ID version of this case. If like me you have trouble holding onto your iPhone 4 this case won’t help you at all and it doesn’t seem to provide as much impact protection as the other models. However, despite appearances the case snaps on very tightly (I haven’t figured out the knack for removing it yet) and it ships with a screen-protector kit. If you’re just looking for something decorative it’s a nice economical option for a custom-printed case.

Case-Mate Barely There Pros:

• Least expensive
• Bright, crisp printing
• Pocket for cards (in the ID model)
• Most compact

Case-Mate Barely There Cons:

• Slippery to hold
• Minimal impact protection

I hope this is helpful. I have most of my designs on most of the models of cases Zazzle offers — iPhone, iPod Touch, Samsung, and Blackberry — but I’m still working through the backlog. Let me know if there’s something missing that you want!

Where did the summer go? Oh, that’s right… between client work, an illustration-heavy project at my day job, and general craziness all the way around, I’ve had very little time for “just for fun” drawing. That’s one of the reasons I like the Doodle Swap Project, a little club of artists and designers who all make tiny trading-card-sized artworks for each other. It gives me an excuse to do some quick, small, simple drawings that I don’t have any time to overthink because they have to get out the door fast.

This time around the theme was “hybrid animals” — chimera, creatures made up of two or more different unrelated animals. Perfect timing for me, since:

a) the idea for little gryphons that are a cross between songbirds and housecats (instead of the more traditional eagles and lions) has been kicking around in my head for a while, and

b) “Backyard” and household fantasy creatures are the theme of my Sketchbook project book. More about that one later…

So, this was a little bit of two birds with one stone. Or something like that. Here are the first few of the cards, I’ll be posting the rest soon. They’re all 2.5 x 3.5 inches, drawn with ink and watercolor pencils on bristol paper.

Anyone else think that these will make nice little notecards?

I’m going to make a confession here: I love school. I’ve always loved school. I like taking classes, I like learning new things, I’d probably be in school forever if I could. One of the things I like about taking classes is that it’s quiet time to sit back and passively take new ideas in, giving the parts of my brain that are always solving problems a little break.

If it’s a lot of factual information, I’m actually not all that passive about it. (I am one of nature’s obsessive note-takers. And not the interesting, oh-so-pretty artistic kind of notes. I filled an entire steno pad with my cramped chicken-scratch at the last training conference I attended.)

But if it’s more abstract, theoretical, or subjective information, I don’t write a lot of notes down. That’s when my pen does other things.

Sketches like these actually help me focus and process what’s being said when either a) it’s not something that I need to capture exact phrases for or b) I’m starting to zone out and would otherwise be falling asleep. I’ll typically keep a separate page — or as in this case a separate notepad — handy to separate these meanderings, a habit I picked up in high school when a rather nasty math teacher kept yelling at me about doodling in my notebook. (I got straight A’s in that class, you bitter old hag!)

This time around it wasn’t Shakespeare or philosophy or even math, but a training seminar at my office. It was a good seminar, but loooong 4-hour sessions meant I needed to stay focused. So, time to sketch! Fortunately I have plenty of little sketchpads in my office, gleaned from years of attending design conferences.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Sketchbook Project book with me, because I really liked how some of these came out. It was a 4-day class, so there are more sketches to come!

She’ll be showing up at my RedBubble site shortly (and yes, that’s not all just “fluff,” the little tubbo…) I did a few scribbles in my sketchbook too, trying to decide on what sort of things to put in my Sketchbook Project book. I fear the challenge there will be picking subjects that I can draw in such a relatively small space… good practice for the pet portraits I’m doing for my MS fundraiser (this is the last week to participate, now with lower donations for art!)

Today is “exercise and more gardening day,” weather permitting. But there will be some more drawings tonight… especially if it really does rain today, which looks like pretty good odds at the moment.