Grandmother portrait

"How are you with drawing old people?" my customer asked. She wanted a portrait of her recently deceased grandmother to send out on family Christmas cards. This was a small 5x7 pencil portrait that I completed quickly in order to get it there in time for Christmas.

This is the photo that the customer sent to me. She specifically requested that I include the brooch.

The more I drew this portrait, the more I admired the grandmother's kind eyes and smile. As I drew the portrait I wished that it would bring back warm memories to her family.

The Dress As Golden as the Sun

A great fall semester just finished. I was blessed to learn from Julie Downing and Stephen Player, and to receive feedback from insightful classmates. But now that the semester is over, I wanted to do something quick and fun. This is a remake of one of my very early drawings:

Unfortunately this masterpiece is not dated. Mom, the internationally recognized expert on my early work, estimates that I probably drew this at about 7-8 years old. "You were just starting to draw faces in profile" at that age, she says.

I am very lucky to have parents who have always supported my drawing. My Mom has lots of my old drawings saved in boxes. Out of all of them, "The Dress As Golden as the Sun" is one of my favorites. I don't know why, it just has a certain elegant simplicity. That one eye is kind of scary, though.

The drawing was from a fairy tale about a girl who goes to three balls in three dresses: a dress as glittery as the stars, a dress as silver as the moon, and finally a dress as golden as the sun. I don't remember the name of the story, though.

I really get a kick out of seeing these two drawings together.

Cute Little Shaver portrait

This was a Christmas commission from an Etsy customer, a 9x12 pencil portrait. I really like how this one came out. I think my values are improving when it comes to pencils.

Here's the photo the customer sent me:

Here's some shots of the portrait in progress:

And Back Again

The Lord of the Rings was a huge part of my teenage years. I finished reading the books shortly before the first movie came out, and I was completely obsessed with the whole world of Tolkien. I could read and write Dwarvish runes, I wrote an extensive fan-fiction about a family of elves, and I even set one of Bilbo's poems to music. My gracious and generous parents let me drag them back to the movie theater to see Fellowship a total of seven times. My mom also helped me sew this cape, and she gave me the ring necklace too!

Tomorrow I am going to see The Hobbit. Feeling nostalgic, I drew this picture. I think it captures the spirit of  my teenage self pretty accurately, except that I was actually much uglier than this.

New business cards!

With my recent website and blog re-design, I decided to order some new business cards. I purchased them from overnightprints.com . I also bought a nifty little acrylic display stand for them. Please excuse the super beat-up IKEA tabletop in these photos.

I went with digital printing rather than offset, because I only wanted to order a quantity of 50 cards. Although the print quality is pretty good (better than it looks in this photograph) and the colors are very accurate, it's a little bit grainy. Next time I think I may splurge on the offset printing.

Also, next time I think I will use a more closeup shot of one of my drawings, rather than trying to fit so much onto one tiny card.

I really like business cards, both collecting and designing them. Do you have any business card printers that you recommend?

Memorial portrait

This is a pencil portrait I just completed for an Etsy customer. It's a drawing of her father, who passed away last year. Here is the photograph that she sent me:

The drawing is going to be a Christmas present for the customer's mother. When the customer saw the finished portrait, she said "The portrait is remarkable. I am in awe of how lifelike it looks. I am so excited to see my mom's reaction when she opens it on Christmas." I wish I could be there to see her mother open it as well! It's an honor to be part of creating such a sentimental gift.

We have no budget for artwork, but...

I recently joined The Illustration Guild group on LinkedIn, and it's been a great place full of interesting discussions on illustration. Recently someone had the chutzpah to post in the group a request for illustrations for a magazine, saying that they had no budget, but the experience would be "priceless."

As you can imagine, they did not get a favorable response from the group. A few people posted the link to this satirical Youtube video:


As I mentioned earlier on this blog, a lot of people contact illustrators without really knowing what they're asking for, or not being willing to pay at all. I found a great blog post on the topic, where the author lays out a form letter that you can send to individuals who want you to illustrate their children's book. Specifically designed to intimidate clients who haven't done their research, it contains questions such as "is this your first children's book?" and "how do you plan on publishing and marketing this book?"

The one where I'm a redhead

For her thesis my talented classmate Sunny Choi drew some scenes from Anne of Green Gables. She asked me to model for her book cover image. She asked me to gaze out of a sunny window, with a smile.

Funny story:  I had pinkeye in my other eye at the time. Actually, that's not really funny, it's just gross. Sorry, I don't know why I told you that.

Here is Sunny's Anne of Green Gables book cover. I believe that it is a mix of acrylic paint and colored pencils. I like how she put her own spin on the photo reference.

The Sea Witch

11x14", pencil

"Every moment the witch threw something else into the vessel, and when it began to boil, the sound was like the weeping of a crocodile. When at last the magic draught was ready, it looked like the clearest water. 'There it is for you,' said the witch."

-"The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen

An interior drawing for my thesis.

My first idea for the sea witch was to make her a crusty old woman.

But as I continued to develop my drawings, I saw that my old witch wasn't really helping with the teen romance style I was going for in this story. So instead, I changed her into a sort of gothic teen witch.

The drawing continued to evolve with feedback from my critique class. I redesigned the witch's tail, added the pile of bones, more snakes, some bubbles, and most importantly changed the position of her hands, to keep the focus on the magic vial.

Good blog: Editorial Anonymous

It seems that most illustrators have heard from an aspiring author who thinks they need some artwork for their manuscript to interest publishers. For art students such as myself, it's tempting to take up that offer, either for the promise of a bit of money or the hope of being published.

Lately I've been reading an amusing and very informative blog called Editorial Anonymous. It's written by a children's book editor who sort of seems like the Simon Cowell of publishing. In this succinct blog post she writes:

"Publishers do not want to receive manuscripts that are already illustrated. You are either ignorant of this fact (and possibly doing this work on spec, in which case: get yourself out of that situation ASAP!), or you're taking advantage of ignorant authors when you take their money for doing something that will not help their manuscript get published and more likely will hurt its chances."

It's kind of amazing how many aspiring authors think they need to acquire their own illustrators, when really just a small amount of research into the publishing industry will correct that misconception.