Lady Hummingbird

I like kimonos. I like hummingbirds. I drew this.

God and Good Craftmanship

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I love this quote.

Star Wars birthday invitations

A few years ago I drew this picture of my brother-in-law Dusty as a Jedi. This year for his birthday, his wife used the illustration to design some pretty awesome invitations.

The back side:

The #1 problem with illustrators

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Recently Giuseppe Castellano, art director at Penguin Random House, tweeted that the #1 issue he has with illustrators is lateness.

Today I was on the phone with a different art director, and he said the exact same thing.

We love to moan about how no one respects artists these days, how it's so hard to make a living as a creative, how everyone wants artwork for free, the market is so oversaturated with talent, blah blah blah. And then to turn in late work to big-time paying clients? Illustrators: what are you thinking???

It boggles the mind!

The value of practicing alone

In a now-famous experiment, (Ericsson) and his colleagues compared three groups of expert violinists at the elite Music Academy in West Berlin. The researchers asked the professors to divide the students into three groups: the "best violinists" who had the potential for careers as international soloists; the "good violinists"; and a third group training to be violin teachers rather than performers. Then they interviewed the musicians and asked them to keep detailed diaries of their time.

They found a striking difference among the groups. All three grounds spent the same amount of time participating in music-related activities. All three had similar classroom requirements making demands on their time. But the two best groups spent most of the music-related time practicing in solitude: 24.3 hours a week, or 3.5 hours a day, for the best group, compared with only 9.3 hours a week, or 1.3 hours a day, for the worst group.

-From "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain

Colors

Recently I've picked up knitting. A friend bought me this yarn because he said that the colors reminded him of my artwork!

Dog vs. Artist

This week I took my pastels outside to sketch the landscape. I would like to use my oil paints, but they're such a hassle to set up, and I don't have an easel. So instead I used pastels.

My beagle friend Dash followed me around, and I tried to draw him, but he wouldn't hold still at first. Eventually he laid down next to me and I was able to finish a drawing.

Meanwhile, another dog, Risky, snuck up behind me and grabbed some of my pastels, then ran away and ate them. Now I have no dark-green pastel.

I hope it tasted horrible.

How to get an art style by Noelle

You draw a lot. One day, you draw a bit that is sort of different from how you were drawing it before, almost by accident. You look at it and think “oh, I like how that looks.” Then the next time you draw something you try to do that again, only more so. Then again and again until you are doing it all the time, because you like it that way. Sometimes this happens without you really even noticing.

Repeat forever.

- Noelle Stevenson

Spin the Bottle

A black and white interior illustration for a self-published book. And yes, THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE PLAYING THE GAME. It's not just these two! Geez! Can't you just appreciate the cuteness?