Make Art That Sells March Challenge!

For the past couple weeks I have been working on the March assignment for MATS. My piece is submitted to the class gallery and as promised, I'm sharing what I've been working on these past two weeks. Our challenge was to do illustrations of jello/jello molds (or an interpretation of that) and create a bolt fabric piece with them.
In the beginning of the assignment I was uncertain of what direction to go in. I enjoyed looking at all the vintage jello ads--and vintage dishware but then I looked at some animation books which led me to drawing jello characters! I feel that the characters came out awesome but that more attention could have been put into the repeat and possibly put on a product in the final presentation. I had a lot of fun drawing and painting the characters but will revisit the pattern in April--I'm still pretty new to doing repeating patterns. :-)
I think the characters look great as a standalone illustration and they look very cute side by side. Our next assignment starts in May. Can't wait to see what it will be!

MATS-More Sketches!

We got our main assignment for March this week from MATS. We are to design a piece of bolt fabric! I did not know what bolt fabric was until I looked it up. For those who are not familiar, it is bulk fabric you buy from craft/fabric stores and it is used for a wide array of projects. Bolt fabric comes in many different designs, lots of really fun designs especially. We were given a website to check out Purl Soho, a yarn and fabric shop located in SoHo, New York City (which I will be visiting soon). :-)

Luckily, while working on this project, I am also reading a great book from Pattern People called Pattern Design & Beyond, which gives all sorts of info on the textile industry, including terminology used in the industry, print/pattern categories, popular types of prints and standards, and also official names of repeat prints you commonly see on clothing, etc. Repeat After Me is another great book they offer.

Anyway, here are some more sketches I did to prepare for our main assignment. I spend a lot of time concepting (still concepting in fact). I am getting started on the color portion at the end of this week
and will be posting the art for that soon.

My favorite page of sketches

We are encouraged to try hand drawn type. It can help your piece go from good to great!

Make Art That Sells Assignment Bootcamp~March Mini!

This week we got the March mini assignment from MATS. The theme....Jello! We were given a few reference photos to get a feel for the color, texture and lighting/transparency of jello.

I got started by drawing a few jello shapes but then got inspired from animation concept art books, especially the movement/gesture shown in character concept art.

Since jello is very wiggly and wobbly I went on to creating 'dancing' jello characters. I definitely want to incorporate the fruit somehow, possibly as a background element. 

I am looking forward to finding out what the main assignment is on Monday to see how I can change/adapt/improve these sketches to the final.

Post for MATS March main assignment coming soon! 

Make Art That Sells~February Gallery!

As I said earlier, I'd post the link to the MATS Assignment Bootcamp February Gallery. It went live on Tuesday and is up for all to view! There's lots of great work in there from artists all over the world. I am still looking through the gallery myself--it's huge!

My work is in there too, at the bottom of page 4. :-)

Bootcamp February 2014 Gallery

Monday begins our assignment for March, new sketches to come...

MATS February Assignment~Phone Case Final!

Just finished my final design for the Make Art That Sells assignment for February, which was to design a cell phone case based around our cuckoo clock illustrations. I went with a Native American inspired design. During the assignment we were given a lot of great tips regarding color palettes, how to discover color trends, etc. I'm really proud of how the design turned out and I am glad that I went outside my comfort zone regarding color, instead of using colors I would typically go with. 

I have submitted my design to the monthly class gallery, which goes live on Tuesday. I'll be posting the link to that.

Really looking forward to seeing what March has in store!

Make Art That Sells~February Assignment: Cell Phone Cases!

So last week we got the February Assignment from MATS. We are to create a cell phone case with our cuckoo clock design. I am currently in the final drawing stage and very close to going to color--(only one more week until the deadline!!) I went with a Native American inspired look for my design. So far I am happy with it but I think for the March assignment I am going to play with more ideas, more designs...More than one illustration.
We can only submit one piece to the class gallery each month--this got me to think how great would it be to have options and to choose the best piece from a group of designs/illustrations.
This is my first time taking this class so it is a learning experience for me. I would like to try a simpler illustration for the March assignment, depending on what it is. I am naturally very detailed in my work and getting simple illustration and simple design down is a big challenge for me, yet it is definitely a look I want to experiment with.

Make Art That Sells Assignment Bootcamp~February Mini

So a while back I found a great class online called Make Art That Sells. They teach a two-part course for some really great markets out there available to illustrators/designers, such as giftware, home decor, children's books, surface design, etc. I found out about their Assignment Bootcamp, which runs for 6 months, from February-July. We get an assignment every month, starting with a mini warm-up assignment the first week. For February, our mini warm-up is cuckoo clocks!

So...I did a clock design once for a client and it came out pretty disastrous...at first I was hesitant about doing a clock design/illustration. I wasn't sure where to go with this design but I thought it would be a good idea to break down the clock into parts (clock face, minute/hour hand, etc...)

Yesterday I put together a really great drawing (bottom) that I feel has somewhat of a Native American feel to it. I was actually inspired by some really awesome reference/still shots I had of a Mickey Mouse cartoon called "Yodelberg."

Tomorrow the main assignment for February is released and I can't wait to see how it relates to cuckoo clocks! I would love to take this clock to final--I think it could have some really great earth tone colors. :-)

I'm looking forward to future minis/assignments from this class! I'm hoping that with each month I can build on more and more drawing at the beginning stages. :-)