Design!

I finally put up my design portfolio!

Missoni Spring 2009

Here's a companion piece I started back in December to the Prada Cats. I might finish the set with some Lanvin or Vuitton. We'll see. It's acrylic on wood panel with black ink. I'm also considering putting some gold on the jewelry areas, but we'll see about that! The second image is the color study.

The dresses are from Missoni's Spring 2009 line. I thought that this was a gorgeous collection that paired a few different ideas about texture & textiles with some fantastic solid colors on some fresh silhouettes. I picked three ensembles that showed the full story of the collection. My favorite part is the cubist pattern of grays, pinks, yellows and turquoise that I got to paint underneath the linework on the second bird lady. Below are the actual dresses (photos from Style.com used without permission)

Seagulls Fly at Midnight

Watch out, because danger lurks around every corner. No secret is safe. My newest Gocco card is spy themed!

And for those of you that still don't know what gocco is, its a wonderful Japanese screen-printing process. Check out this video to see how some professionals diy it! I do it a little differently then they do, but it's the same materials so you get the gist.

Francis

Here's a portrait I did of my nana for an event at the Milwaukee Art Museum, "Jan Lievens on a Jet Plane". The assignment was to take a Lievens piece and reinterpret it in my own style with my own subject. I chose his portrait of Rembrant's mother.

Paper Crave

Guess what? My Valentine's card was featured in Paper Crave's blog about... Valentines Day Cards. Check out all the other beautiful designs - letterpress is so gorgeous!

Valentines Card

I made a Valentine's Day card with my Print Gocco. I thought it might be interesting to show the process of how I create this type of work. The first thing I do is come up with a sketch. Since the Gocco is a screen-printing process, I know I'll be limited in my color. Because of this, it's really important to decide how and where I'll be using color before I start drawing. Doing this lets me easily figure out where to put solid blocks of color, how much detail I'll need in particular areas, etc. Depending on the materials at hand, I might do the color study with markers or quickly in Photoshop.

The next thing I do is enlarge my sketch on a photocopier and then trace over it with a lighttable. This will be a simple black and white drawing. Sometimes I might draw certain elements on different pieces of paper and scan them in separately if it's easier to do that than separate in Photoshop.

The next step can be pretty complicated because I have to finish my artwork digitally (such as reversing the bricks) and separate the linework into two color plates. I use a lot of layers and channels to do this. Here are my final plates, which I print on a carbon-based printer and then burn my screens with.

Then I burn my screens and print. The final result looks like this! If you like it, go to my etsy shop and get some to give to your special friends. (The image at the top of the post is a Photoshop rendition that digitally applies the qualities of a print).

Monster Within

roar

Prada's Spring 2008 looks on some Pretty Kitties

Acrylic and Ink on 12x16 panel. Also, have a look at the color study. The scan unfortunately doesn't do the piece justice, as this panel really glows in life.

Yves St. Laurent - Fall 2008 Men

Here's a little sketch I did of a couple photos lying on my desk.

Beyonce & Sean Penn

Here are the first two in a series of 8x10 celebrity portraits I'm working on. I've included photos on the full progress, because I think half the fun of art is the process. As you can see, I changed Beyonce's hair in the last minute. Mr. Penn went exactly according to plan, though!