On my desk

Updates from my desk

New Traditions

This past Christmas as I watched my three adult children and their partners take in traditional items that mean ALOT to me didn’t seem to hit them in the same way. It got me thinking, what will their traditions be? What sorts of things will they collect to refelct this season? Their partners have different traditions of course as well as religious traditions. What imagery will they want to surround themselves with (if any)?

I asked them some questions about this - even asked about the traditional red and green color palette and if that was important to them. Their answers were informative and inspiring to me.

I’ve been developing ideas for Christmas tree toppers for the 25 - 35 audience. They are shaking up our ideas of the old world order and their future trditions and imagery/color palette choices will reflect this.

Here are some of my ideas I’ve been creating with paper maches and acrylic gouache. They are prototypes but the bug will go to my son Parker and the owl to my son Simon. I made my daughter and her husband a felt Santa developed from an illustration I did as part of my 50 figures series.

Dung Beetle - to roll away the crap from the year before and clear the energy for the new year.

Owl - gazing over the family to bring greater connectedness and wisdom

Santa flying over a village to bless the communities around the world - this one is the most in process of the three paper mache tree toppers.

Felt Santa created from my illustration:

Word Daily

An ode to ignored emails…

Does anyone else get emails on a daily that they do not unsubscribe to because they think they’ll get to them at some point but actually rarely do?

For me, one of these is Word Daily. I want to have better vocabulary. I thought I would play with some lettering and spot illustrations/doodles from my sketchbooks for a bit. The lettering is not fussy, just helps me learn the word.

Gracie Brave grand finale ! Marching on to her next adventure...

Character play

September 13, 2016

Rounding down the illustrations for the Gracie Brave project and beginning to ramp up for what's next for me.

I've been thinking a lot about how I might push the quirk factor in my work. The type of children's book illustrator I long to be is someone who shows more of a sense of humor in my work. I'm putting that intention out there and will explore it in the Lilla Roger's Children's Book Illustration class which starts in October.

In preparation for this upcoming course I have been taking a few related classes on Skillshare.

I recently watched Nina Rycroft's courses. I played with some face shapes in her "Explore Character with Nine Shapes" class:

Next I would like to use some of what I gleaned from her insight and apply it to inanimate objects with character.

About Jane

Every time I start a new series of works I start with a sense of wonder, a speeding up of my pulse, a feeling like I can’t catch up to the things I want to express and the places I want the work to take me.