Couple of things:

• Updated my portfolio with some illustrations of Cleopatra for Junior Scholastic! I thought I’d share a page of the character design I came up with for her. Had so much fun working on historical character design— I need to do more of this!
• Just finished sketches for the book I’m working on, and boy are my hands tired!
• My shop is replenished with some goodies, including Hello Llama pillows and some open-stock notepads and jotters. I’m aiming to get more going in the next couple of months, including an Alice letterpress print! Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see from me in the future.
• Tomorrow is going to be fun. Visiting Bite Studio, and a drink and draw event later in the afternoon.
• I’m looking into the possibility of hosting workshops/teaching. The class I was excited to teach fell through, so now I need to brainstorm other options! I could use your help/opinions of the sorts of things I could teach. 
• Still looking about Portland for job opportunities. Surely there’s a place needing an eager illustrator-type, right? Keep me in mind.

So I had a whole plan to write my Friday Six out (including tattooes, karaoke, and what I think about when I shoot hoops at night) and actually sketching them almost comic style— but deadlines just punched me in the throat and I’m trying to be smart about it all.

I’ll attend to those ideas next week when I have things under control, but in the meantime, I’m sharing a little photo of the store from Monoblock, showing their awesome totebags, placemats, and yes notebooks! And as you can see, I’ve circled something there…. what could it be?

Could be this. Could just be a product of your overactive imagination though. 

Seriously, can’t wait to see these in person. When I get them, I’ll share with the full insane (I mean it, it broke my brain!) artwork. You’ll love it, I hope.

Have a happy weekend everyone, I’ll be back with more illustrated and sketchy goodness soon.

This just in, I love Wonderland too much.  A few spots from early in the book; if I had a ton of money I would produce a pretty copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, designed and typeset by one of my talented designer friends. I think I will continue to illustrate these smaller scenes in limited palette and leave other scenes to be full color. I like the difference of Alice in color and not.

The magpie in this illustration is actually part of the graphic novel project my sister and I are working on; and it still fits pretty nicely in Wonderland. I think my favorite might be the hermit crab though; he reminds me of Pinchy the lobster from that one episode of the Simpsons.

I’ll have to see if I can work up a process post soon, or else at least some sketches from my sketchbook on the topic of Wonderland. (There were quite a few bad ones this weekend!)

I love what I do, I’m very lucky to be able to draw so often and put so much love into my creations. Still, it’s a constant worry that one day this won’t get to be my living. I try not to let it plague me— the ‘what if no one wants to work with me on projects anymore?’ line of thought’s pretty draining. And besides I’m excited by too many images in my brain to slow down yet. Finding new purposes and plans for the things that I make is really important— as is learning and working with other creatives. I’m lucky to have good friends and great projects, but I hope one day soon I can spend more time working together (especially in the flesh!) with people I admire. That was always one major benefit of college, and printmaking— the communal spirit made things so much more worthwhile. While we’re definitely not in a vacuum, it’s still quite lonely chattering about on Twitter. There’s a real need for action and good conversation in my mind lately.

Soon with luck I’ll be able to collaborate on a test Alice animation with my friend Patrick (a fellow Picture Book Report contributor), so that will be good. I hope we can pull something really neat out of the process, even though we’re going to be working remotely! From there hopefully more chances of working together with others will come about.

The definition of work and collaboration’s something that’s definitely hanging on my mind as of late. So let’s work together and make some magic. I promise it’ll be fun!