design-newyork.com

My co-worker Lorn just bought a house and she needed some of those “We’ve Moved!” cards to send out, so I offered to make some for her. I took her old address (in Astoria, Queens) and her new address (in Port Washington, Long Island) and made a map. I also found a picture of her new house and put that precisely where her new house is. I then watercolor-painted the water and the house. It turned out great, except…

What the hell was I thinking with the calligraphy? She didn’t move from The Shire to Mordor, why did I decide to write like that? It appears to be a mystery that will never be answered. So, no biggie, I wrote the words in a slightly less Tolkien-esque style and photoshopped them in, and the card turned out swell. Lorn loved them.

The title pretty much covers it right there. I finally made nice clean prints of my sloth and giraffe. They totally lent themselves to 11 x 17″ paper, so I found a good printer and I printed them and now they’re printed. And I will be selling them. Take a looky-look.

Ah, the time has come, as it does every eight months or so, when my purse gives up the battle to keep all my pointy possessions in check and it starts to look a little worse for wear. I spent a small portion of this long weekend painting a new purse for myself. I liked the turtledoves that I put on my mom’s protea purse (quick review):

So I decided to make a purse for myself with that on it, along with a swirly happy abstract branch. And some leaves. And also some blue sparkles. I’m very happy with the final product.

And I finished photographing all my recent bracelets. Much was accomplished this last weekend of summer. Hurrah for productivity!

Okay, I have a new camera, since the old camera decided to commit seppuku and stop taking pictures. Today I took pictures of my latest bracelets to put in my store (it’s a-comin’!), so I set up my little studio in my bedroom with my nice sheet of silvery paper and my bright color-corrected lamp, and… most of the pictures sucked. Either it was too dark (for no discernible reason, look at the silvery paper and note the light is directly in the middle of the bracelet):

Or it was blurry (also no discernible reason), or sometimes it felt like CHRISTMAS and it was both blurry and dark:

Can I just point out that the bracelet above is covered with light grey swarovski crystals? It should be light and happy and sparkly. It looks like something Robert Smith would wear on one of his gloomier days. So I decided the only solution would be to go outside and take pictures in the bright sunlight. Take that, camera! Try to make my pictures look dim when they are bathed in the light coming from a giant flaming planet in the sky! Ha ha ha!

Long story short, the pictures looked much better.

I’m trying to make a super-secret cool thing that I’ll tell you more about when it’s further along, but in the meantime I’d like to show you some drawings I made to “contribute” to the “secret” “thing” – a drawing of a pigeon (with the word ‘pigeon’ written to be printed on the back of said pigeon) and an artistic interpretation of a disease-resistant tree (with the word blah blah printed blah blah said tree). I think they turned out pretty great.

I have a few more elements to bang out, but as soon as I do I’ll tell you what I’m doing, because being all coy with the secrety-secretness is obnoxious. More to come.

Holy Moses, that took forever, didn’t it? I finally scanned in my deep-sea fish paintings and will be uploading them to my portfolio. I’ll be making prints of them as well and selling them in my forthcoming Etsy shop, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Making a dent in my pile of “to-do”s, it’s happening, slowly but surely.

I was friended on Facebook by a high-school chum who sent me this message:

“Hey Jess, this is G, class of ’95….You came up as a friend suggestion from Rye High so, I’m adding…if you don’t mind that is. Take care….Let’s see if you remember me; ’til this day I’ll never forget you taught me the trick on how to draw a perfect water drop, lol.”.

I had a total flashback of teaching G that water droplet technique. And I thought I would share it with you now.

First, you draw the outer shape of your droplet. It doesn’t have to be perfect, in fact, it’s usually better if it isn’t. Then, near the top, you draw a small circle. That’s the light hitting the top of the droplet. Want to learn how to draw digitally using a tablet? Check out the best drawing tablet for artists here!

Now, when the light hits the top of the droplet, the light goes inside the water and spreads out near the bottom. That means the top of the droplet is dark. So next, you shade the top of the droplet.

The droplet also casts a shadow. First, you draw a heavy line under the droplet, thinner at the sides and fuller at the bottom.

Then you add in a softer shadow. And voila, you are done.

Water droplets like to hang out in herds, so I used to draw them in groups.

A neato trick: Draw the water droplets on a gray or colored board, and then hit the light spots with a white pencil. It really makes it pop.