New video

Here is the latest video I made with Fluent Studios. While I love book work to be sure, it can be nice to include some quicker projects like this one. The client, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, wanted an "edgy" look to appeal to the Upper West Side parents they are trying to attract. I created the style and all the images, Fluent brought it to life.

Doing animation projects with Fluent is very different than creating book illustrations. Animation frames go by so quickly that each image becomes far less precious than a picture book image, which a child might pore over again and again. The tools for me are different as well: for work with Fluent I use Adobe Illustrator to make my images simple to animate on tight budgets with quick turn around times. Where illustrating a book takes months and months, animating a 1-2 minute video takes days. And, since this video is an advertisement, the client has lots of input in shaping both the style and content of the images. And yet, this doesn't take away the possibility for creative expression. With all the tight specifications we were given for this project, it would still look completely different if another illustrator had been asked to do the job. Which is pretty cool. 

False starts and bouncing back

Rejected style sample for animation.

At the beginning of any assignment, I flail around. Lots of false starts. Lots of looking for inspiration. Lots of scribbly sketching as I search for that image that is going to hook me and give me my starting point. In animation projects, when I finally create the style sample that is going to inform all the images to come, I feel giddy, itching to get to work, relieved that the search is over and content that what I have is a winner. And then, sometimes, the client rejects it. But, but, but, my heart screams, I am so excited to make that thing that way! How can I possibly shift directions? And, what do you mean you want her to wear skinny jeans and a leather jacket??? 

But then, after a little break, I reread the client’s comments and really try to hear what they are saying about what it is they want. When I start sketching this time, it is from a more humble place. Not from an “I am going to make the best thing ever” place, but from an “I am really going to give the client what they want even if what they want sucks” place. Paradoxically, when I do that, when I take my ego and expectations out of the project, I find that what I end up making is stronger, more authentic work. Though I still wouldn't mind making a film in the other style someday. 

Approved animation frame.

The one that didn't make it

I updated my website recently (LONG overdue) and asked the hive mind for feedback. (Much as I hate to admit it, Facebook is amazing.) By necessity, my website is just a small selection of images that represent my work. But a dear friend requested that I add one image that didn't make the cut. It is enormous—a 5 1/2 foot tall charcoal drawing done in 2004—not an illustration, and has no place on the website. But, it was a game changer when I drew it. So I am giving it its moment here.

I was in my last semester of art school. I had put so much pressure on myself in my illustration work that I no longer really enjoyed making art, though I wouldn't admit it to myself. The one exception was a figure drawing class with Mark Eanes. The immediacy of figure drawing allowed me to stay out of my head in a way I could not in my other work, and Mark's approach to drawing urged us to leave visible the pentimenti, the errant marks and mistakes and do-overs rather than erase them. It was incredibly freeing, particularly after all the planning and sketching and refining that went into my illustrations. But for the final assignment we were asked to create a near life-size figure drawing and spend eighteen hours drawing it. I panicked. Procrastinated. Overthought it. My modus operandi for any assignment. Did some sketches, snapped some reference photos. And then, with eighteen hours to go, I started drawing. I couldn't see around the drawing because of its size, and I couldn't see the passage of time because I was in a windowless campus studio, and I couldn't hear what was going on around me because of my headphones. So I drew...and drew. Occasionally I stepped back to get some perspective on my drawing, and was surprised to find that I had a whole new cast of studiomates and that my drawing was gradually coming to life. More than that, I became aware that I was smiling. Really smiling, inside and out. I was having a blast...for eighteen straight hours! And that was when I realized how unusual this experience had become. I needed to feel like this more often. How could I transfer this experience to my illustration work? 

To this day, before I begin working on an assignment, I spend a minute remembering this drawing and the ingredients that made it most joyful—the fearless mark-making, the clarity of the task, the focus, the humbleness with which I approached the page, and the layering of imperfect marks to create a finished piece. I don't always succeed, but I always try to incorporate all these elements into my working process, and, when I do, I do my best work.

Pure magic, in my hot little hands!

It's here! It's here! The mailman brought me the best (almost)birthday present today—an advance copy of my new book! And those magicians at Cameron+Company created a beauty. I couldn't be happier. Thank you so much to Iain Morris and Chris Gruener and Melissa Greenberg for the caring and expertise you brought to this project. There really is just nothing like the magic of print.

Flying high

I am riding the high of having turned in a full set of sketches for a book project a day early!  So far this project is pure joy.  Where is the stress?  The last minute panic?  The agonized decision making?  What makes this project so different?  There are only animal characters in this book, and this seems to be freeing me up to just draw, without obsessing over who these characters are too much.  And I was given amazing image directions by the editor.  I am feeling like one lucky lady to have such an awesome job.

Since I can't share my sketches yet, I am posting an unused sketch from an earlier incarnation of the project.  Time to get some fresh air!

Illustration Light

I've always loved life drawing because of the timer.  A figure drawing is a record of an experience.  It is finished because the timer says so.  It is what it is, imperfections and all, and everybody gets that.  In my illustration work, though, I am the queen of the do-over, the endless tweaking, the "version 100", and my expectation is that this is part of the process.  I plod along and keep on hitting it till it says "uncle".  There's this magic moment where suddenly it's right.  And until that point, it isn't.  This means it takes me a crazy number of hours to finish anything.  Or it did.

Now I'm a mom.  And there aren't crazy numbers of hours. There are minutes.  Pulling an all nighter means something different than it used to, cause instead of sleeping away the day after a deadline, I have to keep two tiny kids alive.  Today I turned in a book cover image.  It didn't get tweaked.  It didn't get edited.  It was option two of two.  A last minute experiment that ended up being the one the author chose, so it went to press.  There are about a million things I would have tweaked, a million other versions I would have tried given the chance.  But the timer went off.  Time to pick up the preschooler.  So it's out in the world.  This is how my work is going to be for at least the foreseeable future.  Illustration Light.

And that's a good thing.  What I had going on before was Illustration Heavy, which came with big pressure.  Each new image had the potential to be a masterpiece, if I just hit it hard enough and long enough.  This potential would keep me from making anything at all.  I always loved figure drawing more than illustration work, because it was just about making an image, getting something down before the pose was gone.  I'd have a stack of pictures at the end, some horrible, plus a few gems.  Nowadays I have two choices: either I hang up illustration until the kids are older, or embrace the timer and just make a stack of pictures.  Might be a few gems in there.

I put together a packet of images tonight to send to Cricket magazine.  I feel reckless, slapping together a mailing, hurling my work out into the world.  I feel none of that preciousness I used to feel about my work.  I'm not thinking about career direction, portfolio building, or any of that.  Just ready to make another picture cause somebody needs one.  After I find out why the baby's awake again.

Begin at the beginning

Seems only fitting that this blog should start back at the beginning.  Before I became an illustrator I was a grad student in African history.  Every once in a while this path not taken overlaps with my current path.  Yesterday I got a call from Corrie, who was my dear compatriot in African history, asking for a cover image for her first monograph.  I couldn't be more excited to be a part of her book in even the smallest way.  Here's to many more, dear friend!  The doodle above appeared while I was working on Corrie's cover.  Love sumi on sketch paper!

On beginnings, this blog and this website are my way of saying, this is where I am right now.  I feel giddy saying that.  It makes everything seem exactly right.  It's a statement so loaded with potential, with mystery, with the promise of new things to come, with change, with movement.  Like Maine in late May.