This and That

After two weeks at InventionLand, I am enjoying myself greatly.  I am specifically supposed to come up with weird and cool packaging, get to watch cartoons while i work as long as I'm working and on Thursday, we had a nerd-off.  

My boss may have won by showing up with a Faraday Generator.

10 11 hour days, with a trip to the gym afterwards, are not super conducive to finding time during the week for my own work, but I've been using my lunch break and did some work last weekend, and here's a bit of what I'm currently playing with (removed 'cause I keep forgetting and saving over roughs so the old rough I posted turns all finished and ruins the surprise.)

I was originally going to go with a super graphic style, with big, solid blocks of color -- that kind of 50's cartoon/poster look, like the work of Derek Yainger or Eric Tan...but I may had derailed myself with too much detail.  I'm contemplating doing two versions, perhaps, one more detailed and one less.  Anyway, hopefully, in this largely plan-less weekend, I can finish this piece up, or at least come close.  I have a lot on my docket and keep seeing beautiful, inspiring work makes me just crazy to create.  

In other, adjacent news, I am likely going to be entering some of my work in a show up in Butler at the Undergorund Gallery that is all about Scifi and Fantasy.  As I have a few works of that genre, and this will be added to the pile, this show seems like a good fit.  ^_^ 

In other, non-adjacent news, I went and saw both Thor and X-Men, First Class and just want to watch them over and over again.  I do have some Thor fanart waiting in the wings.  

Also, tomorrow, the bf and I are going to lunch with his awesome ex while she is in town.  I am quite excited, as I like both brunch and her quite a lot. 

A gainfully employed designer

My second interview at InventionLand must have gone well, as I am now the newest member of the InventionLand team.  Hurray!  

I'm doing packaging concept design, which is prett darn sweet.  I come up with an idea/colors/basic fonts/overall design for a package and then it is sent to someone else to actually do all the tedious stuff.  Seriously, though, it is s a great environment.  It took me a couple days to start feeling at ease, but, unlike one of the internships I had during school, it is beginning to happen.  People are nice.  Plus the work is totally interesting.  Because of long (11 hours including lunch) work days, and a plate full of projects, I don't have a lot of time for personal work, but a four-day work week gives me a three-day weekend to work on stuff, so I'll still be making shiny new stuff. 

I never heard back from the couple who wanted the tshirt designs, which disappoints me a bit -- especially as they promised that they would be letting interviewees know either way.  I just think that it is a nice courtesy to do so, and especially if you don't have a million applicants, not leaving those you do have hanging is classy.  Wow...that was a rather garbled and inarticulate sentence.  But you get my drift.    

I also haven't gotten final word on the illustration comission I was doing.  Contacted the studio and was told that the client was currently choosing between the illustration and another direction, and that they were trying to herd her towards the illustration and they would...let me know.  Well, if they decide they don't want it,  I'll post what I've got here.  Heck, maybe I'll even finish it.  

Not a lot else is new...the weather is east coast summer hot and humid, but I have a car now, so I can drive to places where there is water.  

And, it is firefly season.  

hotter days, more and less art

The humid summer of western Pennsylvania is properly setting in, and the air conditioner has been installed in the window for another year.  I swear it wasn't so hot humid the first couple summers I was here.  

I haven't update for a while, as there wasn't much new to add until recently -- I was submitting applications with no response and doing my drawing a day with little success.  A week or so ago, I realized that my drawing a day wasn't really working -- it was a source of stress, an obligation, and due to the short time frame, rather than loosening up, I was simply lacking the time I wanted to invest in projects.  Because personal work was becoming a stressful concept for which I had to force myself to come up with ideas each day, having started at a place in which I was already kind of burnt out, I was feeling really uninspired.  So, I took a break.  I stopped doing drawing-a-day and, since then, my brain rested and inspiration started returning, which is awesome.  

I haven't yet had time to implement new ideas, however, because I've been kind of busy.  

And not the, 'well, I want to do some gardening and take a nap' kind of busy...rather the 'getting contacted for freelance and non-freelance jobs and having interviews and projects that needed completing before I could work on my own stuff' 

I met with two friends who want to make illustrated/screenprinted baby and toddler-wear for the children of yoga enthusiasts, and they plan to contact me by the end of the month.  

I got a freelance job designing a business card. 

I got contacted about possibly working on a graphic novel, and needed to compose and ink an audition page.  

I had an amazing interview at InventionLand, where there was a pirate ship, a poster of Nikola Tesla and my meeting took place at a round table inside a castle. I have a second interview there tomorrow and my fingers crossed, as it seems like a pretty amazing place and the position totally within my personal zone of 'things I'm good at'.  I'm even willing to forgive a 6am start time.  *shudder* 

Then, upon arriving home yesterday, I discovered a false-positive in my spam folder (total fluke I found it, as Gmail tends to be very good about putting stuff where it belongs) from a previous teacher's graphic design partner, asking if I could do a super-rush illustration commission.  I contacted him, fearing that I would be too late, but he told me to go ahead.  So, I worked until 4:30am finishing up the partial illustration to be shown to the client, and so long as the image is approved, I will have my first paid illustration commission, which is very exciting...it falls into the category of 'wow, I'm sitting on my couch watching 'The Vampire Diaries' and drawing, and someone is going to PAY me for it.  

I used to joke that I wanted to be paid just for existing, as I feel that is enough of a contribution.  Considering that I pretty much draw regardless, and LIKE having assignments from others, as it pushes me to work on subjects and styles and objects that I would otherwise not think to do or shy away from, I'm really not far off the mark.  

I think I will make Jell-O to celebrate.  Or brownies.  Or be really wild and unpredictable and do BOTH.  

Siuan Sanche base colors

April Showers

April is nearing it's close and the snow seems to have finally decided to rest up until November.  (Although, living in Western Pennsylvania, I have learned not to count snow out until after Easter...so there are still a couple days left for frozen precipitation.) 

Trees are tufted with green, daffodils are out in force, forsythia is flowering and my lawn is a velvety carpet of green.  

It is cold and rainy.  And though April showers are said to bring May flowers, another thing I have learned, living in Western Pennsylvania, is that April showers actually bring...May showers.  

But enough about the weather.  

If you have been here before, you may have noticed the spiffy and updated style of the site. When I started it a couple months ago, I was in the middle of graduation prep, and barely had time to get my site up, much less personalize it.  But now that I am out of school and unemployed, I have a little more free time, so I finally added my own logo in lieu of the canned header and switched up the background.  The changes don't end here...I'm planning to add custom headers to the different sections, once I know how (there's some CSS involved...the boyfriend and I plan to suss it out this weekend) and overall do a bit of housekeeping, but I finally feel a bit more like this is MY website, rather than simply a site I am camping out on.  

Life after school is strange.  I feel like I'm in a bit of limbo at the moment.  It took a a while to get used to the fact that I'm not going back...and then I DID go back, to meet with my careers counselor and hang around the library sending out resumes and researching jobs, which felt at the same time strange and utterly familiar...I think it feeling strange was the strangest, as I've only been gone a month.  

Obviously, I've not yet been hired, but I have been reassured that it is simply a process and that I'm going about it right in sending out resumes and researching career paths.  

To date, I have had two interviews; one with a small start-up apps developer that, despite some cool projects also had some big limitations and wasn't right for me, and with a small local classified paper, which is nearby, but at which I would be producing a whole classified newspaper on my own, rather than having the guidance of more experienced team members.  

I have had a couple of freelance opportunities that might be very cool, and other than that, have just been trying to get my skill in illustration up to where I want it to be. (Does it ever get there?  It doesn't, does it...I see a lifelong quest ahead.). 

One of the paths towards improvement I have been traversing is that I started doing my 'Drawing a Day' again.  I started off about a week and a half after graduation and, after finishing my illustrated 'children's book' my circuit were still pretty fried, so I spent a week putting out art that I mostly hated, but slowly slowly, my systems are starting to come back on line.  Here are a couple that I have kind of liked:  

I also got directed to some awesome free PDF downloads of some fabulous Andrew Loomis art books that I have only glanced through so far, but even that little snippet set my mind spinning.  

Other than that, I have been trying to let my creativity choose the outlets and inspiration it wants.  I've been baking...I am bound and determined to make Parisian Macaroons at some point soon...I've been gardening and hoping my tomatoes survive to bear fruit this time around...I've been trying to watch and read things that fill my mind with wonder and awesomeness, and am finally getting off my butt to work on stuff that needs working on.  

Until next time, stay classy, internet.