Two months in photos.

Yes, yes. I have been away from the spotlight for a while now. Don't think that I have been twiddling my thumbs. My life's a busy and fun one! I am about to head to the beautiful city of providence in Rhode Island for this year's illustration conference, ICON7. I'm hoping that I come home with plenty of new stories and exciting things lined up for the future! Here's a little montage of the significant events that I've been up to since April.

I've been working on presents that are owing. This is a veggie piece that I'm working on for my sister.

I said goodbye to an old friend. The Green Lantern was adopted by a lovely new family. He will be a happier turtle with kids to lay with him, but it wasn't easy to let him go.

 I made LOADS more tea towels. I am fully stocked with my root veggie and piggie screens.

I took a trip to the ever wonderful New York City with my day job. My first time to shop for inspiration around the city and it was fantastic.

 I've taken Linus on a few spins around Toronto. I take him pretty much everywhere I go.

 I also take this guy everywhere I can too. Biking fun!

 I took some beautiful photos of my tea towels, with the help of my friends Derek Matthew, and Julie Tamaki's fabulous kitchen. I then took those photos and used them to promote my tea towels on my Etsy page. Yes, that's right. Go to my etsy site and buy a towel now! Only if you want to, of course. You should want to. They're pretty great.

  I took a three hour learn to ride a motorcycle class. It was intense. I must say it was fun, exhilarating, and heart racing experience, but don't be looking for me on the road with one of these any time soon. I'm going to stick to the smooth ride I get on Linus.

 I hung out with one of my two sisters. She's passionate about animals in clothes. Ramona was given this cute little Scottish hat by her. You can tell from their expressions how it went over for each party involved.

 I saw the Dave Matthews Band. Again.

 I ate yogurt with Morgan.

 Chobani yogurt to be exact. It's a brand that's new to Canada. So far it's only available in Toronto at Loblaws stores. It's yummy greek style. I was invited to attend a little shindig they threw in the city last week. They had this lovely little make your own yogurt bar.

 I tried to make mine pretty, but as the story of my life goes, it got messy. I tried to compensate by adding a little flower. Anyway, the yogurt is delicious and I totally recommend trying it if you are in Toronto or the U S of A.

 I had so much fun making the first two tea towel designs that I decided to do a couple more! I will be debuting them at the conference this week. These will be available on my etsy site soon too, as well as a couple store front locations I will share once they're available.

You may think I'm focusing in my rings, but alas, this photo is about the brace. I have given myself tendinitis through my silk screening escapades. A great fear of mine has been realized. My right hand is injured. I will be fine, and the brace will always be there for support, but I will never take for granted the limits of my hand and what I can and can't do. 

I will be at ICON7 from June 14th through June 17th, in providence, Rhode Island. If you are attending I would love to meet you. I will be back to write all about it soon!

 

Oh, hindsight.

Hello all! Happy hump day! I was sitting here working away when I had a sudden urge to share. Since Ronaldo is not in a sharing mood and I don't like sharing with Ramona (she always takes, never gives) you hit the sharing jackpot! 

First, a thought on Facebook's massive purchase of the photo editing application, Instagram.

You may notice that I use Instagram a whole lot to edit my photos. I actually really love it (clearly not as much as the Zuckerberg) and I will continue using it. I am happy for the folks at Instagram and their well deserved riches. But man oh man, if I could turn back time to two years ago when I started using this super cool app- when everyone was all about Hipstomatic and couldn't give two shakes of their iPhone to Instagram- I would have bought me a slice of the pie and I could be rolling in solid gold coins right now too. My easter egg properly expresses my feelings on missing out on massive wealth. I guess I'll have to keep working for my money.

And so I shall keep on working. This is my massive pile of tea towels that I have been prepping for my next round of printing. I bought more than my first run, seeing as they were pretty successful. I will be re-printing the two original prints and adding two more new ones to the mix. You'll be the first to know when they are up for sale on my Etsy page.

I'm also working on a majorly late birthday present for my little sister, Dr. Emily. She graduated from optometry school and had a birthday last June, and I told her I would do a painting for her new office. Clearly things have gotten in the way and I'm a bit late on delivery. I can hear her tapping her watch from afar. Anyway, I really wanted to do a grand piece about the wonder of the eye, but when I sat down to think of ideas I saw it more as a grouping of small paintings. Four in total. I told her over Easter dinner that she was getting four for the price of one she assumes that it's a form of accruing interest. I see it as taking care of this year's birthday too. We'll see who wins. I will be updating on the progress of this quadrilogy. 


That's all for now. Ciao!

Got my balls in the air.

I live my life open to imagination and happiness

through my unique view of the world.

I am fearless, optimistic, and take on any challenge,

always growing, learning, and bettering myself.

I wear my heart on my sleeve

and show my true colours.

This, folks, is my brand spanking new, one of a kind mantra. It's a great example of the fantastic-ness I was able to absorb from my class. Not only did I learn about the financial side of my work, I also learned about myself as a person. How was I able to do anything without defined values that I live my life by and align my work to? It was by far one of the hardest things I've had to do, but I feel much more grounded knowing exactly what I deem most important in everything. When I get frustrated, overwhelmed, or down-trodden, from now on I will go back to my mantra to remind myself why I do what I do in the first place. I am still working on my mission statement and vision but those will also help too. The fact is that it's gettin', it's gettin', it's gettin' kinda hectic in here. All good, of course. I have secured three craft shows so far for the holiday season, which means that I've got to start producing things to sell. This time, I'm working to make money too and I think *fingers crossed* it may finally happen this time. 

Here's a shot of some rough work...

...that I refine into final line work....

...and then inked and ready for screen.

I am really looking forward to throwing myself into screen printing. It's new, it's exciting, and it's inspiring to me. This is just the beginning, really, and I can't wait to really explore it. I'm also continuing my embroidery, and continue to add new stitches to my arsenal. I'm hoping to get a bunch of decorative pillows completed to sell over the holidays. Here's a quick preview... what do you think so far?

Now, this is where the mantra comes in handy. The craft shows and prepping for them is not the only project on the go. Perhaps I'm feeling inspired by my new day job (that I actually really like) but I've taken on three more projects (albeit two are fairly small). I'm going to HAVE to put my nose to the grindstone, simply because I promised I would. I'm hoping that everything goes peaches and cream and that I can keep my balls in the air. 

I just said balls.

From Maker to Making a Living, class #2: just say yes.

I've had a day to digest my second class in the workshop series I'm going to be taking for this month. I think I needed it, as last night was a tough one, for me and a lot of my classmates too. Jacqueline's task for the night was to look at all the directions businesses could go in. We're talking blue-skying it. If money wasn't an option, what could I do? You'd think it would be an easy answer, but it's hard not to default back to thinking "I could do that, if I had the money, time, space, etc.". Jacqueline's catch phrase of the night was JUST SAY YES. I have to say it really opened my head to the possibilities I have available. It's funny that though I came into this class thinking that I wanted advice purely for my crafty endeavors. Tea towels and pillows. I went up to Jacqueline after the first class to ensure she knew that though I said I was an illustrator in my introduction that I wasn't intending to bring that part of my business into the class. I'm not sure if you'd call it an "ah ha!" moment or a "duh" moment, but my crafty business IS my illustration business. All my conversation about what I could do with my crafts lead straight to ILLUSTRATE A BOOK. Of course, I didn't talk about how difficult it is to get into a publishing company and that making money in books is hard, I just said yes. It was hard to keep my trap shut, but refreshing after the fact. It's really exciting to see all your potential sprawled across a big, white piece of paper. I really cannot wait until next week's classes!


Now, speaking of just say yes, today we lost an incredible man that did just that and more. I have to make a little shout out to Steve Jobs, as I sit here typing on my third Apple desktop computer. Thank goodness he was one of those guys that saw that the sky has no limit. It really is one thing to have a brilliant mind and limitless imagination, but another to have the guts to use them fully and fearlessly. Macs have changed the way I look at computers, digital media, and, from a girl who once would rather spend hours painting in gouache than open photoshop, digital art. As CBC news stated today, he really was the Henry Ford of our generation. I'm getting a bit teary over here.... anyway, I've wanted to share this speech on my blog since I first heard it, as I've found it to be so utterly inspirational. If you've got 15 minutes I would highly recommend watching it and remembering Steve's genius and heart.  I know he's resting in peace knowing he's left the world a much better place. 

From Maker to Making a Living, class #1: same problem, different boats.

Wow! What a great start to a month of learning! I know for sure that signing up for this workshop series was a great idea. Jacqueline is even more amazing in real life than she is on paper (or web page) and I am looking forward to taking in all her words of wisdom and learning from her experiences. 

There are ten business owners participating, including myself. Tonight was about getting to know a little about everyone's businesses and history, and determining the key issues we all have in making successes of them. I don't know why (ego, maybe?) but I figured that I would here similar stories to my own. Boy, I couldn't have been more off. The areas of craft were wide spread, from weaving to jewellery, furniture making to ceramics. Though everyone had a different perspective on their issues, there were definitely a few common threads. I'm looking forward to seeing the progression of my fellow classmates, and myself.

My first homework assignment was to breathe (lots of information in one night), and then write down what I see my dream business to be. So I started jotting down ideas, and really thinking about it. At the end of the day, my dream business is along the lines of one of my favourite illustrators, Susie Ghahremani of Boy Girl Party. Look to your right and you'll see the permanent link to her site. She's really got it all. She sells stationary and such that gets produced by a third party, necklaces, bags, etc., all featuring her amazing characters. In addition she sells prints of her work, and original paintings. In addition to all of this she's able to participate in art shows AND she's an active illustrator. I like to read her personal blog too, as she is honest about the issues a creative business owner has. Plus, she's funny. Hopefully if I share this with Jacqueline she'll have a better idea of my goals.


So, homework done for the night. I'm a bit of a keener. Now this keener is going to try to read more of her book club book that needs to be done by Thursday. Class number 2 tomorrow!

The life of a painting.

I spent this weekend working on a new piece to be submitted to a gallery show call for entry. Yesterday at 5 was the deadline. I realized at 3 that I was not going to make it. Big bummer. At the end of the day it's my fault for leaving it so long, but all is not lost. I really loved what I created. I took pictures along to journey from concept to final and wanted to share my process.

So, first is the concept. The theme of the show is hybrids. I started working on rough concepts a couple of weeks ago.



Usually I start by writing my ideas down and drawing super duper rough sketches. This is how I narrow down to one idea. At this point in this particular case I had to set everything aside to work on another project.



I came back to this painting a week after my first sketches and did another round of roughs. These ones are based around the best idea I had from the first round. I wrote down my palette colour ideas as well.



One last final sketch. This one is pretty much exactly as I want the final painting look. I'll usually write down where I want to see each of my palette colours so I can be as efficient with my paint as possible.




Next step is to transfer my idea to the final canvas. In this case it's a stained wooden panel. Here I used a pastel pencil to sketch it out but usually a pencil is my tool of choice.



Paint time! I try to lay down the large blocks of colour first.



My first painting teacher in college said to us once that if you're going to paint, then use paint. It's not the time to scrimp. So I went out and bought some new paint! My talent takes me far but the paint itself is so important!



From that point it's hard to describe. I don't start from the top and move my way down. I'm all over the place! Wherever my mood strikes me. It's hard to say how long this will take me. This particular situation took me the better part of a weekend.




I also started using this awesome water dish that my Mom gave me years ago and it was promptly put in a dusty corner of my book case. It's got grooves to lay your brushes down without crushing the tips and a ridged section to help remove paint better. I LOVE it! Thanks, Mom!



So, though I didn't get it done in time for the deadline I did finish it today, and my furry intern totally approved.



It turned out as I hoped it would. It's been a while since I've painted so it was good to get back into it in the least. I'm already working on my next one!

A twist in the 40 hours.

I have been waiting for a while to tell you some rather exciting news. Papers have now been signed and it's official so it's time to shout it out to the world! 

So, I work a full time job for a major corporation as a graphic designer that illustrates. The job, unfortunately, includes a lengthy commute and has made it difficult to progress the freelance illustration career that I have been striving for. Come hell or high water I WILL be a full time illustrator in the future. I had a one year contract with this company that came to an end last week. When it came time for me and my boss to chat about a new contract, I was very candid about my situation and my feelings about being stuck in a 9-5 world and how it just couldn't continue that way that it had. Now, knowing the background I know about the corporation and it's reputation I was bracing myself to have to walk out the door cold turkey and start pounding the pavement in Toronto to find ways to make ends meet. However, I was met with an unexpected response... a willingness to find a solution to benefit both of us. So, my boss and I basically worked out a two year freelance transition program (I'll call it the FTP) for me to follow. Yeah, I know. Weird that a company would help me very slowly quit my job. Totally amazing, thoughtful, and appreciated too. So, starting next week I will be going to a 32 hour work week at my day job, and spending 8 hours (ONE WHOLE DAY!!!) working on my own personal business. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??!?? This is the first time I have ever had the time to be really thoughtful and diligent in my actions to move forward in my career! I cannot tell you how excited I am!! As you saw last week I organized my studio stuff in preparation for this transition and am trying to start working on little things every night. Tonight I am gathering and formatting my newer work to put up on the Three in a Box rep site. I did a similar move this passed weekend when I updated my page on the Workbook website. I'm going to build a momentum and keep it going! 

So that's it! I guess sometimes all you have to do is be honest and ask for what you want instead of assuming you'll never get it. 

Claire loves... illustration!

Even though I lose sleep, miss out on fun events, and my house looks like the Tasmanian devil spun through it, I love illustrating. I just finished a really challenging project that really tested my concentration abilities being able to put my head down and plow through it. At the end of the day I was really pleased with the end results! Here is a sneak peak of some progress work I did on what ended up being my favourite piece of the series:


It's for an article about being alone. To be an artist sometimes you need to spend large stretches of time in solitude so I really connected to the concept. Check out all of my hard work next Saturday January 1st.

I really can't wait until I can say that illustration is my full time job.

Oh, and by the way, Christmas eve is tomorrow. Excited much?