We are still working on our new classes! As of right now, I have 3 of 4 weeks of my Illustrator 102 class recorded. I just wanted to share some bears that I created for the course, because I think they’re really cute. Mike thinks that the bear looks like it’s peeing…
This is the Blackham family whose matriarch Melanie, commissioned this portrait from me. Full disclosure: Melanie is my darling little sister. She has been wanting me to do a portrait of her family for some time. She finally made it very clear that she was a serious paying client, and that I should NOT treat her as just a family member that wanted a favor done. She wanted hers to be a more cartoony style of her family in front of their house. I liked that idea, and so she sent me photos of her family and home separately. It will be displayed in her home as a 16X20 canvas print.
Thanks Mel, glad you like it, it was fun.
{Mike}
I am honored to speak tonight at the Creative Collaborative tonight on the subject of balancing work and home life within the creative realm. It’s a subject that both Alma and I are pretty familiar with, and it will be a group discussion. Hopefully we will help each other figure out better ways of striving towards the sometimes mythical balance that we strive for professionally and personally as creatives. If you are in the Provo area tonight, come on by!
{Mike}
We had Nicole Gerulat shoot these “afters” months ago of our remote office here in Springville. We have used them for a few different things, but I just realized it might be fun to see a before and after. Without any real explanation, here it is. Thanks again Nicole!
Mike and I are busy working on new classes for Nicole’s Classes. In the next few months we plan on having the following to offer:
Illustrator 102 (4 week course)
Illustrator: Ornaments and Embellishments (2 week course)
Photoshop Elements (4 week course)
Photoshop 102 (4 week course)
Photoshop: Beauty Retouching (2 week course)
In both my 102 class and my Ornaments and Embellishments class, I will be going into more detail on making pattern brushes. We cover the very basics in 101, but designing a full pattern brush requires making a starting tile, an ending tile, and two corner tiles, and it can be a lot of work! I just wanted to share with you an example that I developed last night to use in one of my classes (I haven’t decided yet if this guy is destined for 102 or Ornaments and Embellishments… but I’m leaning towards 102 since the feel of Ornaments and Embellishments should be a little more classy/pretty and a little less snakey). Pattern brushes can be absolutely anything, of course, but I thought that a snake might be especially fun!
At Nicole’s Classes, we teach a variety of courses in Photography, Illustrator, and Photoshop. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to use your SLR camera, or if you’ve ever wanted to learn these complex programs, Nicole’s Classes is a really great option!
I was contacted recently by an individual named Melanie, who lives in Florida and turns out to be a really cool music blogger who co-created and writes for a blog called The Ruckus, which has been a great resource for me of lesser known music acts. Anyway, she contacted me because she had a beloved dog named Delilah that passed away recently, and while that is obviously sad, she commissioned a portrait from me to honor her memory.
Delilah was not just ANY dog, she was also pretty darn famous, appearing on SAYMedia for Dogster, and her image also graced TypePad‘s business cards. Needless to say, I was more than honored. Melanie chose an iconic image of her, the one that was used in the ad for Dogster, actually.
Here is the image used:
AND the portrait itself:
Thanks to Melanie, and to Delilah for being such a fine canine.
{Mike}
Every year I love working with Lime Ricki on their swim suits. Here are some suits with my patterns that they have released this year (visit the site and you can see other styles using the same patterns as well!). I love how these turned out! It’s a tough job for me to pick out which one(s) I want for myself! This year, I couldn’t narrow it down to one, and so I’ll be picking out two suits!
These two portraits are ones I did of our kids to develop a different approach to my portrait. I feel this approach is fun and graphic, where basically the skin is rendered but everything else is presented in flat solid colors. Hope you enjoy them!
I was able to do portraits of an entire family for the first time not too long ago. It was a great experience. Jane, who is great, commissioned them from me.
She chose to go with the more graphic versions I offer, where the subjects are depicted a solid white, with a contrasting solid color in the background.
You can read about them here, on her blog as well.
Thanks Jane!
While Mike and I love working together and collaborating on various projects, nothing gives us quite as much joy as our GREATEST collaborations, our children. We are now proud parents of two children; Baby Joan joined our family on April 3rd!
I had some health complications after the baby came (okay, that sounds more ominous and dramatic than it really is… I had to have my gallbladder out) and spent a few days in the hospital, which allowed us the time to actually put together a proper birth announcement (we never sent out a birth announcement for Oliver).
Nicole, of course, photographed our precious baby, so ultimately the announcements didn’t need very much design, since I didn’t want to compete with her beautiful images. Mike and I developed this idea together of a two sided announcement. I love that people have to choose which side to display on their fridges. I’ve had many reports of kids getting ahold of the cards and playing with them, flipping back and forth to show “happy baby, sad baby, happy baby, sad baby.” In fact, we even have a copy that I’ve been keeping in the car for Oliver to play with, because he also loves to flip it back and forth and say, “Awwwwwww, WAAAAA!”
