Chesapeake Bay Bridge

A friend of mine requested that I help her mom with creating an image of the Bay Bridge for the back of a t-shirt. She gave me the photo she wanted to use, but the image was way too pixelated to use, so I redrew the image in Illustrator for her so that she could print it. She also wanted a blue crab for the front of the shirt, she is going to add the text later. So here is the illustration of Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

Party Invite

I'm sure most of you know my father-in-law. Well, we are throwing him a surprise birthday party in May...so...SHHHHHH!! Anywhoo, I drew this illustration of their dog in Illustrator with a sombrero on her head. Since the theme is a Fiesta. I cut out the invites so they are the shape of the dog. I bought bright primary colored envelopes to put them in. Bright bold reds, blues, yellows, and I think there was a green and orange colored one too? Not everyone received the actual printed invites, since there are so many guests invited, so these paper ones just went out to family members mostly and folks without computers. The rest were emailed. Hope you all like!!

I won!!

Hey all,
I found out today that I won an Apple iTouch from the T-shirt contest I entered last month. I am sooo excited! I hope to get it some time this month. I had a choice between a Wii and an iTouch. And since I already have a Wii, the iTouch was my choice. And a kicker is, they may actually produce some of my designs!! Pretty cool eh?

Boy Scouts

A coworker of mine requested that I design a Boyscout Patch for them. They already had a hand-drawn sketch of what they wanted. It took quite a bit of time to draw this sucker in Illustrator and to keep it simple since it is going to be a stitched patch. This is the first iteration of the patch. Not sure if its the final yet since I sent it forward today. So we'll see what happens. But for now, here is phase 1. Hopefully when its all finished, I can get a photo of the actual patch.

T-Shirt Design Contest - VOTE 4 ME!

I decided to finally enter an art contest. It's been a long time since I've done one, so I figured it's worth a shot. Hey, I even got a Free Tote Bag just for being one of the first 50 to submit a design!! The theme for this contest is Valentine's Day. The company designs eco-friendly clothing. So it had to fit the eco-friendly feel as well as the Valentine's Day theme. So this was the design I liked the best of all my submissions. I made a couple to signify Valentines Day, of course. They are enjoying each others company on a swing outside in nature. The tree branch of course signifies the eco-friendly attire. I added a "distressed" look to the t-shirt to give a little more of a modern feel to it. Below are also thumbnails of a few other submissions (the others were all similar so I grouped them together). I'll find out next month who the winners are. The winner gets a free i-Touch or a Wii. I already have a Wii, so I'm hoping to get the i-Touch. My poor i-pod is in desperate need of an upgrade. Anywhoo...hope you like it! Vote for my shirts!! Go to the link in the first sentence of this post and vote for my shirt. Please!! :) Thanks guys!

This one is called "Me & You on a Swing for 2":

These are some of the other designs:

Posters

So I was asked to design the 5ft posters for the I/ITSEC conference held every year in Florida. This was back in like Nov/Dec....around Thanksgiving or so when this conference was held. I ended up creating both in Illustrator to keep the file size down. I made them both complete vector-art posters. Everything you see is vector art...including the screen captures. I retyped the text on the screen caps and converted all the imagery to vector art. This is what I came up with. Enjoy!

Logo Design

So at work I was asked to design a logo for this group here. I want to go through the process I took to get to the final logo for those of you who aren't designers and don't know all the steps and time it takes to design a logo. This is just some of the steps I took (minus extra doodles, thumbnails, thinking, etc).

The group already had a pretty good logo to me, but they needed to match the branding of another logo. I had to stick with their same original color scheme of the red and gray, but match the new logo with the logo they were going to be sharing their site with. This shows the original logo and original name "ILES" and the logo they wanted me to make it kind of match (my bro took my original design and tweaked it with a new font and added the extra colors when he was a graphic intern here at work...go Dan!).
After I received the logo, I started playing with ideas. Here was my first set of thumbnail ideas until I later found out that they changed their name to SGST (go figure). You can click on the images to enlarge it.

After I made the above logo ideas, they liked stuff with the "swoop" since it matched the JKDDC logo best. They also wanted me to include more colors from the JKDDC logo. I remember them saying they wanted to keep with their original color scheme since they didn't want to have to recreate all the color-schemes on their website. So I decided to just include the color purple on it instead of all the reds, greens, blues, etc. I figured it wouldn't stray too much from the original gray and red they already had. Below is the next set of thumbnails. Some which include the title.
Then they chose some that they liked from the group above and wanted me to change the swoop around a bit more. So additional logo ideas are below.


After much thought, they narrowed it down to 2 logos....finally!!! So this is their new logo.

Creepy art

So, I read on this site about these famous artists who draw in Illustrator. I was messing with the Gradient Mesh tool in Illustrator to learn how to draw realistically. It is very difficult, that's for sure. Anywhoo, so here is the Mesh of Cali's face, then the gradients added with the Mesh tool, and the photo I based it off of. I gave up after awhile. I'm sure I could keep messing with it to make it better, but well, it was just for practice anyways. So this is what I have. Maybe another time I'll make a better one once I've practiced with the tool enough.

That's my Girl, Girl, Girl!

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Drought

Well, I haven't done any art in awhile, but I have decorated my cube at work. Unfortunately I can't take any pictures of my cube since our building does not allow cameras in it (security risk). So, no picts of my cube, sorry everyone. But I have been playing in Photoshop at work and my coworkers and I have created some crazy photos of coworkers and family. Here are just a few of our creations:

Creatures

I found this cool site to add pets to your Blog. As you can see on the right I have turtles and a hamster that need fed. Here is a Koi Pond you can also add to your Blog. They are so fun and will keep you occupied at work. Click below to feed my fish. Love it!!

Christmas Time!

Finally, our house is done!!

Red Hat, Purple Dress, Funny Cat, time to Impress

A friend of mine saw the note cards I made for Emilie and wanted me to make some for her mom. Her mom is part of the Red Hat Purple Dress society. So she wanted me to take their cat and make some note cards for her as a gift. Here are a couple of ideas I created for her. I first took the cat in Photoshop and a picture of her mom. I cropped out her mom's fancy hat and stuck it on the cat's head. Then I brought the new image in Illustrator and just started playing. Here is what I came up with. The basic concept for the card is on the left, and different ideas for the front are on the right. It was kind of fun, something creative that wasn't too difficult and didn't take too much time (since I hardly have any creative time these days with Cali). Oh yes, and also, we lit up our house for Christmas last night...its nuts! Don't worry, new xmas photo to come soon!

Photoshop World!

I am entering a Photoshop World contest, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with all of you. One of my Top Ten reasons to go to Photopshop World Expo is that I would love to get my Portfolio reviewed. Being that its been awhile since I've had a Portfolio Review, it would nice to get some insight and thoughts on how to improve it, what is wrong, what is right, what is awesome, and what is plain boring, etc. At Photoshop World, I feel, can help me answer my questions and improve my portfolio. PHOTOSHOP WORLD will also have Help Desk LIVE!, which is where you can have all your Photoshop questions answered, one-on-one. I know we all have a million Photoshop Questions that need answered, since the program can do SOOOO MUCH!

The Photoshop World Conference & Expo will be held:

March 25-27, 2009

Hynes Convention Center

Boston, MA

Here is the link for more info: http://www.photoshopworld.com/

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILIE!

My friend Emilie's birthday was on Friday last week, so I made her something small for her birthday. I figured there wasn't much "hanging" space to hang a drawing for her, so I decided to make her notecards as a gift of her doggy. Since she is a teacher, I figured she probably would write on notecards. So I made two different ones for her to use. Just something small. Hope you liked them Em!! Happy Birthday...again! We had a blast Saturday night!

Pearls of Promise

A friend and coworker of mine is going to be designing dishes for breast cancer awareness. She came to me and asked me if I could do some designs for her. She scribbled out on paper what she wanted, and here is what I came up with for her. She is going to get them made and start selling them, and a percentage of sales will go to me, if it ever takes off. Pretty cool huh? She swears we'll be on OPRAH one day...haha. But seriously, she is a sweet lady. Her mother died of breast cancer, and she is a survivor of it TWICE! She also had a tumor removed in her brain not long ago after collapsing at work, so she's been through a lot. She said that God came to her in her dreams, telling her to get these designs done and start to sell them and an angel would help (being me). She is very religious and spiritual. So when I designed these for her, she cried. She cried and cried. She asked me how I got into her head and created exactly what was in her head...lol. So we'll see if this business venture of hers takes off. I can't wait to see these things actually made!! I will also be designing the cover of a book she is going to write on her life. But I told her lets focus on one thing at a time. I don't want her crying every day now! Below are some logo ideas I had for her, some plate designs she wanted, and a cup she wanted me to create. Click on each image for a larger view. Enjoy!

Petey!!

One of my very good friends, Stacey, I've known for a very long time, has a Boston Terrier named Sampras....after Pete Sampras of course. My husband love, love, loves to call him Petey. Anyways, her birthday was last week. She is always thinking of others all the time, and always remembers me on my birthday. So I wanted to get her something special, but wasn't sure what. So I got thinking, maybe she'd like a portrait of her dog. I wasn't sure what I was going to draw, what medium I was going to use, etc. So I decided to go with Illustrator and hand-drew her dog in Adobe Illustrator. This is what I came up with. I hadn't posted this yet, since I wanted to wait until she received it first. So again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACEY!

Finally!

So I finally drew a picture....well, a quick sketch. When I was working in Fairfax for a week, I had a lot of time to kill at my desk at work. Sooo, while i waited for some actual design work to do, I brought up some animal photographs on my screen, and decided to sketch from there. This is just on typical printer paper and a regular old ballpoint pen, so no real art supplies. So this is what I made. The tiger was super cute. It came out alright for something quick. I wish I had my Micron pens and real art paper, but, since it was doodling at work, I guess I can accept it with all its issues...lol. Artists are always picky about their work, can't you tell? Hopefully I'll actually sit down and really draw, but for now, you will have to settle for quicky-art with desk supplies. More to come soon....i hope.

I am a Badger

Well, I was sent off to work in Fairfax, VA for a week to work on a major project for my company. It was a last minute assignment that I was requested to drive up in less than 24 hours. I got a phone call at work saying, we need you ASAP in Fairfax....so, I got home, packed, kissed my baby and hubby goodbye and headed up North. I am here now, and am workin diligently (sp?). As I sit between graphics, I created a silly sign real quick. You see, back home they call the graphic artists, graphic rats....and well, the last time I worked on a project with my friend and fellow coworker, Kevin, we decided we didn't want to be rats....so instead, we called ourselves Badgers, since folks Badger us to do graphics. So, that's where badger came from, and well, since I was sitting here at work, between graphics, I made this "graphic badger" sign for myself to put on my wall as I wait to get "badgered". Sigh...life as a badger isn't always what its cracked up to be, i will be home soon!

Party Ponies

So I'm designing a website for a friend of mine. Her family owns a Pony Riding business. They do the pony rides at The Farmers Market, Pungo Strawberry Festival, for birthday parties, etc. So I am not sure exactly what I'm going to go with yet. A more professional approach or child-like approach. I'm giving her options. Anywhoo, I drew this Pony for a possible child-like approach to the site. We'll see what I end up coming up with in the end. The site will most likely be www.beachpartyponies.com once its up and running. Here is the pony I drew. Hope you all enjoy. I am trying to squeeze in art when I can. Having a little one sure does make things more difficult.