sketchbook stories :: shari warren

Shari is a fellow Northern California artist that I met via twitter and is proof that you can form friendships thru social networking. Shari use a variety of media to create her art, both traditional and digital, but no matter what the project is, she always starts with pencil and paper. Shari is a fan of HGTV (one of my all time favorite channels) and a bargain shopper to boot. Hey, who doesn’t love spending a day doing some solid trend research!

The series that Shari is sharing with us today is for products that she designed for Ritzenhoff, a European giftware company that specializes in high-end designer collectibles.

Here is Shari’s Sketchbook Story ::

SW:  The project was to design a coordinating beer and schnapps glassware set. For each product I design, the company sends me a story and technical brief about the product description and I am given complete freedom in creating the artwork and colors. The only restraint is that the final illustration has to be in a vector format (I use Illustrator) to fit the supplied product technical drawings. 

SW: The story for this Beer and Schnapps glasses is “Royalty”. So I gathered reference of Crowns and Kings and Queens. Animal Icons and Motifs are commonly used in the jewelry and crown designs and as my creative ideas started flowing, a thought came to me “King of the Jungle” and “The Beer of Kings”. I decided to design a Lion King for the Beer Glass and a Lioness Queen for the coordination Schnapps Glass.

SW: I thought it would be fun to incorporate the Barley and Hops, the ingredients for beer, as part of the crown design. I draw my rough sketches and then scan them in. Since the final art needs to be in a vector format, I place the sketches on a layer in illustrator to work from. And a little side note: I added the little hearts to the faces, because as I was thinking of "kings and queens" and I remembered this funny segment from a Mel Brooks movie where he played the French King in History of the World. It's one of the silliest and naughtiest movies I have ever seen, yet the costumes were great and the make up was awesome. Powdered faces, crazy big wigs, and one of the characters had this little heart on their cheek right under their eye. Yes, I had to sneak this in!

SW: I create the final artwork directly in the Product file as supplied from the manufacturer. That way I can be sure all the elements fit as I see it as a final product. They also wanted me to use a metallic gold on the top rim design of the glass as well as an accent color below. 

SW: I love how the Glasses are the Heads and the Coasters are the Bodies. These products were introduced in Ritzenhoff’s 2008 collection, and are still great sellers today.

And here’s where you can find Shari:

  website: http://www.shariwarren.com

   twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/shariart

 linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shariwarren

if you are an artist or would like to recommend an artist to be featured in Sketchbook Stories please feel free to drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you :-)

a night on the town:: RN74 & Cut and Paste

Some times things work out perfectly. Last week I received a text from my friend asking if Ava Blu could do a sleepover with her BFF. Well of course she could, and the timing couldn’t of been any better as it just so happened to be on the Friday of the week of my 8yr wedding anniversary. I organized the detail of the sleepover and Jay handled the rest. He booked us dinner reservations at RN74 a Michael Mina restaurant and then tickets to my first Cut & Paste at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an event only a geeked out designer or illustrator could love.

Dinner was great and dessert was fantastic.The white sesame pot de crème was to die for and the goat’s milk cheesecake was amazing, but the most memorable part of the evening for me was picking out our wine selection. We went back and forth for a while trying to decide and were finally seduced in by the story of Soffocone di Vincigliata. The winemaker, Bibi Graetz, is also an artist that puts his own art on the labels and this particular bottle was banned to enter the US by customs because US Import regulations do not allow wine labels to feature any type of sexual or pornographic imagery. He had to revise the label in order for the US to permit his wine to be imported. I was totally intrigued and asked to see the bottle, and of course once I saw it I knew we had to try it. And I have to say it was a quite tasty bottle of wine. (Here is a link to the original label if you are interested in seeing why it was banned and what the name means in Italian:-)

What a great night!

Notes of Encouragement

A few week ago a friend of mine left me this really nice note of encouragement. It was during a time when I was going thru some tough stuff at the day job. And I have to say it meant a lot to know that I had support of a friend. I’m trying to make the best of the situation, even though I know, and if I’m being really honest with myself have always known, that it’s not quite the right fit. At least going thru all of this has opened my eyes and forced me to set some concrete, REAL with a START DATE GOALS that align my personal desires and professional artistic goals of living a truly fulfilling creative life.

How not to choose a Halloween Costume

 

I recently received a Halloween costume catalogue in the mail and I handed it to my daughter with a page of stickers to pick out the costumes that she liked. I came back from doing the laundry to find her stickering up the whole catalogue. They all were her favorite. It was actually quite cute. She finally decided that she's going to be Alice from the "NEW" Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp and that I should be Strawberry Shortcake. My husband had a good laugh, but there is no way I am dressing up as Strawberry Shortcake.

sketchbook stories :: tanya orstad

I first met Tanya back in 2007 when she was my art director at dg inventive, Paper Prince & XXOX and we became fast facebook friends. She has since started her own design business, AppleSass Studio. Tanya’s a sassy lass who’s a fanatic NKOTB fan, like I’ve never seen, and a 14-year old girl at heart, which explains why she's so great at tapping into the tween market. Tanya has a very clean and fresh look that is strongly influenced by a passion for fashion, flea market treasures and renegade crafters. Oh...and she’s crazy about her bulldog Ernie.

Here is Tanya’s Sketchbook Story ::

 TO: My target market when creating trend boards for back to school is generally the “tween” category, which I love!

TO: A lot of times, I skip the sketch phase and just go straight into Illustrator for my design – mostly due to time constraints. This particular project did start with a sketch.

 

TO: This piece was created last summer/fall 2009 for 2010 back to school which I licensed to multiple clients for use on pencil pouches  and an iPhone/iPod alarm clock that were sold in Target stores the past couple months (during back to school). The artwork was originally created in the color palette shown in v1 (that was licensed on the alarm clock) and was recolored in v2 for the pencil pouch to coordinate with the rest of the pencil pouch assortment. The pencil pouches are no longer available as the back to school shopping season has ended, but the alarm clock will remain in the Target Electronics department.  

   

And here’s where you can find Tanya:

  website: http://www.apple-sass.com/

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AppleSass

Making the most of a boring situation

I just spent the afternoon working away doing a bunch boring mundane tasks, that really I’d rather not be doing. The upside was that since I was stuck doing these things I could at least listen to something that was informative, funny and in some small way helping me advance my illustration career. Thomas James's Illustration Island Podcasts have become one of my favorite to listen to. Anyone who is an illustrator or art director should give it a listen.

This afternoon I especially enjoyed listening to Episodes 47 & 48 with Marshall Arisman. I really appreciated Marshall's sense of humor and the fact that he could speak so intelligently and then just as easily laught at himself and drop a curse word or two.

If only I were in a different place in my life, I would love to have enrolled in the Masters Program at SVA that Marshall chairs. He seems like he would be a hoot to be around and learn from.

I think my body is trying to tell me something

Last night I picked up my arsenal for combating this cold I feel coming on and hit the hay at 7:30. The last two weeks have been super stressful and it seems as if my body can’t take it anymore and is shutting down for a long need rest. It appears I have no other option but to oblige.

sometime it's ok to take a break

I’ve been having to force myself to take more frequent breaks away from the computer because my eyes have been straining.  Taking a break, really is a good thing!  I sometime forget how important it is to take a few minutes to regroup and rejuvenate, not just my eyes but my body and mind too. And it always makes going back to a tough task that much easier. So why did I have to wait until I was having eye spasms to figure this out?  Gosh, sometimes my body is truly smarter than my mind.

Just what the doctor ordered, the eye doctor that is.

I went to the eye doctor last week to get a check-up because I was having trouble seeing. It’s been 3 years since my last visit and I was actually looking forward to picking out a new pair of glasses.  Well, I got a little more then what I was hoping for. My optometrist told me that my eyes are straining and I am having eye spams, because of all the time I was spending in front of the computer. Her recommdation was to get a second pair of glasses for computer use and reading. Not at all what I wanted to hear considering on any given day I can spend upwards of 16 hours in front of the computer screen and who wants to switch back and forth between glasses. What a pain in the bum. The only other thing I can do is limit my computer time. So this past Saturday I decided to give my eyes a rest and we got out of the house and enjoyed a beautiful day at Tomales Bay.

This was Ava Blu’s first time trying oysters and she absolutely loved them. We couldn’t shell them fast enough. I actually think she winded up eating more oysters then Jay and I. We had a great time, and as a added bonus ran into some friends who had the same idea.

sketchbook stories :: monica lee

I “met” Monica while we were taking a blogging e-course together and instantly felt a connection to her and her art. Monica delights in all things girly and this is truly reflected in her feminine and classic designs, that have a slight wink to the past. She creates her art by combining her hand drawings and painted elements with digital accents to create stylish illustrations.

Monica is often hired to create chic and hip gals. She was contacted by Guideposts, who found her thru her theispot portfolio. Guideposts asked Monica to illustrate the cover and interior spots for a book called “The Christian Mama's Guide To Pregnancy” authored by Erin MacPherson.

Here is Monica’s Sketchbook Story ::
 
ML: I usually send over quite a few roughs and I like to add a tad of color because it helps the client get a better feel for what I an envisioning in my head. I send a lot of sketches over because "hip, current etc" all mean  something different to different people. I think I  actually did 6 or 7 sketches for this client. I also NAME each girl I draw because it helps me communicate better with the clients... i.e. "We like Vanessa and Sophie best..." It is much easier than just marking them 1, 2, 3, trust me!

ML: If I am really sold on a "pose" I will draw it with 2 different hairstyles to try to really sell that to the client! (my secret trick)

ML: Then I give them one more round of choices (I actually sent her in two different dress choices! Clients like choices!)  cover 1a and cover 1b.

ML: Then it becomes the cover, hooray! I think it comes out Spring 2011.

I want to thank Monica for graciously offered to be my first Sketchbook Story Feature. Thank You Monica!

And here’s where you can find Monica:

website: http://www.monicaleestudios.com

     blog: http://monicalee.typepad.com/monicaleestudios/

theipsot: http://www.theispot.com/portfolios/index.cfm?clientnumber=a2550&artistName=Monica%20Lee