Continuing The Adventure: Our Wedding Invitation

First of all, I just want to say that I'm sorry for being such a slacker with posting on my art blog.  I know there are very few passable excuses, but for over the past year I've been planning my wedding!  And it's taking place in a month from today. A. Month. From. Today!  I don't know if I can grasp it!  My fiancé, Daniel Skubal, and I have been working on lots and lots of our own art for our wedding.  This has been happening along with our 9 to 5 jobs and freelance projects.  It has been an extremely busy last couple months to say the least. 

Our invitation project is, by far, my favorite artwork we have done for the wedding.  We are going for an old Hollywood theme, so naturally we wanted to make an old 1940's movie poster.  Dan is a filmmaker and has an obsession with the art deco era.  And I love all things vintage!  So this was a perfect idea for the two of us.  We're also making a large poster for the lobby at our wedding reception with a "Now Playing" banner in the corner.  The tables will have theater numbers on them, and the place cards are movie tickets.  Here is our invitation and poster!

We have done some collaborations before, but this was something we both put our hearts and souls into.  Dan and I started off by doing a fun retro photo shoot of ourselves in our apartment.  We just used my camera, set it up with the tripod, and snapped away.  It was actually a really fun time!  After we captured the pose we liked best for an iconic romantic movie poster, I sketched us out and put the outline on my computer.  From there, I painted us with my Wacom on Photoshop.  This was a process with close to a billion layers of color.  Haha... I was really happy with how it turned out in the end.  I'm really starting to enjoy digital painting; something I completely rejected when I was in the illustration program at NIU. 

After I made the full digital painting of us, I went on to do the same with the sky and the red plane.  Daniel was dead-set on having the title as skywriting.  I was worried it would not turn out the way we wanted, and this was actually more frustrating than I had anticipated.  But, I'm happy with the result after all of the skywriting versions I worked on.  Once all my painting was done, Daniel worked his magic. 

He added the Chicago skyline to the background, adjusted some color, added texture to the whole piece to give it that old feel, and of course, did some amazing typography.  If you look at the credits in our movie poster, it is actually the names of our friends and family in the wedding party! 

We're hoping that this piece can be added to our collaborative portfolio, and are also planning a bunch more projects. 

It's rare when you can find someone who has the same artistic vision as you and trust him to change and work on a piece with you.  It's even more rare when it is the person who you are going to marry.  I'm so lucky to have found both of these things in Daniel!  I'm excited to see what our future holds.  Not just in our marriage, but in our art and design work.

Making the Move to Digital

I know I haven't posted in more than a year. Honestly, I haven't had time to post because I've been doing a lot of freelance work and keeping busy with my traditional freelance. But about three weeks ago, an opportunity came along that may have just influenced a change in the way that I create my illustrations.

When I was at NIU, I was the only student in my graduating illustration class to have a fully traditional portfolio. I still use Prismacolor, acrylic, and a clear varnish on my boards. I never felt comfortable with the disconnection of hand and eye coordination that went along with using a Wacom tablet and stylus. I didn't feel like I could fully control my strokes or layering well, and I just didn't really give digital medium a fair chance.

My fiance is a film editor, but also a very talented graphic designer as well. He was given the opportunity to pitch a design to Bryan Burk, producer of the motion picture Super 8. After some brainstorming and layouts, he decided that he wanted to go for a more traditional, Drew Struzan-esque, design with that nostalgic Amblin feel. He had only one night to come up with this and had a vision of exactly what he wanted to do. He only lacked the skill to illustrate a portrait or scene for the poster. That's when he came to me.

We both pulled an all-nighter creating the poster. But I have always thrived while working under pressure. Also, I needed to create my drawings for the poster completely digitally. Of course I had classes on it and had minor experience, but always HATED every moment working on my computer before. But something clicked and I was drawing like I would on my illustration board. It was such an awesome feeling, and my drawings turned out the way I would have wanted them to on illustration board!

Working under pressure for such an amazing opportunity with my best friend and fiance was fantastic. But even more thrilling is that I think I am truly getting the knack of working digitally. I know, I know...I'm a bit late on the band wagon, but I love knowing that I can work with both traditionally and digitally to make my work exactly how I envision it!

I hope that more opportunities arise for us in our collaborating. And we are definitely going to keep working as a team, experimenting with techniques and just generally streamlining the process. I think this is the start of something great and I look forward to sharing the experience with you on my blog!

Read about our entire experience at Living In Cine.

Fat and Happy

...maybe he should have picked a better spot...

...a new friend.

This is a character I am developing for a story called "The Umbrella Tree" that I am putting together. There's a lot more of him to come...

Octocute

It was recently Kelsey's birthday. This is for her. :)

Monnnster

This was for Cassy. Kitties...monsters...cute things...She loves all of those things. I decided to put them into one happy ball of fun.

Otter Way

This is a piece I did for my sister, Elaina. She loves her some cute otters. That's fo sho.