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i LOVE this piece and am enjoying EVERY second of painting it!:) ok...so as well all know, i am the world's worst photographer;) took this pic with my phone really quick so the colors are a bit "off". but, i'm getting there...:) can't wait to finish it!!!

ok...this could be one of my new favorites:) this is a sketch for a comissioned piece for the cousin of the little girl's room i just finished up last week-isabelle.
http://theenchantedeasel.blogspot.com/2011/02/isabelles-roomall-done.html
thank so much to liz for asking me to now adorn her niece's room with my work. i am beyond excited to do another piece for this wonderful family!:)
*a few background notes about this piece-mailee loves loves loves cows! her room is pink and brown AND they used to live in washington d.c.*
so i couldn't resist the cherry blossom trees (which are my favorite) and a sweet little pink and brown stuffed cow. besides, what little girl doesn't absolutely love to have tea parties with her stuffed animals/dolls?! i am super excited to start painting this in the next couple of days...:)

i'm so happy that these are done!!! and, i'm even more excited to ship them off tomorrow to liz so she can hang in them in her baby girl's room:) i am actually pleased with the way these turned out. i love the colors and the concept(s). i hope baby isabelle looks up at them and they make her SMILE:)
liz and i spoke today about doing a piece for her niece miley who LOVES cows! so, i'll be sketching some ideas for that this weekend. super excited for that one as well!:)
BTW~I WILL BE SELLING PRINTS OF THESE IN MY ETSY SHOP NEXT WEEK...STAY TUNED...

We are quite proud of the fact that we offer personalized images inside of our custom kids books.  It is extremely important to us that the children receiving our books see THEMSELVES inside, not just their name.

But how did our artists create characters that could be customized to become every child in America (and some very far away countries, too)?  A fantastic book called “Making Comics” by Scott McCloud illuminates how, as a default, a reader envisions a character as him or herself.  I’ll try to explain with my own horrible drawings.

Imagine a stick figure.  We recognize it as an icon signifying a human.  Any human. It could be you!

 <— You.

You identify with the stickman.  Feel his pain.  But when we give him a monocle, top hat, and cane, it is no longer you (unless you are Mr. Peanut).

 <— Some jerk.

So it is through each new detail that you begin to differentiate a character on a page as “not you”.

“Okay,” you say, “so you were too lazy to create all the different face shapes, noses, and brows to more accurately match each character to an individual child, so you went generic.”

Not quite.  Have you ever seen this piece of art?

If not, I’ll relate how nearly everyone learns about it.  The French script underneath the pipe says, “This is not a pipe.” 

“Silly French Artist,” you say with a bit of disdain for all people who were berets, “of course it is.  Look at it, it looks just like a pipe.”  

“But can you smoke it?” asks some snooty art person who’s already in on the joke, to which you sheepishly hang your head, roll your eyes and admit, “Fine.  It’s not a pipe.  It’s a PAINTING of a pipe.”  And then you wait anxiously for the moment you can look smart by explaining it to someone else.

Back to our “laziness”. We realize that anything we put on a page can only be a visual REPRESENTATION of any particular child.  Photorealistic detail only underlines this fact, which is why it’s a lot easier to believe that this…

 <— Jeff

is ME, and this…

<— Some jerk.

is just plain creepy.

I suggest everyone who has ANY interest at all in comics (funny papers count) to go out and buy or check out from the library “Making Comics” by Scott McCloud.  It’ll change the way you see not just comics, but art itself!   Check out his amazing lecture on Ted.com.

…

Ponoko is a very cool service from New Zealand that takes your designs and laser cuts them on demand into a variety of materials like acrylic, felt, wood, and cardboard. I decided to try out the service with some images from public domain books available on the web to make a variety of acrylic jewelry, keychains, and hair sticks (hey, hair sticks are infinitely useful. You can poke people with them in addition to keeping your hair tied back).

I downloaded their templates for Inkscape, a free vector graphics program that creates .svg files. Then I found a public domain book called Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places by Frederick William Fairholt that had beautiful engravings of old jewelry designs, including a fascinating little Memento Mori ring that I thought would do quite nicely for Halloween.

I figured since I was paying for a full sheet of acrylic, I should probably cram it full of stuff. Plus, it gave me a chance to test the different engraving thicknesses as well as the exactness of sizing - ring sizes are precise to the millimeter, so I created three versions of the Memento Mori ring in ladies’ size 4, 5 and 6 to test. Then I added some images from L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series because I thought it would be super cool to have an Oz ornament hanging from our Christmas tree this year.

I uploaded my designs to my Ponoko account, then chose my materials  - in this case, white frosted acrylic. The interface of the Ponoko site just makes this process that much more fun. I finalized my order, then sat back to wait for the results.

I certainly wasn’t disappointed! The package showed up five days after my order was completed, and I was very very happy with what arrived - everything was exactly as I’d specified, even the mistake I made on the Oz ornament was fully intact. I quickly tried on the rings, then checked them against a sizing chart, and they were perfect. The engravings are a bit difficult to see on the material I chose, but I brushed India ink over one of the rings to “antique” it and it looks awesome.

Now my head is full of ideas for truly 3D creations, like picture frames and puzzles and lampshades. They’ve added a variety of new materials in the last week, like bamboo, and they have a GREAT blog with links to designers experimenting with laser cutters and custom manufactory.

Since I used public domain images for my designs, I made the .svg files I created available under the same (non) license, so you can download them for free at Ponoko and do whatever you like with them. If you make something with Ponoko, let me know, I’d love to see your work!