Preview!

I've got this informal arrangement right now drawing chalk signs for my former place of employment, which I've been dutifully documenting each week. It's been giving me some excellent practice with handlettering, and has proved to be quite a fun little job! Until I have a chance to really put together something nice for you to look at (and I've been at this for a couple of months, so I've got a lot of photos!), here's a recent one:

(yesterday was really sunny, so the heading with the business name is washed out)

Bike Polo!

 

Hey kids! I drew this the other day (...other month?). If you're in the St Louis area on October 14, come on out, 'cause it'll be a darn good time. The movie is going to be Zombieland. Not only can you watch a crazy sport (it's kind of like if you took hockey or soccer and put everybody on bikes), you can play with us! It's super fun and we've got spare equipment for the borrowing.

ps. The main text is done in a fantastic font called Tusj.

Update (of sorts)

(photo taken by my dad)

Now that I'm all commenced and everything, I've pretty much been spending my time moving back home, re-learning how to live in one place (instead of just being on break here), and working (so that I have something to back up my fantastic plans for prints and notecards and things). Plus there's been seeing family and friends that I haven't in months, doing a wee bit of traveling (two times since New Year's Eve!)...to put it plainly, it's sort of amazing to me how little time has actually elapsed, just given how much stuff has been happening (good things, to be sure!).

The long and short of this is that I have neglected basically everything art-related, as good as my intentions not to do so have been. To explain my lack of posting (and hopefully kick myself into doing something again), I present you with the explanatory entry that you have just read!

While I am not really leaving you with any artwork of my own (other than the little bitty prints in that photo up there), I would like to point out the list of links on the right side of this blog, which will take you to the pages of a number of dear friends of mine (and one relative!—my dad, Todd. It's a different site than the one linked above, so you should check out both!). They've all been really awesome to work with over the past few years (or just awesome to know, for the ones I haven't had the pleasure of working with), and deserve your attention. Special shout outs to my critique group from last semester ("Lust for Lukewarm Flannel"), which included the fantastic likes of: Annie Wu, Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi, Emma Rochon, and Noel Hernandez (thanks for being so great!).

You should also have a look at these people who taught me lots of things: Brockett Horne, Daniel Krall, Jaime Zollars, Mary Arthur, and Rebecca Bradley.

ps. if you are reading this and feeling forgotten, please do not be sad and instead know that I decided it was a good idea to write this late at night after working an eight-hour closing shift. anything omitted or ridiculous-sounding can pretty much be blamed on that. I mean, basically what I'm saying is that you're all really cool people. Thanks for reading my li'l piece of interwebs.

Subaqueous Activity Live!

Check that out, it's up on the wall now! If you're anywhere around MICA/Baltimore, have a look—they're in the December Commencement show in the Fox Building (they'll be up until December 20). There's also a little process book underneath them that has images of all the cuts and a lot of the preliminary prints (not included here, mainly because it doesn't really look all that exciting). Neato.

Let's Have a Party Tonight

You may not know this, but puffer fish not only love throwing wild, balloon-filled parties, they are also big Wanda Jackson fans (the title of this print is in honor of that love).

ps. last print of the series (for now), hooray!

Puffers

Newest cuts, finished earlier tonight! And guess what else? They're also the last cuts of this series! And probably one of the most adorable, but I'm terribly biased since pufferfish are one of my absolute favorite animals ever (they are just so cute). An excellent way to finish out the project, in my opinion.

With any luck the finished prints will be up in the next few days, but given that I am headed homeward tomorrow night, it may take a bit longer. I've done a little bit of work with them, though, and things are looking pretty good. These ones actually lined up the best out of all of the prints so far, which I suppose makes sense since they're #4 (or numbers 7 and 8, really).

In other news, the special projects using these prints that I mentioned before are looking like they are both pretty much good to go (once I get them moving a little more) so check back for that soon too!

A Formidable Opponent

I am just a posting fiend these days.

 I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty well intimidated.

So this guy officially means that I'm 3/4 done with my planned prints, which is exciting! I have some fantastic plans for them that will be revealed once they're a little more concrete. And since I like including Fun Facts about my work: my friends advised me to look at Stephen Colbert for the expression, which prompted some confusion from others as to why "Look at Stephen Colbert" was included in our group's notes for that day's critique.

If you want to see the Octopus, Angler, and Catfish in all their real life glory (plus print #4 and mystery future project #1), they'll be hanging in the December Commencement show at MICA, which is up from December 4-20. I don't know where they'll be yet, so details to folow, I suppose.

In other exciting news, I finally quit putting off that "buy a domain" thing, and as of about fifteen minutes ago, this blog can be reached via a lovely little redirect from rosemarydavis.net.

Shrimps

For my dear cousin's band, Pinkleef. This is mostly digital, which is something I have never really totally had work out for me up to this point, but I am pretty pleased with how this went. Plus I like working with type—it's like a puzzle.

Here, fishy-fishy.

I think it would be pretty fantastic if catfish really came in neon magenta. Probably less fantastic for the catfish, unless muddy water was also neon magenta...which might also be cool. (speaking of crazy things involving catfish, ever hear of noodling? Well, uh, I guess you have now. Just trying to assist with that whole "you learn something every day" thing.)

Two cuts and a minitour*

*not to be confused with a minotaur. 

I swear, I'm getting things done. Really. Here's some proof that I'm not just hanging around doing nothing all the time:

New cuts!

It's a catfish, playing with a ball of yarn seaweed. Awww. Prints soon, just working out some color stuff as I get the next round of cuts ready.

For those who are interested to see just where it is I'm making all this stuff, here's that minitour I mentioned in the title:

 

This is my half of the studio I share with Emma Quinn. Some things to note: that big ol' pile of wood shavings is from carving the cuts above; hanging on the wall are the preliminary sketches/separations for the angler (done in pink and blue highlighter), and my extremely hi-tech and professional palette is made of taped down duralar with half a ziploc bag taped over the top. (The eyes are leftover from the last people who used the space.)

This is the corner of our studio, where I've taken over the supplied tiny table with piles of prints and wood-blocks, and where we have posted a pin-up by Gil Elvgren entitled "Pleasant to Si". It's real classy-like, and is our "INSPIRATION FOR EVERYTHING" (which is written across the top, so no one forgets).

Literary Angler III

And a finish! Apparently I'm still having that awful washed-out-image problem. Imagine that sucker real bright. I ended up having to change how I get my final prints (for now), so this is digitally registered from two hand-done prints.

Angler fish like reading too!

Even deep-sea predators like to get a little literary sometimes.

(These two are enlarged to show texture. Much like on a cereal box.)

So there are the woodcuts I've been laboring over. They were being a total pain and splintering and causing me to use so much force with each cut that I was worried for my own safety, but then I got some expert advice and now they are not only significantly less of a pain, but they're finished! This week I'll be printing them (one on top of the other...exciting transparencies and overlaps will ensue!) and then the results will be posted for all the world to see.

Extra special bonus: brush-and-ink self portrait I did in my life-drawing sketchbook. In any case, I like it. I'm usually not so hot at the brush-and-ink business, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it.

Hey there, stranger!

Long time no post. Really, really long time no post! I'm sorry to anyone checking in regularly. I'm sorry also because it may continue to be a fairly long time between posts, even though school is back in session and therefore, shouldn't I have lots and lots of things to put up? Huh, huh? Shouldn't I?

The answer is "kind of". See, this semester my classes have worked out so that I'm only taking two studio classes—life drawing and thesis. So why the high probability of a scarcity of posted work this semester? Because Studio #1 is Life Drawing, which is not so much fabulous artwork as it is super-academic practice work (which is fantastic and I love it, which is good because goodness knows I need the practice), and Studio #2 is thesis, for which I am working slowly and laboriously on some woodcuts. I'll post some progress on those every once in awhile, but each image is going to take three weeks to reach full completion (sketches to cuts to prints), so it might be some time between when I get them onto here.

In the meantime, here's a photo of some (unfolded) cards I made when I interned at Firecracker Press this summer. This the project that inspired my current thesis work (featuring more sea creatures partaking in silly activities—stay tuned for a very literary angler fish):

(If you're in the Saint Louis area at any time, go check out their store! (it is located at 2838 Cherokee Street, something I have hand-set in little lead letters many, many times now) Other than having my cards for sale, they have lots of neat stuff to look and are cool people to boot. Plus, you can get excellent Mexican food barely a hop-skip-and-a-jump away.)

Thanks for reading! Thanks for sticking with me! Come back soon, I promise it will be less of a barren wasteland of a blog!

Tacos!

Hey look, tacos! These were some spot illustrations (gouache, digital, you know the drill) done for a blog my Illustrating the Edible class designed/drew things for. I went to Taco Fiesta (the top two pictures) and El Taquito Mexicano (bottom two), which were both pretty good. The blog got written up in the Baltimore Sun, too,which was neat (and hey, I'm quoted, neato). I would also like to mention my dear friend Emma Quinn, who accompanied me on these adventures and assisted in reference-photo-taking/Mexican-food-eating/transportation.

In other news, I have returned to my native land (Saint Louis) for the summer, and the whirlwind of unpacking and packing and organizing and all of that has me with very little to post art-wise. Bear with me, I promise the pictures will return someday. Someday soon, even. I also just started interning at Firecracker Press so I will eventually have pictures of what I do there (but right now I am still learning and therefore doing a fairly limited amount of printing. I did help make around 200 buttons the other day, though, which let me tell you, feels like quite an accomplishment).


ps. If you are in Saint Louis, I have been dropping off little stacks of business cards in various locations. They feature this image . I'm making this sound much more like a treasure hunt than it really is, but sometimes these things happen.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

A new finish! Based on the Norwegian fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon. All gouache. My absolute favorite parts of this are the mountains to the right and the girl's knee where the bear's fur overlaps (in case you are curious). This scan doesn't really show it, but all that gold is actually quite shiny and sparkly.