Surtex 2011 here I come!

Today marks the first day of Surtex, the biggest, funnest, and greatest art licensing show of the year! If you are in the biz, stop on by booth 321, Artists of Kolea, and check out my newest work. Fun times will be had by all!

Surtex is coming!

Surtex 2011 is just days away, and my preparations are complete! As always, Surtex is run in conjunction with the National Stationery Show, and is May 15-17 at the Javit's Center. If you're going to the show, come check out the Artists of Kolea, booth 321-323, and see my latest collections.... here's a sneak peek....

Lunchtime!

Just a little something I've been working on, which was inspired by an Illustration Friday from several weeks ago entitled "Stir".

Invitations are coming!

Hi Everyone! For the past several months (well maybe more) I've been working with a new invitation company, creating birth announcements, party invitations, wedding invitations, and everything in-between, called Look Love Send. It has been an exciting process and I've learned a lot, and had a great time using my art - and they are almost ready to go live! Our launch date is May 1st, but if you go to our website now and sign up for the mailing list, you'll get 20% off your first order... what a deal! Go now! What are you waiting for?! You can also read about the designers involved, and see whats coming soon. Yep, thats one of my baby collections thats on the splash page.

Here are a few sneak peeks of some of my baby stuff.

Reduction print

Here's the efforts from my first reduction print. The flowers look familiar (ie: see the header above, and also my last collection). This was so much fun, I'm having a really good time in the class. I'm not the greatest at it, but I'm learning a lot and having a good time. With a reduction print, one block is used, and the prints you create are a limited edition, with the one block being carved and printed with each color. For this print, I used 7 colors - a bit ambitious for my first one, but I think it turned out really cute, and using the easy-cut block was just what the name claims - it was easy!

Bird - final

I finished my first print several weeks ago, but have been busy with other things, so now I'm finally getting around to putting up my efforts here. As I mentioned before, this is a linoleum block, and when printing, I tried using one color (shown here) and 2 colors - not shown because I didn't like the way it turned out. My favorite one color attempt was much lighter than the brown shown here - it was a neutral beige, but something happened while printing and a large unattractive dark spot showed up on the paper when it dried...probably another color ink that got on the roller... too bad. The class continues and right now I'm finishing up a reduction print - my first attempt! And because I can't make anything easy for myself, it has 7 or 8 colors. Yikes. I'll post pictures when its done.

Printmaking!

I am taking a continuing education class at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and trying my hand at printmaking. Here's the first relief that I've done, carved out of linoleum, and on Friday's class I printed with it! Its a lot of fun, and my first real exposure to printmaking, outside of high school and elementary school art classes.... why didn't I take this in college?! This first print was done in black ink (oil based) and during the class I printed several more, and tried my hand at a 2 color print with this bird - one color background printed solid on the paper, and next week I'll print the 2nd color on top, of the bird and worm. I also want to try water based inks (they are supposed to clean up easier). Now I need to start thinking of what my next piece will be...hmmm....

Here's the linoleum block, ready to be printed.

First print!