Happy Almost-Summer!

S'more, Deconstructed

(click to enlarge)

I know that the calendar says that we have a month or so until summer officially starts, but in my mind, Memorial Day starts summer rolling. And since the Illustration Friday topic is melt, I thought I'd share this drawing from almost exactly one year ago. (See the original post here.) Have a relaxing holiday weekend!

A Box of Chocolates

(click to enlarge)

Well, I still can't get enough of linocut printing. This latest piece that I did for Valentine's Day is another reduction print, meaning that first you carve away the areas that you want to stay the paper color. After that first color is printed (the "milk chocolate" color in this piece) you carve away the areas that you want to remain the color that you just printed, and so on. Some artists even do reduction prints of twenty or more colors! One of my favorites is Sherrie York. Her website and blog show the steps in her process so beautifully. Amazing. Ok, back to my little print...

After printing the milk chocolate and dark chocolate, I "cheated" and made a separate little block for the red heart. I was going to put a border around the image, but after playing around with it, I decided that I like it as is.

I ended up with about ten prints that turned out with varying degrees of success including the one at the top of the post, from which I've made slightly larger digital prints for my Etsy shop. I love how they turned out: I can hardly tell the difference between the original block print and the reproductions!

So, along with this Christmas one, there are now two "A Box of..."

What should be next?

Notecards

I recently made a little set of notecards for a special girlfriend's birthday. She's a loyal blog visitor, and a writer of lovely notes, so I knew she'd appreciate them. I decided to focus on drawings of edibles, as she's also a wonderful cook.

It was such fun selecting the blank cards and box at my local Paper Source—I could spend hours in that shop! I printed the drawings on my inkjet printer on Canon Matte Photo Paper. (It's a great heavyweight paper, and is reasonably priced, too.) Then, I trimmed them and spray-mounted them onto 5 x 7 notecards (color: "paper bag") and they fit beautifully in a little mailer box (color: "chartreuse"). To make them look more "store-bought", I made a contents label for the back of the box in Adobe Illustrator.

Finally, I cut a vellum band to go around the box, and added a little sticker  that I made by printing one of my drawings onto Avery Clear Sticker Paper that I had lying around. (Being a former graphic designer, I love playing with the packaging details.)

While I'm not quite ready to venture into Etsy territory, I definitely had a great time putting this little package together!

Illustration Friday: Dusty

I have a busy week ahead, so I'm posting my Illustration Friday drawing early.  The topic, "dusty" really didn't appeal to me at first.  But then I started thinking about "dusty" things to eat (of course) and...