princess abc flash cards + GIVEAWAY!

I've been working with Chronicle Books on some new Twelve Dancing Princesses themed goodies.   Wanna see??

Here they are: Princess ABC Flash Cards!  Illustrated by yours truly.

You can get them from the Chronicle Books website, 

or from Amazon (of course, everything is on Amazon).

OR 

...you can enter the GIVEAWAY to win one!!

The rules: 

• Leave your e-mail address in a comment to this post.
• I'll use an random number generator to pick a winner!
• US residents only please.  Yes I know, but these things are kinda heavy so int'l shipping is not an option...this time around, at least.  
• I'll pick a winner on October 21!
• Yayayayayayay!

The giveaway is closed!  Thank you to everyone who entered!

Let's take a look at these things!

A little info: the characters are based on my book Twelve Dancing Princesses, and artwork from my Princess Matching Game.

They come in this neat little box, so when you're not learning your ABC's you can stow them away!

They are made of heavy, cat-proof cardboard so they won't bend or rip unless you try REALLy hard!

They also have round edges so little hands won't poke them into little eyes.

Here's a few of my favorite cards!  There are 26, naturally, but it would make this post very verrrryyyyy long to post all 26 of them.

If you have the previously mentioned Princess Matching Game, you're probably having deja-vu right now.  That's because a good portion of artwork for these cards was up-cycled from the matching game. 

 Why did I use a dorky word like up-cycle?  Because a funny thing happens when you take artwork from a 2" card and blow it up to 6":  it needs to be adjusted, and spruced up, and man, does it ever look different when it's bigger!  And three years have gone by!

I had to do a lot of adjusting and composing and photoshop magic to make the old artwork useable.  Fortunately for me, I tend to keep EVERYTHING on separate layers in photoshop and label each layer meticulously, so opening up the old files was not too bad.  But it WAS still a lot of work.

Here's the king and queen from the matching game.  The biggest differences are little things: the king's medals got more refined, and so did the queen's pearls.  They looked so blobby when I resized them!  I also had to adjust her dress shape and re-do all the details in her hair.  It was like they both got make-overs!

...and then some of the cards are just entirely new artwork, like this horse draw carriage! H is for Horse drawn carriage!

R is for Princess Rose:  Princess Rose got a make-over, and like all the princesses on these cards she also got her name-sake flower put in her hand.  

J is for Jewels!  I loved working on this card.   

N is for Nighttime: I like this one a lot.  It's a friendly kinda nighttime.

Y is for Yawn:  This is straight out of the book!

M is for Marigold.  Marigold made the cover of the box.

S is for Shoes...I love this card.

And I is for Iris.  I like this one because Iris sort of looks like she's pretending her iris is a microphone.  

It was definitely a unique experience re-visiting my own artwork.  Usually you put something out there and that's it, it's done, no do-overs.  I never imagined I'd get the chance to go back and fix/tweak/refine these gals.  

Stay tuned for a winner to be announced next week!!

...and PS: did you notice that cute little black doggy on the front of the box??

That's my cute little black doggy!

Her name is Lila!

That's a little fun-fact trivia nugget for you.  

faith and lola

12x12, photoshop!

Here's a little illustration I did for Australian clothing label Faith and Lola.  Best part of this deal: they paid me in clothes.  That is like...a dream.

My inspirations for this piece were: actual faith and lola dresses, 1960's fashion illustrations, and cornflowers.  Cornflowers are beautiful and you should google image search them immediately.

a curious poppy

This is my piece for the Curiosities show opening next weekend at Gallery Nucleus!

It's my first paper cut out piece, EVER!  

Instead of using colored paper, I cut the pieces out of plain white watercolor paper and then painted it with gouache.  It allowed me to have more fun with the colors and textures, and I had the flexibility of changing colors around if I wanted to.  Which I did.  

It's sort of hard to see, since I didn't do a really good job of photographing the piece, but I used a bit of thread wrapped floral wire for the stem.  It came ready to go in that lovely yellow green color.  There are also tiny little pins holding the flower in place!  Those especially didn't photograph well, cause they're so small.  

Little tiny flower face.  To give you an idea of the size, her face is the size of a penny (because I traced one) and the whole piece is 8 x10, which is a size I barely barely ever work in.  I'm usually trying to get myself to go BIGGER since my natural tendency is to go micro-small-tiny.

Here's a shot from mid-process.  It was messy, but pretty!  

marceline vampire queen

This is my contribution to the Adventure Time Tribute at Gallery Nucleus this month!

What'd I do here?  I pretty much took Marceline (because I like her. I like female characters that are unapologetically bitchy) and made her Brigette-y.  I gave her a cute dress and a strawberry base!  And fancy red toenails and a garden of sharp pokey plants!  Why doesn't she already have one?  She loves red things. 

I had to put Tree Trunks in it too, because Tree Trunks is my favorite Adventure Time episode!  Not just because my husband and my friend boarded it together, but that doesn't hurt.  

It should be a good show.  And by a good show what I mean is, it should be a gigantic cluster f%&# of Adventure Time fandom.   The previous Adventure Time themed show at Nucleus was NUTBURGERS.  I'd never seen it so packed before!

Speaking of Nucleus, if you were hankering for a print of my Beatles piece, you can have one!!

CLICK THIS FOR BEATLES PRINT!

Meanwhile:

I'm working on illustrating a book,

teaching two classes at CalArts next year,

and my birthday is this month!

Good stuff!

rose red + snow white + 2

Yeah!  Finally!  This took me forever to finish.

I couldn't decide which idea I liked better: the girls meeting the bear, or the girls riding on his back.  So I did both.  I didn't want them to have the same color scheme though, mostly cuz I think I'd get bored painting (basically) the same thing twice.  I loved this color pallet, even though it's nonsensical.  Who cares!  It feels right, that's what matters.

This painting will be on display this July at the Wonderful World of Animation, in a fairy tale themed show.  Yay!  I love fairy tales, I can't wait to see the rest of the work.  (Their website is...well, just look at it for yourself, huh?)

I think I'm going to give both paintings a glossy finish, which I usually don't do but it seems kinda appropriate for these.  Plus I understand that it enhances the color to a degree...cool!  Make those reds really pop.  

rose red + snow white

I'm working on a bunch of paintings at once these days.  This is the first one that got finished!  It's for a show in July, and it will have a sister piece to go with it... a diptych, if you're fancy.  

Click to see it bigger!

The show is fairy tale themed.  You know I love a good, obscure fairy tale.  You know what else I love?  Flowers, and vintage clothes, and patterns.  So all those things got wrapped up into this painting.  

It's acrylic on board, by the way, and 16"x16" square.  Haven't had it framed yet but I'm thinking something wood and vintage looking.  Usually framing is my least favorite part (who knows who will end up buying it, and what they'll like), but I can't wait to see this one all ready-to-hang.

As usual, I did a butt load of sketching before leaping into the painting.  Can you believe I really haven't done much bear drawing?  I just wanted him to be really BIG with a cute face.  And a crown.  Because if you know this fairy tale, then you know he is a prince, after all.  

I like post-its for compositions.  If you hate your drawing then you can just peel them off and throw them away.  

Yeah, flowers.  I had a moment where I thought I might do teenage versions of the sisters, and make them more contemporary, but the littler versions won.  As soon as I had the idea to put them in little mod dresses it was over with.  I might, however, still put those heart-shaped sunglasses on Snow White...

More comin'!

flower heads and cake ladies

I did these sketches for what was maybe going to be a stationary set, but it didn't pan out.  What a bummer.  I hate it when that happens.  

The idea was that they would be black line art on white paper, and they would come with a little watercolor set and you could color them yourself.  

As far as the designs go, I was just having fun, really.  They are marker and pencil,sketches and they're not the best drawings, but they give you a pretty good idea.  I probably would have fancied them up with a brush pen if they it had been a go.  Brush pens are fun things. 

Things I like: flowers, fancy ladies, beautiful desserts, and the 18th century fashion.  If you couldn't tell.  

And then there was this weirdo one withe the octopus hair thrown in.  

I like markers a lot, even though my marker technique (if there is such a thing in the case of markers) is pretty 'whatever'.  

Frustrating days lately, you guys.  Really stupidly tough!!  I can't seem to get any projects off the ground, for reasons that are utterly mystifying (to me at least).  I don't wanna bitch out on my blog, because that's sort of yucky, but then again why not?  It's part of the deal when you're an artist that depends on other folks/institutions to put your work out there.  Your s#*% gets rejected sometimes!  

Anyway.  On to the next!

there is just one moon, and one golden sun

....and a smile means friendship to everyone!

This is my piece for the Gallery Nucleus It's a Small World show that opens this Saturday, September 17.  I made a diptych, which is fancy speak for "two paintings that are supposed to go together".  They're both about 10"x20" and acrylic on board.

I wanted it to capture the happy, peaceful, slightly psychedelic feeling that you get from the ride.  I have been on that ride (at Disneyland, and once at Tokyo Disneyland!) a lot of times.  Once, we got stuck inside in the same spot for about 15 minutes, which could easily be obnoxious, but there's so much amazing design to look at that it was actually nice.  Slightly hypnotic, but nice.

Messing with the colors was a lot of fun, and I actually indulged and bought new, non-bargain price paint for this project!  Well, I say "indulged" but most of my paint was pretty much dried up crust in a bottle and not usable.  Plus I've got more gallery shows coming up and I like to be prepared!...or try to be.

Classes at CalArts started today!  I'm teaching a class about making awesome portfolios (a class I wish had existed when I was there).  I'm slightly nervous, more because it's hard to get up in front of people and talk than anything else.  My first class is Friday, so I still have to time to prepare!  I'm going to practice my lecture on my dog.  We'll see how that goes.

Work work work!!

wednesday weirdos

Watching TV and doodling is a thing I like to do. It's nice to turn off your brain and draw stuff that pertains to nothing. I remember doing a great deal of that before I went to art school, and especially during school, but once I began to draw things for a living somehow drawing becomes a chore! Probably because it's very cerebral when you are doing it for a specific purpose, or person, or job. You have to think hard.

When you don't think hard, or barely at all, because you are watching Ghost Hunters (again?), so half your brian is distracted by ghost evidence, you end up with a lot of weird stuff. Here are my weirdoes!

Have a nice weekend you!

my first ever give-away!

UPDATE: A winner has been selected. Congratulations Christen Krumm! The give-away is over now, but you can still comment if ya like.

Thanks everyone who entered!

Well, I got a big box of Princess Matching Games in the mail last week. I got more than I can possibly play with alone. So I'm giving one away!!!



Here's all you need to do to enter the give-away:

1. Leave a comment. Make it something amusing, for goodness sakes. And don't forget to put your e-mail in there so I can get in touch with you if you win!
2. Wait a week. I'll be picking my winner via random number generator on February 28!

SO EASY! The matching game is not technically out yet, so you'll be getting it before ANYONE ELSE. That's really special. There's 72 pieces of matchy-match fun in that box. It also has a magnetic flap closure, which truly elevates it beyond simply a cardboard box full of cardboard bits. Really!



If it goes well, I might do a stationary give-away too. We'll seeeeeeee...

Here's some images from the matching game pieces! These are my favorites. The little black dog is my actual dog, Lila. She really sleeps on a pillow like that. She's such a princess.

The Queen

The King

Royal Dog

The Castle

Princess Lilac

Good luck!