I woke up in the middle of the night, ran to the bathroom, and had some drive heaves....delightful. It is that season again, the season of the unidentifiable illness. Luckily I am my own Jewish grandmother. When I got home from work I made chicken soup from scratch, which as you know, is the only way to get over the ick*. Canned or from the carton has a lot of sodium and gums so this is way better. I even made the stock from scratch. Ah the wonders of modernity you can make a stock from scratch and while it is boiling away be looking up scanners on ebay and correcting illustrations in Photoshop.
At work today one of my coworkers said I was going to be an amazing Jewish grandmother...but why wait I am already crotchety and my Yiddish is as good as its going to get.
Nothing better than some adobe layout programs while languishing on the couch....oh to be young and old at the same time.
*technical term for a fish disease, but in this case it refers to illness without origin.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Here's the Skinny
Illustration Friday: Skinny.
I was thinking of all the bad illustrations that could come out of this one. People who are sickly skinny, anorexic jokes, and all things tasteless and it kinda made me want to skip this week altogether. Maybe I am just being pessimistic about some folks sensibility.
So birds it is!
Another random illustration for the Ugly Sweater. The book is done! I finished all the illustrations last night. Now comes my favorite part...sitting in front of the computer and hitting my head against InDesign until the layout and type looks good. Then off to the printer so I can send out some samples to various publishing houses for judgement.
And I finished just in time to enter in the Communication Arts Illo annual!!! I can get rejected on so many different levels. No really, I am used to this. I used to draw comic books and send out about 25 books a summer to different publishing companies. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did it anyway and the rejections got better as I did. They become longer and more positive and more personal. So really I am ready to rock the rejection.
The cool thing that happened the other day was a guy came in to the shop, saw my work, and wanted a promo card. (When someone asks for a promo card it generally means they are in the business of doing more than just wanting a print to hang on their wall.) I did not have one on me so he gave me his card and I promised to send him an email link to my website. His business card said Disney Hyperion...I nearly peed my pants.
Anyway, he wrote me this email where he said he liked my work a LOT and if/when the right project came up the other editors in charge of children's books would reach out to me.
yay
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
An ink smudge on both your houses!
I ordered a small hand held portfolio from Lulu.com today. I have no idea how it will turn out, but it was pretty cheap and could be something nice to give away to potential clients.
I could print myself, but after paper and ink costs alone I would be losing money...I am not even taking my time into account. What is hard to consider is that printing is never as easy as it seems. No matter how simple something is it always goes wrong. Its either your fault or the printers fault (in this case my Epson R2400). The classic things I forget are bleeds, spelling, image size, and type size ratio. The printer usually smudges, runs out of ink, the rollers are covered in paper dust and will not grab the paper, or there is a COMMUNICATION ERROR. One easy way to deal with human error issues is printing thumbs of your work before hand. My only issue with this is that is takes my printer 45 minutes of processing a job to accomplish this task even if I export it as a pdf. The printer issues are more complicated in usually involve a ritual dance where I bounce from foot to foot yelling obscenities at the computer while holding up the paper and yelling "see what you've done! How is this ok??" Basically, fixing the computer is on a computer-by-computer basis. For roller issues I suggest getting Epson Cleaner sheets. It does not matter if you have an Epson or not it works for any computer. The paper is sticky and acts as a lint roller to pick up paper dandruff off the rollers...much cheaper than bringing it in to get serviced.
Ok so you have overcome all these issue and now you have pages printed, yay! But wait there is more. Now you have to cut the pages down. I used to use the old exacto-ruler method...boy did I screw up a lot..which means back to the printer, yay! Now I have a very fancy paper cutter from the 70s; my beautiful Premier. It saves my fingers and poor judge of a straight line. But really the kicker is that once you have all these pages beautifully cut you have to bind them together. Perfect binding is the easiest, but it if the pages are held together tight enough then you can have glue seepage, which means the pages will stick together and your beautiful pages become gross.
Doesn't that make you want to run home and try to print a book!
Will let you all know how the Lulu experiment goes. The book was 19 dollars after tax and shipping. It is full color, saddle stitched, and 46 pages. There is also blurb, but Lulu had more layout size options.
All this work made me hungry, lunch anyone?
I could print myself, but after paper and ink costs alone I would be losing money...I am not even taking my time into account. What is hard to consider is that printing is never as easy as it seems. No matter how simple something is it always goes wrong. Its either your fault or the printers fault (in this case my Epson R2400). The classic things I forget are bleeds, spelling, image size, and type size ratio. The printer usually smudges, runs out of ink, the rollers are covered in paper dust and will not grab the paper, or there is a COMMUNICATION ERROR. One easy way to deal with human error issues is printing thumbs of your work before hand. My only issue with this is that is takes my printer 45 minutes of processing a job to accomplish this task even if I export it as a pdf. The printer issues are more complicated in usually involve a ritual dance where I bounce from foot to foot yelling obscenities at the computer while holding up the paper and yelling "see what you've done! How is this ok??" Basically, fixing the computer is on a computer-by-computer basis. For roller issues I suggest getting Epson Cleaner sheets. It does not matter if you have an Epson or not it works for any computer. The paper is sticky and acts as a lint roller to pick up paper dandruff off the rollers...much cheaper than bringing it in to get serviced.
Ok so you have overcome all these issue and now you have pages printed, yay! But wait there is more. Now you have to cut the pages down. I used to use the old exacto-ruler method...boy did I screw up a lot..which means back to the printer, yay! Now I have a very fancy paper cutter from the 70s; my beautiful Premier. It saves my fingers and poor judge of a straight line. But really the kicker is that once you have all these pages beautifully cut you have to bind them together. Perfect binding is the easiest, but it if the pages are held together tight enough then you can have glue seepage, which means the pages will stick together and your beautiful pages become gross.
Doesn't that make you want to run home and try to print a book!
Will let you all know how the Lulu experiment goes. The book was 19 dollars after tax and shipping. It is full color, saddle stitched, and 46 pages. There is also blurb, but Lulu had more layout size options.
All this work made me hungry, lunch anyone?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
soul sucking latte
I love my job, but my soul is dripping out of my ear and into someones latte.
I sent an important email today to someone important who saw my work in the shop. It made me very nervous, so much so that I kept typing a sentence and erasing it because everything sounded dumb. Basically, now that my site is up and something I feel really good about I want to let folks know so I think there are more scary emails to come. The difference is is that in this case this person wanted to see more if my work. I think if its something that comes to anything I will post about it. Right now I can't really because its just one of those pipe dreams and anytime I talk about something that is just a hope it comes to nothing.
I have decided to make this blog a little more dedicated to my thoughts as well as art now that I can direct folks to my website that will have all the art and no talk.
I am going to send an email to the writer of a blog I really admire. I wrote an email to this blogger and have it saved as a draft because I did not want to send it out until the website was up...well now is the time.
In other news my children's book is coming along slowly but surely. I am trying to get it done before the December if I can. The problem is it limits my ability to take part in things like Illustration Friday. I am going to try and fit in a couple as long as I can hopefully more than one day before they switch topics.
Onward and upward
I sent an important email today to someone important who saw my work in the shop. It made me very nervous, so much so that I kept typing a sentence and erasing it because everything sounded dumb. Basically, now that my site is up and something I feel really good about I want to let folks know so I think there are more scary emails to come. The difference is is that in this case this person wanted to see more if my work. I think if its something that comes to anything I will post about it. Right now I can't really because its just one of those pipe dreams and anytime I talk about something that is just a hope it comes to nothing.
I have decided to make this blog a little more dedicated to my thoughts as well as art now that I can direct folks to my website that will have all the art and no talk.
I am going to send an email to the writer of a blog I really admire. I wrote an email to this blogger and have it saved as a draft because I did not want to send it out until the website was up...well now is the time.
In other news my children's book is coming along slowly but surely. I am trying to get it done before the December if I can. The problem is it limits my ability to take part in things like Illustration Friday. I am going to try and fit in a couple as long as I can hopefully more than one day before they switch topics.
Onward and upward
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