The Internet is Too Fast for Me

One week ago the winter issue of Twist Collective went live. Twist is an excellent publication. It's a hybrid of website and magazine, with articles for free and (gorgeous) knitting patterns for sale. The site was created to serve designers in particular; Twist promotes the patterns and the designers get paid for every pattern they sell. I can also personally say that the site/publication is run by some of the loveliest ladies in knitting.

Why am I talking about Twist Collective? Besides the fact that it's an all-around awesome publication, I'm in it. I am an official, paid, published illustrator.

After the issue went live, I put the original paintings for sale on Etsy. All but the cover illustration sold almost immediately! I feel incredibly happy: I've sold illustrations for publication and original paintings this week, and some more work has come out of this assignment as well. Today I am a successful illustrator, and I owe it all to the knitting community.

These are the illustrations as finished paintings. Go to Twist Collective to see them in full, published context.









After I pay for food and rent (more on the latter bit later), I'm going to give back to knitting, a little. I'm going to make this.

Sketches

I have some awesome unused sketches from the Campbell American Guitar spot. I may wind up finishing at least one of them, but for now, enjoy some penciled craziness:




Any preferences on which one I ink and/or color?

Trying to get everything you ever wanted.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do some freelance work for the Christmas Tree Shops. (Those of you who are not native New Englanders may be lost at this point, and I don't know if I can help you. CTS is a unique place and I recommend that you find and visit one. I spent my time at the art department at the central offices, where they create every graphic for every product that they manufacture.)

The freelance was a step in interviewing for a fulltime job. It's worth noting that this position is essentially my dream job: go to work, create patterns, graphics, drawings and paintings for a huge variety of products, work with trend boards and a group of artists that are young, funny, talented, and mostly RISD grads, then go home to my well-appointed Boston-area apartment and enjoy my health insurance. (I'm pretty sure that when I was younger, my dream job involved more fuzzy animals and less healthcare, but I think that's a symptom of adulthood.)

Christmas Tree Shops has put hiring for this position on the back burner for a while. It's understandable; the economy has everyone nervous. (I've lost the "why does everything happen to me?" attitude I had when I first heard this news.) In the meantime, I've redoubled my efforts to be productive in every way.

I've been spending my mornings writing letters of inquiry for jobs in the Boston area, my afternoons looking for and at apartments, and my evenings making new illustrations for fun and profit (more on that last one in the coming days).

This is all a very long way of saying three things: 1) someday soon I will be moving to the Boston-ish area (I'm looking from Waltham to Jamaica Plain. As long as it's near the T it's a possibility), 2) if you need an illustrator, I'm most likely your gal, and 3) I did some Christmas-sy pieces a while back. Check it out:




And here are a few sketch pages too, some of them with a decidedly Halloween feel:




It's been strange to write this much about my life (and this little about my illustrations) since this is a blog for my work and not a personal journal, but these are important times for me. I'm looking forward to rereading this in a year and knowing that everything worked out fine, and maybe not in the way I expected.

PS: Vote!