Winter Warm-up Drinks #2 and 3

Mulled Apple Cider is up on Good Good today! I think this is my favourite one so far. And I forgot to link to drink #2: Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, yum yum!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone! Whatever you are celebrating during this holiday season, I hope you are enjoying yourself and get to spend some time with the people you love. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me this past year! From helping me out with my thesis to continuing to support me and my illustrations, you have been absolutely amazing. You have helped make 2011 better than I could have imagined. I've got so many ideas for 2012 and I am looking forward to sharing them with you!

New Mini-Illustration Series

I've started a little mini-illustration series on my other blog for the month of December. Some illustrated drink recipes to warm you up as the weather gets colder. You can see my first one here!

Black Friday + Cyber Monday Coupon Codes

Got a couple of coupon codes to use in the shop this weekend!

Domestic buyers can use the code BFDOM to receive free shipping on all orders!
International buyers can use the code BFINT to receive 15% off all orders!

Discounts are valid through Monday.

Craig Thompson

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by one of my favourite graphic novelists, Craig Thompson, last Wednesday at Boswell Books on Downer with Lilly. Lilly is the one who first introduced me to his work a few years ago, urging me to read Blankets, and we totally nerded out when we saw Craig standing in line at Starbucks before the talk.

He gave a presentation about the process of creating his latest work, Habibi, which was followed by a generous Q&A session.

I love listening to other artists talking about their process. Yes, we are all working toward a final product, but it's the process we really love. Craig talked about his endless pages and pages of thumbnail sketches, showing us photos of sketchbooks he has filled. I was interested to learn that when starting a project, he immediately begins storyboarding. He will toil over these thumbnails, the sketches being almost as detailed as the final illustrations. He works to perfect details in their thumbnail stage so that by the time he has to work on final art it is just the mechanics of drawing he has to worry about.

Habibi is rich with details inspired by Islamic art and is an interesting contrast to Blankets, whose imagery is inspired by stark winters growing up in the Midwest.

He stayed to sign (and doodle in!) books after the talk. It was great getting to talk with him while watching him effortlessly personalize each book with a quick sketch. 

If you have never read anything by Craig Thompson, I highly recommend it! His beautiful pen & ink illustrations and moving stories have literally caused me to just sit and read from cover to cover in one day.

Many thanks to Boswell Book Company for hosting such a great event!

(All process images from Craig Thompson's blog.)

Website Update

Finally sat down and updated my website! Some of my more recent projects are now on the illustration page, my bio is correct and says that I've graduated, and the blog button actually links to here! Hooray for getting things done.

Scoops of San Francisco

I got the opportunity to illustrate this map and cover highlighting some of the best spots for ice creamin' in San Francisco back in July. It ran in the Style section of the Sunday July 10 issue. Having no access to the paper in Milwaukee, a friend of a friend graciously picked me up a few copies from the Chronicle's office and mailed them to me. I was over the moon when they arrived last week! There are few things I enjoy drawing more than maps and food and this illustration only increased my desire to visit San Francisco.

Feature: Design Work Life

Thank you to Courtney for featuring my maps in
her travel themed series of posts on Design Work Life!

Oh Comely

This beautiful thing arrived in my mailbox a couple of nights ago all the way from London! I'm ecstatic because this is the first sample of my published work that I have received! It was wonderful working with the lovely Laura Callaghan for this project. The entire magazine is gorgeous. Clean, simple, and beautiful design. My illustration ran with an article about a beetle enthusiast in search of the oil beetle.

TIFF Map for the Hollywood Reporter

Wow, long time no blog! I've been working on a few freelance projects over the summer that I plan on sharing over the next few weeks. Currently, I've dragged my butt to Starbucks as I will be getting internet in my new apartment on Tuesday (I know, first world problems).

It was a pleasure working with The Hollywood Reporter on this map of Toronto. The map is running with an article about the Toronto International Film Festival on newstands this week.

Inspired to Share

It was such a pleasure meeting Colleen on Gallery Night at MIAD last month. We discovered that we both blog and I quickly became a fan of her lovely blog Inspired to Share. Yesterday she featured my Here & There posters. Thanks, Colleen!

Design*Sponge

What a surreal experience and great surprise to go check Design*Sponge this morning and see my San Francisco poster on the front page! Thanks, Grace!

P.S. I swear I'm going to be posting more than "hey cool, I was on a blog!" stuff here. Just haven't had time to doodle anything worth showing this past week. Soon!

Illustrated Vancouver

Vancouver map featured on Illustrated Vancouver! Thanks Jason!

Poppytalk Lookbook

The Poppytalk Handmade Pop + Pop Art Lookbook is now available for your viewing pleasure.

Where The Lovely Things Are

Many many thanks to Mallory for featuring my work on Where The Lovely Things Are yesterday! Your sweet words made my day.

Poppytalk Feature

This month Poppytalk is featuring affordable art on their blog (morning and afternoon editions). This morning my Here & There prints were featured! Thanks Poppytalk!

Poppytalk Handmade Market

Hi everyone! (Or, just Alex at this point, I guess. Hi Alex!) I had the honour of being asked to participate in this month's Poppytalk Handmade Market for the Affordable Art & Father's Day market. You can check out my stuff as well as a whole slew of other awesomesauce folks here or click the picture in the sidebar to visit my table! Thanks Jan and Earl for having me!