ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD: DAY TWO

Is it sad that I'm impressed with myself for keeping this up for three whole days in a row?

I've visited London once for about six hours when I had a long layover at Heathrow on a trip to Italy in high school. Luckily, they let us out of the airport to do a bit of exploring. We managed to pack quite a bit of sight-seeing into one afternoon. One of the things I remember most is how interesting the pigeons looked, though. They just looked more beautiful than North American pigeons.

ILLUSTRATION OLYMPIAD

After watching hours of Olympics coverage this past weekend, I hatched a plan to create an illustration for every day of the games. Partially as motivation for finishing my London map, partially to justify the exorbitant amounts of time I am spending in front of the tv. I'm calling it the Illustration Olympiad. Here are my illustrations for Saturday and Sunday.

The cauldron lighting was one of my favourite parts of the opening ceremonies on Friday. One of the coolest cauldrons I can remember. (Second favourite—making Lord of the Rings jokes during the forging of the ring).

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

I don't follow sports one bit but boy do I love the Olympics. Not even a hideous logo and terrifying mascots can dampen my Olympic spirit. For a couple weeks every two years I am glued to my tv from the opening to the closing ceremonies. My London map has been a little slow-going as I am working on continuing my Here & There series in between freelance work but here is a little sneak peek.

I've got a good list going of places to highlight on the map but if you are a Londoner please feel free to leave any suggestions in comments!

POSITIVE INKING

Alyssa Nassner has started a new collaborative project called Positive Inking (everyone loves a good pun) that features illustrated and hand-lettered affirmations from a bunch of cool artists. This was my first contribution to the project—a hat-tip to The Brothers Vlog. I love making simple animated gifs but they usually don't look the best with my illustrations because there is such a variety of colour with the watercolours which often gets pixel-y and simplified in order to be small enough for a gif. This was a fun opportunity to bust out one out. You can follow the project on tumblr here or on twitter here. 

MILWAUKEE MAGAZINE

Here's a little spot illustration I contributed to the current issue of Milwaukee Magazine. It accompanied an article about historical homes.  Great working with art director Kathryn Lavey on this project!

The issue also features a great cover illustrated by the wonderful Mary Kate McDevitt

YIP YIP!

I seem to have been bitten by the fanart bug lately, which I am ok with. Pokémon and Arrested Development, now Avatar! This was my contribution to the Avatar edition of the Character Redesign Project on the Ten Paces and Draw blog. This awesome series has been spearheaded by the wonderful Natalie Andrewson and has included so many great themes already (Kill Bill, Wes Anderson, The Avengers, Game of Thrones, to name a few). It is pretty much an opportunity for us illustrators to nerd out about our favourite pop culture characters.   

When I saw the Avatar redesign posted, I knew I had to participate. Truth be told, I really chose Aang just so I could draw Appa and Momo. You can see the rest of the Avatar redesigns right here. And be sure to keep your eyes on the blog for future redesigns! There are some kick ass themes coming up (seriously, it was very hard not to sign up for every single one).

BLOGS & BOOKS

I've been working with Sara and Colleen, two fantastic local bloggers in Milwaukee, to brand this fun new collaborative event they've been scheming about. Blogs & Books is going to be a seasonal book club and blogger meet-up. I'm excited for the first meeting in August! You can find out more details here (and don't be shy if you're not local! They've got fun stuff planned for out of towners, too!) It was great working with you Sara and Colleen!