New Rive designs: 2nd snow day *1 New Image*

So in a classic New England turn of events, today marks the second snow day in two weeks that I've had from my office job. Last snow day I was able to lock down a good design direction for my Prague design (I'll show it eventually), and get the Turkish Thistle design to a great testing phase. Today, I've got these, all for Rive.

'he LOVES me'

No 'nots' here! A VERY pink, very girly, very whimsical design with pinks and oranges. Top two blocks of color reflect silicone cap/boot color suggestions.

'nerd glasses'

Nerd is pretty 'in' right now, so I played with the idea of Star Trek/sci-fi silver (all gray=silver) plus a vintage 3-D glasses color palette. Most of the glasses are actually relatively modern or vintage-popular, so I tried mixing the red stripes with the silver bands to make a pseudo-plaid background pattern.

'nerd glasses--old gold'

Recent addition of ochre and gold.

'mix tape love'

I guess I've got a pretty romantic theme going on right now, as my boyfriend and I just celebrated our 5 year (dating) anniversary...well, here you go. A cute/vintage punky throwback to mix tapes and journal scribbles. Cap suggestions shown at the top (sparkly silver or watermelon pop).

Current Rive Design Doodles

Was just given the green light from Rive to show some of my current workings for the super awesome chic glass water bottles. Part of my New Years' Resolution! Post more art!

This is actually a design that was finished November-December of 2010, but I LOVE it and Zebra finches are some of my favorite birds ever.

My current color edits--favoring the design on the right just a little more...I've NEVER liked cobalt and yellow/orange before, but it makes a lot of surprising SENSE in this design. Who knew?

The earlier color studies and experimentations.

So that's it for now--working on a bunch of other designs in tandem, but I'm exhausted and its a snow day so that's it for the day.

Mexico Blues

The beginning of the Mexico photos in blue-scale. These were all taken on the island of Isla Mujeres in Mexico over the past week with my Canon Rebel Xti. Plenty of more photos to come.

Isla Blanca sign on the Gulf side of the Island.

Abstract shapes in paint on cement.

Blue door to Lolo's Bakery in the early morning.

Close-up shot of the door handles to Lolo's Bakery.

Abstract view of doorstep to Lolo's bakery.

Old fence posts on the Punta Sur end of the island on the Atlantic side.

Blue and Green homes across the street in the early morning.

A Brief Look at Mexico

Proper artsy photos to be uploaded over the following days, but a fun touristy video snippit from my vacation...

Happy Holidays!

Get ready for it... New Years Resolutions!

Obviously, its not New Years yet, but I thought I'd just put in this little update with some serious resolutions, just to keep the ball rolling:

Resolutions:

• Update this blog at least twice a month, preferably once a week.
• Expand my photography and include a whole photo dump portion of the blog AND my website.
• Plan a photo-documentary trip for myself once every 2-3 months, to keep things interesting. Thus far I'd like to find my way onto a lobster fishing boat and a cranberry bogger field trip.
• Post more doodles. Also, make more doodles.
• Find TWO more storefront potential locations in other states for my coasters/saucers. I'm thinking Vermont and North Carolina.

ok, that's what I've got now. In other news...

1. Heading off to Mexico on January 1st with my family and boyfriend, so I'm also planning on creating some new tropical designs and photographs from the trip.
2. Might be featured in the RISD Alumni art magazine for my food-themed work with how2heroes and my personal plates/coasters.

Side Project: Decorative Cowhide Squares

So my next shipment of ceramic coasters is starting the slow crawl of arriving to my office (I'm getting partials orders, as they are ready). So, while that is happening I started another random side project...

Cowhides are pretty much everywhere right now, used both tastefully and not. HGTV uses them as accent "rugs" on most staged modern rooms and houses, but you can also see horrific examples of kitsch gone horribly wrong online. I had eight of these beautiful knotted, rippled wood squares ready for random projects, so I'm varnishing them and affixing some cowhide samples to the backsides (or front? depends what you like) to see what happens.

I don't usually go for a hide or skin look, but the colors and the textures of the hides (found at Ikea for $3.99/ea) are really very beautiful and subtle in their colorings. If it looks cool, awesome. If not, well then project over...

Rive LLC design reveal

Finally had the time to take some good photographs of the two awesome sample bottles that Rive LLC supplied me with. The following two designs are not absolutely final, as the designs will be altered and tweaked depending on the application method.

Above: Japanese Hybrid Design (Ocra + Eggplant) created using pen and ink, plus watercolor swatches for spot colors.

Above: Birds on branches design created using pen and ink and then vectorized in Adobe Illustrator.