Just thought I would share with you some of the work I did recently for The Target Tribeca Filmmaker Lounge for the Tribeca Film Festival. You can view an overview of the project and see a gallery of great pictures of the actual space here on BizBash.

Let me hasten to point out that my client, Daphne Shirley of ShirleyGirl, was the ultimate creative force behind this event venue. And when I say “force” I mean like a force of nature! How Daphne manages to coordinate and orchestrate all the elements of an event like this and still stay enthusiastic, personable and upright is beyond me! It is always her vision and her inspiration that guides me through projects like this and my esteem for her only grows with each project we tackle together!

I am tapped out. For the last three weeks I have been pretty much chained to my computer cranking it out as fast as I possibly can, working on custom graphics for the Target Tribeca Filmmakers Lounge (for the Tribeca Film Festival) and then the Target events at the NYC Grows Garden Festival (held this past weekend). In a matter of twenty days I have designed a couple of 90 foot tent backdrops, three different birdhouse shaped craft centers, lemonade cooler covers, signage of all sorts, wallpaper, vinyl record centers, lighting gobos, a series of movie star portraits (which worked out beyond my expectations… yay me… and made up a little bit for the few things that didn’t), and a million other little things which kinda escape me right now.

It was all rush rush rush and seven days a week and ten hours a day (minimum) and now it is not. I’m battling to regain my equilibrium as I always do after a big job like this. I am in that up and down period that always follows, feeling exuberant one moment and completely lifeless, utterly drained the next. By the end of the week, I’ll be back to normal. I know that. But in the meantime I tip too far one way, then too far the other, like a drunken lumberjack trying to negotiate a log jam. Just trying to roll with it.

• For whatever reason, I just can’t do audiobooks. I’ve tried. Most of the time, they kinda creepy me out. Or make me extra fidgety.
• There is a particular reddy-pink color that appears to be hot this season (from what I’ve been able to discern via very hurried window shopping on the way to my dentist’s office*, which happens to be housed in a mall) that I am rather enamoured with. It’s a deep rosy color, sort of muted, and looks particularly fine with olive tones. I have to get me some of that. I’ve already got lipstick in that exact shade. And I’m not normally the type to be able to coordinate these things, so I ought to make an effort to capitalize on the cosmetic (and cosmic!) synchronicity.
• From my kitchen window this afternoon, as I stood over the sink simultaneously stuffing down a muffin and mixing up Finny’s lunch, I noticed that the peony bushes I planted last spring are sprouting rhurbarb colored nubbins. O, Spring! you are really and truly on your way.
• They swept the streets of my neighborhood this morning with one of those really raucous machines. I am both amazed and dazzled by the difference it makes.
• There seems to be a sudden influx of chipmunks in the park these days. I find that even more dazzling then swept streets… on par, I think, with the rhubarb hued nubbins.
• That reddish-pink color I was trying to describe earlier? It could be accurately described as rhubarb hued too.
• I’ve been compulsively doodling carrots whilst (whilst!) on the phone these days. I don’t know what I that means. I usually doodle eyes or birds. I don’t know what doodling birds means. but I’ve heard that compulsive doodling of eyes means you’re psychotic.
• I’m not. Psychotic. Or at least I don’t think so. I am a bit peckish, however.
• My Wordpress spellcheck did not recognize the word peckish so I looked it up just to be sure I spelled it right. Merriam-Webster says it is “chiefly British”. That phrase (”chiefly British”, not “peckish”) describes a good third of my life. Although, peckish might well describe another third of my life.
• My Wordpress spellcheck does not recognize “Wordpress” either, which I find odd. It doesn’t recognize “snackerel” either, but I don’t find that strange. I think I made that word up. Either me or Winnie the Pooh.
• Winnie the Pooh authored a surprising number of really good words and phrases. And yes, I know that it was actually AA Milne (and later, the good folks at Disney) that authored Pooh’s words, but I prefer to think that Pooh came up with them instead. Or perhaps Rabbit, as Rabbit is quite scholarly and capable.
• Whenever my energy flags lately, I’ve been playing the Rockford Files Theme song to revive myself. I purchased it on iTunes a couple of months ago with the intention of burning it to CD and popping it into our alarm clock so that Johnny Snacks could wake to it. Because Holy Awesome Song To Wake to Batman! But I can’t take credit for that idea. My friend Fiona came up with it years and years ago. She was so right… it does really get you going. Particularly the folksy bit with the harmonica. Seriously, give it a listen sometime when you’re feeling sluggish**. It just makes you want to stride about, pumping your arms purposefully as if you’re swinging a briefcase or something.
• an embarrassing number of songs I’ve purchased lately have been used in Apple product commercials. Just once, I’d like it to be the other way around. I like to live under the illusion that I’m a trend setter, not merely an early adopter.
• I was talking to another woman in the park the other day, another everyday regular, and I thought she said that people have been spotting long haired owls in the last couple of weeks. I just realized about 10 seconds ago that she probably said long eared owls. But I think long haired owls would be way kewl, don’t you? I like think about long haired owls. Long haired owls as drawn by S.britt. I bet S.britt could do a long haired owl justice.

* O! Just in case you were wondering, I am gingivitus free!! My gums are all pink and loverly.

** Someday I will make a compilation called “Songs for the Sluggish” and it will become a part of the Time-Life Library and I will make fortunes. I’m really good at finding songs that will thwart most episodes of sluggishness. It’s one of my most under-utilized talents.

Today, I charmed the birds out of the trees. Literally. Next step: training them how to help me get dressed in the morning and help me with household chores.

• am enjoying the rain but not so much its affects on my ‘do. Or the mild hammer of a headache it’s creating in my temples.
• am oddly excited about new community composting program and am enjoying feeling extra virtuously eco-friendly. Kudos Halton Region
• am in midst of frenetically busy work period. Holy monkey I’ve gotta pile o’ work to do. But most of it is pretty fun stuff.
• have developed an addiction to Skor bars. One which may soon require intervention.
• found a broad patch of snowdrops in the park yesterday. Spring… it’s on its way, it really is!
• bought the prettiest book of peony stamps today. Was sad to have to use one on bill payment.
• am seriously in need of a good raincoat. A yeller one, or maybe a red one.
• am sleepy and wanting a nap. But probably won’t get one any time soon.
• am behind on the domestic scene. And correspondence. And just about everything except work… sigh.
• am still aware of the toast I burnt at lunchtime hanging in the air.
• am concerned about Gingivitis. More mine than yours.
• am anticipating a spring shopping spree for much required clothing items, but have no idea when I’m gonna get around to that.
• am going to get up and walk around the house for a couple of minutes as foot has fallen asleep and is all prickly and stuff
• am wishing for you the most lovely and relaxed of weekends, full of spring sunshine and dewy good stuff.

have you ever wondered what a kid of mine would be like? Wonder no more. If I had a kid she would be exactly like the little girl who says ” a mermaid!” in this commercial. And if I had a second one? She would be exactly the one who says seahorse. yup.

Earth Hour Canadian site for information or go to the official site to register your participation

So, yeah. I’ve been sort of blah on blogging lately. I find this happens to me when I get very visually focused… the words, they evacuate. Sometimes they tip out my ear when I sleep or drop out a pant leg as I’m shuffling around, a jumble of random letters and broken up words lying on my pillow, collecting on the floor. I look at them and I think “o, pretty. Collage!” and then I sweep them into a corner where they get all wound up in a cyclone of dog hair and dust and hoovered up by Johnny Clean, the man who lives to vacumn his Saturday mornings away.

The result is, of course, that I have a major backload of stuff to tell you. Like, I am now vegetarian (well, almost, I still eat fish and seafood). And have been for nearly a year. Forgot to tell you that. And yoga, I’m big on that too. Been doing lots and lots of yoga. For more than a year. And all sorts of other miscellaneous stuff that I keep meaning to tell you, but don’t. Because the words fall down my pant leg and vanish.

But the big thing is: I have somehow found my style. The style. wow. It sort of just arrived one day a couple of weeks ago and it’s been sticking around and feeling so awfully good. It’s still shifting a bit as I work through various projects and at first I was reluctant to post about it, all superstitious that it was gonna up and vanish on me the minute I did, but no… I think I’ve found the knack. Above is the first absolutely complete illo that I’ve done in this new vein. I am working on three other illos in the same style with plans for more, more, more, but they are in various stage of completion and progress has been interrupted a tad by paying design gigs that rolled in this week.

A bit about what I mean by style: for quite sometime I’ve been looking for a way to keep my drawing up front in a way that I can take from drawing board to computer screen and back again and still have it feel fresh and spontaneous and consistent whether I’m working in traditional media or digitally. And I needed to find a way to do it with relative speed and ease. And I’ve found it, at last. It’s sort of been there all along, I just needed to recognize it and apply it with more intention than I had been doing previously. And figuring it out was mostly about just relaxing and trying to let my own way of seeing and drawing speak for itself, just be. And most importantly, stripping back to basics and not over thinking it, overwhelming the line work. Let myself do the things I do well and jettison the rest.

This is a portrait of one of the greatest influences in my life these days, my darling friend Penelope Dullaghan who has been crucial in supporting my development as an artist, encouraging me on my way, celebrating my little victories on the path and making me laugh when I have tripped and cracked my tailbone. Thank you, Pen, for being there so consistently for me, for always knowing what to say and for making my days lighter, brighter, better always.

sending powerful good thoughts to: Tara, Ali, Kate, Bob, and Louie the dog. Wishing each of you health, healing, and happiness.

Holy Monkey!!! Loobylu is updating again!!!! Did you know?! And if you did, why did you not tell me?! Now if only Miss Doxie would come back.

I myself will update soonish. No, really I will. And I promise I will not talk about the weather. Nope. I’d update right now, but I’m in in a crazy good creative phase and being all uber-productive and I don’t wanna mess with it just yet!

omg. It is snowing AGAIN. Snowing SOME MORE. Spring is never gonna come, is it? I’m trying to remember what the local groundhogs said a month ago, whether they saw they’re stinking shadows or not. Even if I could remember whether they saw their shadows or not, I can’t remember which way I’m suppose to root… do I root for shadow spotting or not? Which is the quickest path to spring like temps and bits of green?

The past three days have been the coldest of the year. This winter is becoming entirely insufferable. More snow then we’ve had in the past two years combined. And on top of that, bouts of freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing and o, how ’bout a little freezing rain? Wouldja like that? Yes?! The terrain in the park is hazardous indeed. It’s becoming so dreadfully tiresome. I’m scrambling for the silver lining in all of this and I guess it is that the most treacherous areas of the park are the areas most travelled where the ground has frozen in fearsome ruts disguised by layers of powdery snow, so Finny and I break new territory almost every day, leading us in directions we haven’t walked in literally years.

man, winter!!! it’s insufferably dull. and it’s making me over in its’ image.

I am in a completely wide open, thoroughly random mood today. Somehow this image kinda captures it. The moon walker photo (beneath my random graphics) is a photo of a photo that I snapped at the Natural History Museum during our last visit to NYC. (um, well you know, obviously I didn’t snap the original. I mean, I am many things, but an astronaut is not one of them. And my walks are far-ranging, but I have yet to stroll to the moon.)

And apropos of nothing: I have listened to Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder about 25 times today at furniture trembling volumes and, impossibly, it gets better every time I hear it. It makes me feel like I could open my mouth and swallow the Earth, which is a pretty spectacular way to feel just now. There are very few songs that make me feel like this. In fact, there is only one other song that immediately springs to mind and that is the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah as preformed by John Cale. Hallelujah also has the capacity to completely consume me in ways I can’t describe, but today my obsession is Hard Sun. I can’t decide if it is best followed by Holland by Sufjan Stevens or Panic by The Smiths.

It never fails. as soon as my thoughts start drifting and circling around art again, as soon as I start feeling that tickle of excitement and inspiration in the pit of my stomach, as soon as I turn with real earnestness to my drawing table, the space above my head opens and an unanticipated deluge of design work swamps me good.

It’s a difficult balance. Design work is pretty much my bread and butter and I enjoy it. I do. I’m never going to set the world on fire with my design prowess, I’m never going to revolutionize the industry, I’m never gonna be David Carson or Saul Bass, but I have a knack for producing reliably open, user friendly design that makes my clients happy. I am fortunate enough to have some fun, talented and connected clients that I really enjoy working with and through them, I have done projects for Target, Loreal, Olay and the like.

But I don’t get the same rush from design that I get from illustration. Design isn’t a personal process. It’s all about finding the right visual solution, interpreting someone else’s vision in a way they may not be able to do for themselves. Sometimes, I really love the end product but ultimately, it’s not about whether it’s to my own taste or not… it’s whether it communicates the clients’ desire and hits their target audience, delivers their message. I work hard at it and I am delighted when my clients are pleased and the piece I designed really delivers. It is challenging and rewarding and it certainly keeps me occupied, but not the way art and illustration do.

Design is just not as deeply personal for me as illustration, it doesn’t fill me the same way. Or torture me the same way either. Illustration demands something completely different from me. I can’t quite figure out how to explain it, other than to say that design is all about how other people think while illustration is about how I think. And feel. Illustration is much more about feeling than thinking. I tap into a whole different part of my brain when I am drawing or painting than I do when I’m designing. It’s like the difference between solving a math equation and writing a poem (although that analogy is a little weak too because again, I find the process of writing and the process of illustration/art entirely different again).

The fundamental challenge of problem solving is the same, but the route you take to get there is entirely divergent. Design is an express train straight to the target destination with clearly defined markers and clearly legible signage pointing the path whilst (whilst!) Illustration is a careless meander through the countryside, with unscheduled stops to peer into the knots of trees to spy on roosting squirrels and to look under footbridges for evidence of trolls and the Billygoats Gruff. Illustration takes naps, gets pollen and chocolate all over her clothing, takes back alleys (blind alleys too), trips and stumbles a lot and very rarely arrives on time. Design finds that sort of thing pretty much horrifying.

blah, blah, blah, blah… it’s doubtful that this makes much sense to anyone but me, but there it is. My as-per-usual long-winded way of telling you that this year I am really trying to make some real headway with my illustration career. I’ve been making noises about that for quite some time now, I know. And I have made some real forays into the back room. I have made some real progress there. Not the truly measurable kind of progress, to be sure, but things are beginning to tumble into place for me in terms of what I want to do with illustration, in terms of what works and what doesn’t. And what I’ve discovered is in order to make serious progress with my illustration, I need to stop taking it so damn seriously.

If we’re laying it all out on the table, I have to tell you that I really got my panties in a bunch about it this past fall. I flopped and floundered, threw a right wobbly and kicked over paint pots and stuff. I swore up a storm and pouted in the corner and flung myself sobbing across the bed. I spent a lot of time thinking big, v. serious, v. angsty Capital A Artistic thoughts, frowning and stroking my chin and generally carrying on as if it was The Only Thing That Mattered. Sometimes I thought for a moment that I had it by the tail, other times I was sure I had lost it forever.

And then January came a long and knocked me completely sideways and for a good 5-6 weeks there, I had not one real thought about illustration or anything to do with it. So imagine my surprise when I woke up this week to find myself doodling about and feeling quite comfortable and merry and absolutely, spectacularly friendly towards the subject. January was a horrible month for me and I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed it in any way, but one thing is for sure… it certainly righted my perspective and somehow paved the way for me to open up to the simple joy of creating again simply for the fun of it, the ease of it. And that, folks, is the essential ingredient that I lost last year with all my writhing about. In the twist and shout of trying to do Very Important Work Of Impeccable Taste, Talent and Originality (or VIWITTO), I totally smothered the one thing that keeps illustration alive for me. Joy, Simple joy.

I think I’ve got it back, at least for the moment. Joy is fluttering prettily around this room, morphing into shapes various and sundry, trailing dog hair and cookie crumbs and little silvery sparklets. And for once, I’m pretty sure it will still be here when I get finished with my unexpected pile of math problems.

* The above is a little self-portrait I did the other day for Rama Hughes’ Portrait Party. The Portrait Party is an incredibly inspired idea and if you enjoy drawing or painting on an level, I really encourage you to check it out and pass it on.

I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m not particularly looking forward to going out there this morning. It is bright and shining, but oh my word, so so frosty! With 70 km/hr wind gusts and a windchill of -29 degrees or something ridiculous. Ouch.

I’d much rather stay indoors and obsess about feng shui which is what I’ve been doing for much of the weekends. I borrowed a couple of books from the library about Chinese Feng Shui last week and I’ve mapped out the whole house. I am eternally grateful that Johnny WestGroup and I have the exact same Kua number even though we were born in different years. This means we have the same auspicious directions and makes this whole feng shui thing much easier. I think my head would have exploded by now if our auspicious directions had been different because this feng shui thing? Holy confusing Batman! But the thing that thrills me most is that even though Finny J.’s Kua number is different from ours, her directions are exactly the same! How fortuitous is that?! How often does THAT happen, that all the members of the household have the same auspicious directions?

So that’s the good news. The bad news? Those four auspicious directions are the four most neglected corners of our house. Oy! Balance must be restored forthwith!

I’m in the process of decluttering and I’ve got to say, it’s kinda painful. I’m not really a material girl, so how is it I’ve accumulated so much junk that I’m ridiculously attached to for no apparent reason? sigh. I suspect this is gonna be a long process… but already the house is starting to feel lighter, brighter, better.