My sister, Shenandoah Davis, released her third album, Souvenirs, earlier this year. Shenandoah (or Shenni, as she is known to her family and past acquaintances of her pre-20s) asked me to create an illustration inspired by the lyrics from her album; she sent me all of the words to her songs and left me to sort through the poetry and see what image I would pull out.
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Oh boy, I have been gone for some time, haven't I? In November, our family moved to the Denver area, and in January we moved into our new, absolutely darling new home in Arvada, Colorado. I plan on staying here for a very long time. Moving sucks.
One of the most wonderful things about returning to Colorful Colorado is that I've been able to spend time with many old friends from college and earlier. One of these lovely classmates, Royce Roeswood, cohosts (with comedian and all-around neat person JD Lopez) a monthly live edition of the podcast Left Hand Right Brain. The year-old podcast is a light-hearted discussion with local creative types, and Royce asked if I would be the guest for February's live recording. I said yes! Now you can listen to me talk to other humans about art and other things.
I think that JD might regret telling me "don't feel like you are talking too much. That's what we are here for, to promote you" before recording--I just talked and talked and talked.
My friend Ben Weger emailed me a sketch of what he wanted for his King of All Creation album artwork, along with the words "I envision something very creation-y. Birds, sky, earth. I kind of see a starburst frame with a primarily sketched circular center with maybe some water color undertones and the title across the bottom in some handwritten old-school cursivey goodness? I don't know if that even translates lol..." I love emails like this because although Ben was uncertain if he had effectively communicated his vision for the artwork, the entire picture popped into my head as a finished work--all that was left to do was to actually make the artwork in real life. I started out by drawing the "creation-y" scene out in pen on paper, then scanning it to add the watercolor effects digitally in photoshop. Creating the entire image on paper would have been risky with a design like this--if the tree needed to be a different color or the sky needed to be a deeper shade of blue, I would have had to re-do the entire piece from scratch. By coloring digitally, I was able to alter hues and textures much more efficiently.
I also don't have a lot of experience with watercolor, and my experiments with the medium usually turn into brown mush-lands of trash. Photoshop watercoloring is much safer with my skill level. Admittedly, these are not entirely new. I created the drawings for this Artist Trading Card Print Pack series quite some time ago, but I only recently motivated myself to compile the drawings into a neat little set of prints. Artist trading cards are something I create often; the originals are perfect little gifts to include with thank-you cards, and because they are baseball-card-size I don't feel awkward about burdening someone with a piece of gigantic art that they might not like. Oh, thanks, it's...so great...I will allow this to take up space in my closet forever and feel obligated to never throw it away. No one wants that, and no art is for everyone.
Although normally I just draw whatever comes into my mind at the moment my pen touches the paper, many of these cards were intended for specific people or to capture an exact observation. Here are my three favorites: |