Happy Presidents Day!

Timeless Love

Just a little something I created for my agent's upcoming promo look book. She and I discussed possibly creating some kind of mother & child vignette, and this is what it became.

Finally...

I finally have a deadline that is actually manageable, and I'm finally looking at some potential free time in the near future!!

Once my current project finishes (March 1st) I'm hoping to take some time away from educational work to pursue other avenues for a bit. There is so much I want to do, and simply never enough time to do it.

I'm dreaming about finishing up the painting for my mom, making some more doodlepaintings, doing a mailing on my own, maybe starting a new artist book, gathering some story ideas for a dummy, the list goes on and on....

But until then, it's back to work for me. Here's a little spot image I cranked out the other day for a story about a haunted hotel room in Savannah.

The North Wind & The Sun

This last week was killer. Between working for the theatre Monday & Tuesday and a long doctor's appointment Wednesday, I lost three days to work. Which meant making up for it all weekend. From last Wednesday to this Tuesday night I'v been stuck in my chair, digitally painting my butt off in an attempt to meet the January 31st deadline. 

Sadly, I did not finish in time and had to work until 2am just to be able to keep the delay to one day. I think this is the only project that I was ever late on. Yes, I've had extensions before but those were made well ahead of time because I knew I'd need them.

Anyway, the project was extra challenging because not only did I hate everything about how they were coming along, the files were also MASSIVE: well over 24" wide. I was working at 33% (which equated to the final print size).  My work is not well suited to this scale (nor it seems was my computer) and it made for slow, messy going. 

Regardless, I've sent them off to National Geographic and am crossing my fingers that they will approve. I was so excited at the start of this project but it quickly turned into an experience I hope to quickly forget!

Occasionally people ask me what it's like doing educational work. My reply is that some projects are more enjoyable than others. Some pay better than others. But the over-arching, recurring challenge with edu work is its specificity.  The client gives such specific directions for what they want there is rarely much room (and never any time!) for creativity. In this instance, NatGeo provided me with compositional scribbles for each panel (shown here). 

This is even harder to deal with because the implied message is don't even bother taking the time to try something else, just do what we ask. And as easy as it might seem to turn someone else's kindergarden scribble into a functioning composition, it is actually extremely difficult. At least for me!

An American Hero

‎"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK portrait created last year for Scholastic's Famous American's Edu project.

Welcome 2012

Christmas and New Year's made for a VERY relaxing time away from the studio, and spending LOTS of time with my family made it one of the nicest holidays in years. Adam and I stayed four days at my parents house for Christmas and it felt like being a kid again. It was magical!

Even though the break allowed for many days away from my desk, I did make some time to wrap up open projects. I finally finished with the IRA (Independent Read-Alouds) Card project (shown here).

I also submitted sketches for the National Geographic edu project of The North Wind and The Sun---I haven't yet received feed back on these but I'm hoping they'll get approved.

Other than those things I worked on some personal projects including a painting for my mom (still in progress) as well as digitally archiving my family's home videos from my childhood (also still in progress).  This painting is my first ever water-soluble oil painting. In the past I've had adverse reactions to the fumes/solvents of conventional oils and have shied away from using them. But this kind hasn't made my glands swell at all and paints just like regular oil. It's awesome!

And yesterday I had the interesting and unexpected job of working as a "pick-up artist" for a fellow Tugeau 2 illustrator. (In fact, my favorite Tugeau 2 illustrator.) She was under an unmanageable time crunch and needed to hand off the project to a different illustrator for the final color. So I responded to the request and got paid (a flat fee with no commission---which means my agent didn't take a cut!) to color some charming illustrations drawn by Gaia Bordicchia. It was honestly very fun, relaxing, and helpful to understanding another artist's visual thinking (even if I was not using her exact style). In all, it was a worthwhile exercise. Deadlines can get crazy in the educational market---especially when projects get delayed and overlap with other projects. And the benefit of having an agent is that there's probably someone who can help in a worst-case scenario. I hope that I did her work justice, even though stylistically it's become a bit of a Gaia-Courtney hybrid. I'm sure it feels uneasy to pass on your sketch to another artist but I hope it helped her in the end--I do so very much admire her beautiful work.

In unrelated, non-art news, it seems my battle with the assumed Lyme-disease is likely far from over. After 4 months off of antibiotics, my symptoms have made a comeback. And while the body pain is virtually non existent compared to how it felt last year, the headaches have been hitting me pretty hard. I don't know what the future has in store but I'm hoping to work through it--for as long as it is in my power to do so. There's just no point in having a prolonged pity party about something that isn't going to go away anytime soon. My only choice is whether I want to sit on the couch in my pajamas every day wasting my life or to say FORGET THAT and get back to work. So I've chosen the latter.

I'm trying to keep my head up and continue to hope that there exists a time in future Courtney's life when Lyme disease is not a part of it...

2011: Year in Review

All in a year's work. Excited to see what 2012 will bring!

Merry Christmas from Slumberland Studio!

Christmas is coming...

It's going to be a busy week for me as I attempt to complete all my current freelance obligations before Christmas. I really want to be able to take some time off to enjoy the week between the 24th to January 2nd with my husband who will be on vacation from his job at 38 Studios.

That means completing 3 illustrations, five sketches, and one optional promo piece all within the next 8 days.

Not sure if it can be done, but I'm sure as heck going to try. Luckily I have until January 6th to wrap up this Rabbit and Coyote tale which is more than enough time for work and play.

I finished up this one today:

And this Christmas promo is on the back burner (hopefully to get picked up again on Sunday).
I may go with a different image based on how much time I have to get it done.

Bizznizz

Yesterday I spent a few hours solidifying the new font change to my website and then jumped into printing up some newly branded postcards and business cards. I really like the process of creating a visual identity for my "brand" but I find it challenging to get it right. Because I have three distinct artistic sides to myself (children's illustration, painting, and abstract doodles) it's tough to try to wrangle them all together in a way that both acknowledges these different sides and still ties them to me as a single individual. 

Business Card (front & back)

Post Card (front & back)

Now that SlumberlandStudio.com has officially become a children's illustration portfolio ONLY, I've created a second similarly branded website, CourtneyAutumnMartin.com, to show all the artistic things I do. From that site you can branch off into the two previously mentioned sites as well as DoodlePaintings.com. Here's a peek:

Rabbit & Coyote Sketches

I've had a nice, relaxing break from freelance work over the last few weeks and am looking forward to getting back into things. My next project is another educational job---this time it's four images from the Pueblo tale of Rabbit and Coyote.

They'll be printed as large cards that the teacher holds up while reading the story to first graders. I'm still waiting for approval on these but hopefully I'll hear back soon.

In the meantime, I've made some aesthetic changes to my website---new logo and stuff, and I'm hard at work on some christmas presents for my family.

Also on deck for the next few days will be some festive holiday sketches for new Tugeau2 agency promos...  

Til next time!    

HAPPY ENDING

I'm so glad to have finally finished this edu project! After two marathon days rushing to meet the deadline, I'm ready for either a relaxing break from freelance work altogether or the next project---whatever comes first is just fine with me. :)

An ArtFULL Weekend

Yesterday (Sunday, November 6th) was a pretty GREAT day, I gotta say. Not only was it the anniversary of the day Adam and I started our relationship 6 years ago, but it was also my grandmother's birthday, a day of setting the clocks back, AND a beautiful day for a trip to Amherst and Northampton!

Adam and I drove up/over to the Western Mass with my sister Brittany and her boyfriend Matt, and met up with our friend Bonnie at The Eric Carle Picture Book Museum. As always, we had our fun in the book shop but the highlight of the museum was hands down the showcase of Barbara McClintock's amazingly beautiful pen and ink drawings from 1988's now out of print The Heartaches of a French Cat.

One of the most affecting aspects of the showcase was seeing five different color variations of the spread shown below. Each of the iterations' color and value differed greatly and impacted the readability of the scene. The final artwork was clearly an improvement over the first four approaches. And although I don't have the others versions to show you, it's worth mentioning just to serve as a reminder that it's unrealistic to assume that even highly experienced and skilled illustrators get everything right in the first pass. Time for revisions, tweaking, and experimenting needs to be allotted. Practice definitely makes perfect. 

Also on exhibit was the work of Jules Feiffer. It was nice to see some of his earlier work on display including those from The Phantom Tollbooth. I'm finding it difficult to say many good things about the entire show simply because I'm rather torn about it. I get that the success of his work hinges on capturing the simplicity of the gesture. I get that there is an energetic immediacy to the way his drawings are created. I get that it must take a lot of control to appear so loose. And I like that.

That being said, I just can't seem to embrace some of his later work. His black ink line work is still going strong but his color is generally messy, ugly, and sometimes right out of the tube. The value in his black and white paintings is muddy. I feel like I'm missing some key element to appreciating his work. 

I honestly respect every human being's right to create whatever art they please, in whatever manner they please. Art rules are arbitrary and can be broken successfully any time. But what I don't quite grasp is why we revere certain pieces of art or their creators. Why we put some artwork on pedestals. Everyone likes what they like, and I'm all for that. I know what I like, though I can't always articulate WHY I like what I like. But if, on occasion, I also know what I don't like, I hope that doesn't make me a terrible person or a disrespectful artist or worse---a shallow, ignorant art critic. Because really, who am I to judge? I'm no one. I know nothing. 

I must also remind myself that I am subjectively evaluating these images out of context. I have not read all of Jules Feiffer's books and thus don't have the story to affect my encounter with the artwork alone. 

But all I keep thinking in the dark corner of my mind is that realistically, if I or any one of my classmates at RISD had brought in a final illustration that looked like this, I doubt it would have made it through the critique unscathed. And yet here it is, nicely framed and hanging on a wall in a museum, making me feel bad for not seeing the genius of it. 

Ok. On to the next part of the day! 

The Opening Reception for R. Michelson's 22nd Annual Children's Illustration in Northampton.

We were all very excited to see work by some of our favorite illustrators, and we were not disappointed.  Highlights for me included seeing the beautiful oil paintings of  Kadir Nelson and Rebecca Guay in person. 

Kadir Nelson's technique and skill is eye popping, and seeing it reproduced in his books is nothing compared to seeing the actual paintings. Oil paint just glows right of the paper. Both his bold, bright colors and more subtle, limited paletts are beautiful, as is his thin to thick application of the paint. His use of lights and darks and profile/silhouetted shapes are very effective in creating interesting compostions. 

Rebecca Guay's work is beautiful and elegant and romantic. I love the looseness of her pencil drawing that peeks through the final layers of paint. I love the glow of her whites and her color palette--particularly her use of turquoise/blues/greens. Her stylization of faces is also one of my favorite things about her. Her people are always beautiful or handsome. She is perfectly suited for the types of stories and books and art she is hired to create---there is drama, grace, fantasy, magic, mythic and fable-like qualities to all that she does.  And what she does, she does very well.

A few images from her graphic novel collaboration with Jane Yolen were on display and were some of my favorites from the evening.

My favorite piece from the entire day had to be her large oil painting of Cupid and Psyche. Photos simply can't do it justice. GORGEOUS. 

Both Rebecca and Kadir's work really makes me itch to use oil paint. In my opinion I find it easier to handle than acrylic, and there's no doubt about the richness and blend-ability of the medium. Unfortunately the type of work I do is so fast paced I'd never be able to pull it off professionally. I can start painting things in oil just for myself but in in my past experiences I've reacted with swollen throat glands when using it for long periods of time. Hmmm. 

I was hoping to see some original paintings from Tony Diterlizzi on display but was disappointed to find that only a few prints of his were hanging. Sadface! They're still great, but I want to see the real thing.

Luckily there was plenty to see besides! Here are a few snippets of the other pieces I enjoyed:

Tomie dePaola

(this is not the image I wanted to post but I can't find the right one).

Mo Willems

Jarret Krosoczka

John Bemelmans Marciano 

Wendall Minor

Scott Fischer 

Ron Mazellan

Neil Waldman 

(his hatchet cover was beautiful. Wish I had a shot of just the art.)

Ruth Sanderson

Jon J. Muth

The show was worth the 90 minute drive, and I'm glad we were able to make the trip. I feel very fortunate that such a strong illustration community is relatively close by. It's great to see people of all ages there to support these talented artists, and it was super inspiring to see their work in person. 

ART makes me HAPPY.

Also, I REALLY wish that we lived in Amherst or Northampton. It's such an awesome place! 

Sigh. Maybe someday.....