On the Move 2

I recently reconfigured this existing piece into a vertical format, adding a few more vehicles here and there. The original piece got me the Road Work Ahead book gig! Who knew I would love drawing vehicles this much?!

Thank you for the well wishes about Lilia. Its been interesting trying to finding time to work with a baby. I've been trying to work up some promo pieces lately and feeling a bit stagnant. Wanting to take my art to the next level, but not sure what that really means?

Food Icons

Some "grown-up" work! I illustrated these icons for Diabetic Living Magazine.

Anagrams

 Anagram spots I recently did for TIME for Kids magazine. Clockwise from upper left: Rats/Star, Pan/Nap, Paws/Swap, Desserts/Stressed.

Be Mine Patisserie

I really fell in love with the color palette I used for the Valentine ABCs that I continued to play with it and used it on other illos.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Duelin' Banjo Pig (+Singin' Chicken)

So...there is this duel thats been happening amongst a few illustrators' blogs. You may start seeing banjo pigs everywhere. It started over at Guy Francis' blog, go over and check out many other duelin' banjo pigs. Now I'm REALLY convinced us illustrators are...a unique bunch, heh. Rock on! Cluck on!

Chef Kitty is back!

(click on art for a larger view)

I first found out about this fun blog called They Draw and Cook from Roz (check out her adorable entry here). They invite artists and designers to draw/render a recipe. Since I love drawing food, I had to do this piece. Anyone can participate and submit, so go check it out! Thanks to Nate and Salli for this wonderful idea.

Chef Kitty first appeared when I made some recipe cards. With all her top secret recipes, I'm sure there is a picture book story somewhere. I also forgot how much I love illustrating and designing at the same time. I want to get more of those projects.

On another note, I want to thank Megumi for the sunshine award! Check out her adorable work here.

Gift Card design for Target

The wait is over! I was honored and humbled when I was contacted by Target a little over a year ago to design some baby gift cards for them. Definitely one of those "wow, really, you want me to design it?!" kind of jobs. And here is the one that finally made it into the stores.
There is a a bit of felt texture on the bear and clouds, which I didn't know about-its a nice touch. So if you are going to get a baby gift card, you'll surely pick this one, right? ;-)

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday...I was offline and took a nice break, traveling to see family and friends. Its time for reflection and think about goals for 2010. I'll be posting some of that. Cluck cluck!

Moving Monster-Revised

I decided to redo my moving monster piece, you can find the first attempt here. Thanks to all the feedback here and over on flickr, I was able to see what was missing. Here's what I came up with now:

Here was the "before":

Now that I look at it, The "before" looks more like a sketch. I'm glad I was willing to push it a little further, thanks to all the encouragement. I feel alot better. Whew! :-)

Moving Postcard-1st Attempt

Trying to get back in the swing of things with an attempt to come up with a moving announcement postcard. I'm finding that I'm struggling a little bit, did I leave my muse behind? This is my first attempt- fun to post here but I don't like it enough to use as a postcard. Back to the drawing board.

Fun things I'm enjoying:
*Fellow illustrator Gina Perry with a pic of her baby Miles reading The Haunted Ghoul Bus! Totally adorable facial expression while flipping through the book! Its priceless to me, thanks, Gina!

*Recently found this awesome blog about children's book design and illustration:
The Apple and the Egg

Cluck cluck!

Spring

This is my piece for our spring mailer at Illustration for Kids. I had a meeting with an art director once who told me that the problem with alot of vector illustrations isn't because its digital, but because it is usually very flat in terms of perspective. This is my attempt to take on that challenge and shake things up a bit.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year! Here is a piece I did for Time for Kids magazine. I'm celebrating by eating alot of my mom's food....she came over a few days ago to stock my fridge with lots of yummy Chinese food.
Things are busy here as I am managing work and also some wedding-related things...which is only a few short months away now. I've been hand assembling my invitations for the past few days and I can't wait to take pics and show it off here (the fruits of my hard labor!) but I will have to keep it private for now.

Anyways, I hope I will keep up with the blogging but I've been distracted with so many things going on personally....and sometimes wonder how much of it I should share here. Ever since I quit my job 3 years ago to become an illustrator full time, I've been focusing on my career. This is one of those years where I need to focus a little more on my personal life/goals. And hopefully, I can share a few things as I go along. More later!

Updating my portfolio

So I was looking at my coroflot account and my portfolio needed some serious updating. Funny how I haven't been posting much work from various jobs lately...I've been working though! Digging around my "2008 illustration jobs completed" folder, here is some art for an educational book called Kitty Breaks the Bank.

It is about a kitty who saved up money in a piggy bank and goes shopping at the mall.

She looks and looks, but couldn't find anything to buy.

She goes home in tears. But in the end, she gets a hug from her mother...and its free!

This job was the perfect match for me- I love drawing anthropomorphic animals and store scenes.

Roast Duck and Asian American Children's Books

Its MY Roast duck restaurant!

I've been wanting to do illustrations that have anthropomorphic animals in an Asian type setting for a while now. I don't see much of that in American children's books and I miss that. Usually when there are any type of Asian American children's books, its usually to teach Americans about Asian culture, so they don't use anthropomorphic animals. Its usually happy Asian children celebrating some sort of Asian holiday.

I was looking through my Japanese children's books and was so pleasantly surprised to see animals eating noodle soup with chopsticks...its just so cute and fun. I guess if it was anyone's responsibility to incorporate that in their work, its me.

Of course, I wouldn't have the evil butcher guy to the right in a children's book and give little children nightmares. Or would I!?! (insert evil laughter here)

This year's Holiday Cards!

My holiday cards finally came from the printers!

They are available at my shop!

**and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!**

More Inspiration and New friends

I would like to share with you a little 5" x 5" catalog I picked up while I was in France. Its for the company Djeco and it manufactures some amazing toys. It is the most well designed catalog I've seen in a long time!

It combines beautiful illustrations by Gwen Keraval with photos of their products. Imagine all the work involved! Here are some spreads:

And last but not least- A cluck cluck to Edrian Thomidis- who were in NYC and we got to meet and chat about illustration and design. Thank you for the lovely conversation! It was a pleasure to meet you and your husband!

Halloween Characters

If I had my own sticker line, it would look like this. Happy Halloween!

Out of the Comfort Zone

About two weeks ago, I was asked to submit a sample for a possible children's Bible storybook assignment. At first, I must admit, I wasn't quite sure about it, since I was not brought up religiously and this was something outside my comfort zone.

The publisher had a specific scene in mind for the sample and gave alot of reference. Here is the piece I did:
To my surprise, I was very comfortable! I had alot of fun doing this and learned something in the process. (It was pretty neat to see how my interpretation of Jesus would turn out.) Too bad though, I did not get the assignment. But now I'm ready for the next Bible storybook assignment when it comes my way.

So the moral of the story is, try something out of your comfort zone. You might surprise yourself.

Circus from sketch to color

I've been working on a self promotion piece. Its actually for my page in Picturebook 09. I decided that a circus theme would be fun, but I didn't realize how little I knew of the circus. I tried to jog my memories for reference but the only thing I thought of was going to see some sideshow freaks. I'll save that for later.
Hey, I'm starting to sketch on the computer! I actually did a very rough sketch, scanned it in, re-sketch this in photoshop. (I know, a bit ridiculous, but I had to start somewhere.) Still a little rough, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel where sketching digitally is possible. Cintiq here I come.
The composition was still bothering me from the sketch, but I thought I would go ahead and start on the color, and move things around a bit to my liking. And this is the final!

Think Jot Draw

This is a piece I did for a cover contest over at Think.Jot.Draw. I've had this in progress for sometime now. Initially the deadline was in October and that came and went, I never finished it. But I found out the deadline was extended till the end of the year. So head over and see what its all about and enter!

Front and back cover:

(On the left there is room for text and the UPC code.)

Little Red Riding Hood

Another mock cover I am doing. Although I wished there was some consistency with this, it was fun to do more experimenting and playing with my style. For this I worked straight on the computer, it turned out to be more vintage-like than I intended.