sketches and sickness

Ok so I had high hopes to post new sketches and more about process. But alas sickness struck. First the flu last week, and that has now morphed into pneumonia. Oh goodie! Instead of posting sketches I want to talk about something that occurred to me during my sofa hiatus.

I have been doing illustration and design for clients for years. Not the licensing art, but for hire, draw this image for me type of work. With the slow down of the economy this work has slacked which opened the door for me to create work for licensing. I have enjoyed the large body of work created and the small fruits it has bore already. However, I find I am at a crossroads.

Since the other work slowed down, and the licensing is just picking up, I find both are at the same spot as far as need. I either have to dump time and energy back into promoting the 'Bread and Butter' work of the past, OR dump time and energy into the licensing work of the future. Both require promotion and follow-up. All my old word of mouth, steam ship promotions of past for the regular work has slowed down since everyone cut back their budgets. Now that I see a glimmer on the horizon of work picking up, I either have to start putting myself back in front of those people, or I lose them. By the same token, my fledgling licensing work needs the same love.

What to do? Can I do both? Can I promote both or do I need to choose. Licensing or Bread and Butter? I enjoy licensing, but I enjoy the immediacy of a payday from Bread and Butter clients. With my amazing luck of having pneumonia, I see that I can ponder this from my sofa for a few days.

start to finish

So I am not the world's best blogger. Not even close. I decided to do something that sounded more fun. Starting right now I am going to post sketches of a new collection I am working on, and at various intervals show how it develops. Figured it might be more interesting then me blathering on.

Here we go, I want to do a fun series of animals. I started sketching and decided I wanted them to be sort of toy like. With more angular shapes, imagine little plastic animals you might put on a cake. That is my concept.

This is one of my first sketches. I will keep posting as I make them, but for now my first page. I don't like the lion, but I really like the giraffe. Not loving lion head. I also have some possible textures I started too.