More Boom in every room....

Our super swell next door neighbors Carmi and Shawn, run a stereo/home theater installment company called HomeConnections. They wanted to do a direct mail piece to introduce some new services and asked us to do it! The target consumer of the mailing piece is the bigger homes in Mission Hills KS. The more they described the client the more we thought of Madmen. Modern interiors, huge budgets. Also, women run these households, making most of the domestic decisions with money is no object....
A story started forming and we came up with four panels of different scenarios inside said household.
They were really happy results! We believe the imagery will certainly catch a possible clients eye and stand out from all the crap we get in our mailboxes!

Super Fun Family Portrait Commission

Helloooo. How are ya today? Enjoying your Saturday afternoon so far? I just had waffles and bacon so I'm swell :) I'm also really excited to share a project we finished right before Christmas that we've been too busy to share until now! It was another commission from the lovely designer Jennifer Bertrand. I should mention she is debuting an internet radio show about design and other musings. Pretty cool. She asked us to do a family portrait for her lovely friend Violet. Her husband is none other than Frank Black from the Pixies. WHAT???!!! Of course we freaked out and then said yes. Then freaked out some more. We are obviously fans of the Pixies so it was such an honor. Plus we had total creative freedom so we went to town. As we sketched and looked over pics of them we couldn't help but fall in love with their quirky/down to earth family. We tried to capture the essence of the lovely couple and there 5 awesome kids as best we could. Colin had the brilliant idea of doing a family totem so we found out what their fave animals were. We had a blast and feel so lucky to have been able to do this project.

Almost finished!

Hello! It's Friday and we have have Monday off. Thank you MLK! So there have been quite a few changes since the last post. The detail on her gown is tightened up, her hands are done, I've added a hair piece. Overall I felt like the background was too dark, so I lightened that as well. I'm excited because I'm learning so much! Acrylic is extremely forgiving. I've been all about the gouache but now I'm realizing they both have different strengths. So there. They're both special :)

so far...

ok...so painting is hard! This is a huge learning experience for me. After knowing how much time it takes to get the rich textures, distressing the surface and building the layers of different color variations, I have an all new respect for painters. I'm in the processs of adding a lot more detail to her dress, giving her hands, of course and a slew of other noodly things. I'm also changing the bottom design completely. Hopefully in  the end she will be all the client wants and more!

Where the sweet things are...

If I had a nickel for every time I got teary eyed at some youtube video or news story I'd be rich.

Any who, a buddy of mine shared this with me and I just loved it. But alas, no nickel. The bringer of tears was a Maurice Sendak interview done by NPR's Terry Gross. It's just so real. Anyone who draws for a living has heard of or is a fan of Maurice Sendak. Obviously we've been inspired by him as well. And so a fan/fellow artist Christopher Niemann takes this interview and pays homage to his hero with simple but sweet pencil line animation. What makes Maurice Sendak so special? I think it's because he gets right to heart of the youngsters human condition with a child like innocence. And for those of us who haven't lost touch with our  "inner kid", we can still relate to it as well. His unique perspective only gets richer as he ages. And as far as how vain we can all can be as we grimace at our wrinkles in the mirror...(or at least I do) Well...your right Mr. Sendak, getting older is a blessing, not a bummer.