Take My Skillshare Class

Hello, hello. I'm teaching an online class at the wonderful Skillshare. You can take the class online at your own pace and it's only $20! I'll be teaching you how to color your hand made drawings/art digitally in Photoshop. More details below or on the classe page here, where you can—and should SIGN UP!

Below is the description of the class and you can learn more through Skillshare on the class page. Sign up here. It's only $20!

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Whether you are an independent artist or a designer looking to develop your illustration skills for commercial work, this class will explore several methods of scanning your sketches, paintings, and drawings to develop them further in Photoshop. 

We'll start by exploring one hand-drawn typography based work and one poster design with a central subject matter.

The Project

In this class we will create a drawing assignment of your choice (poster, typography, character design, children's book illustration, etc.) and take it from a the paper state the a finished digital form. We'll cover simple adjustment tips as well as some methods for developing full color illustrations out of your line art. This class can apply to comics, poster design, hand drawn typography projects, fine art, and commercial illustration.

Structure of the Class

This is one part art & drawing class to develop your drawing style and technique One part design and composition class And one part technical tutorial to develop and finish your art/drawing/designs digitally in Photoshop

Materials You'll Need

Scanner, computer running Photoshop (you can download a free trial at Adobe.com), paper and drawing implements of your choice

Handmade Alphabet Teaser

Something I've been working on that I'm really excited about. Hand drawn alphabet, roughly 40 hours drawing time over the course of 3 days.

Me As One of My Girls by Ramón Escolá

Back in March Ramón Escolá and I met at OFFF Cincinnati—we got along immediately. I was instantly a fan of his work and general awesome energy. Ramón is a designer, director, typographer, photographer, and all around cool-shit-maker-person. Today I got an amazing surprise in my inbox, and I'm still wearing a smile that's so big it probably reaches Ramón's studio in Barcelona.

In Ramón's words: "While I was listening to your conference in Cincinnati, you showed the DesignCollector project where you took 2 photos and made your own illustrated interpretation about them.

Then you also showed your '100 girls' personal project and talked about the fact that you liked to exaggerate the facial features…

I just thought it could be super funny to try doing the opposite process… what would it happen if you could create a 'real' girl from one of your drawings?

I wanted to make a photo portrait from were you could hypothetically have done one of your 100 girls as a realistic illustration. And then I also thought that could be even more funny if I used your own portrait as a base. Like this I could ''transform" you into one of your drawings!"

So without any further ado, here I am as one of my girls. So creepy awesome! Original unedited Ryan Essmaker (which I of course then edited to black and white, sorry Ryan)—and lastly, my pink hair girl illustration that Ramón used as reference below.

OFFF BARCELONA 2013

COME JOIN US IN BARCELONA FOR OFFF 2013!

I'll be speaking about trying to do your best to do what you love in life. If I were to name everyone I'm excited to hear speak, it would literally be everyone, so instead I'll just direct you to the schedule. See you crazy cats there!

Here we are in Cincinnati in March for OFFF On! at CAC. Hector Ayuso, OFFF founder on the left. David Mack, artist and creator of my favorite comic Kabuki and upcoming OFFF Barcelona speaker on the right. Animated GIF part of GIF ME by Multitouch Barcelona.

Work. Play. Work

The first year in my life where I'm busy to the brim, but have also literally "scheduled-in" fun time. I guess I never realized you could do that before. Life is too short to not do what you love. Life is also too short to work all the time, even if you love it. Another random collection of photos from the past little bit. Work, play, lifestream. 

"This is how New Yorkers sunbathe."

Hanging out in Orchard Beach watching the bike races. 

Prospect Park night riding.

I'm pretty in love with riding culture so far. It's amazing that you can get out of the city so easily, and cover so much more distance than I ever could just on my own 2 feet. It's been incredible getting up early on the weekends and basically feeling like you've had an entire day before most people have gotten out of bed.

The SixCycle boys destroyed the field at Orchard Beach. Really fun race to watch as you can see the entire loop of the crit. Rog took 2nd place.

Orchard Beach for the bike races this weekend.

I'm terrible at being girlie. I wear shitty jean, T-shirts and 10 year old boots 99% of the time, but every once and a while you gotta bust those leggies out. Occasion for documentation.

Drawing process of something special I'm making for friends at OFFF Barcelona where I'll be speaking in June. 

And a small dedication in the grasshopper foot. 

Invited to Monotype's Pencil to Pixel exhibition with the wonderfully talented Ryan Essmaker and Mark Weaver.  I'm not overly knowledgable about the nuances of typography. All I know is I like it, and I know when it looks good and when it doesn't. This exhibition had a treasure trove of original drawings used to mint the letterpress characters. I loved seeing all the process drawings, erased corners, whited-out serif revisions, etc. I love all the smudges behing the perfection. I also particularly loved how they adorned the entire space with type—on the glass of the window and over the walls and entries. I liked this simple self-describing statement in the window: "Set in DIdot LT Roman"

Pencil to Pixel space walls with New Jersey peeking through.

Hand drawn letterforms. Yum.

I think this 1776 1976 piece was a crowd favorite. Or at least me and Ryan's. Holy fuck, gorgeous.

A cityscape nestled in the crease of a character.

The mister somehow finds time to run a business, race bikes, keep me happy, and get tattooed. Took a little inking upstate adventure to kick off the weekend.

FITC Toronto 2013

I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have met all the amazing folks who put on this year's FITC Toronto conference, as well as the incredible panel of speakers and attendees. Once again, I'm leaving a design conference totally floored and inspired. The world is a beautiful place. A very special thank you to Shawn Pucknell, Lisa Walters, and Andrew Fraser to name only a few of the FITC superheroes. I was surrounded by ultra-smart and creative folks for 3 days straight—I can only hope that I was able to absorb some of their radiant energies. A truly interdisciplinary conference with something for everyone, I had a few favorites, mostly geared around visual creative delights. They were: James White, Hydro74, Nando Costa, Memo Akten, Dan Mall, and Anton Repponen and Irene Pereyra of F-I. 

I gave my talk about figuring out your process as you go... because that's how I figured it out, and still figure it out. I try to create a "fail-friendly" environment where I can experiment and learn from my own mistakes. You can read a summary of my talk on the FITC newsroom blog.

I pirated this photo from the FITC Flickr! Look-it, mom! It's me, on a stage!

Photo credit—from the FITC Flickr! Overlooking the event filling up.

Photo credit—from the FITC Flickr! 

I arrived and immediately set up my remote ZSO workstation in the Toronto Hilton, fully equipped with awesome Toronto views from all the way up on the 26th floor.

Another beautiful view of CN Tower at the FITC Awards show held at Atlantis Pavilions on Lake Ontario with amazing panoramic skyline views from the water.

Caught Hydro74's opening at Hashtag Gallery over on Dundas Street.

Absurdly bundled up for April taking creepy photos of myself lurking in the hotel halls...

New friend James White (aka SignalNoise) delivering one of the most awesome, high energy, high-fun talks I've ever seen, titled "Process Destroy." 

Ahh yes, and nothing better than grainy bar photos—I had to post this regardless. FITC wrap party.  A very happy me accompanied by my lazy eye, flanked by my two favs Shawn Pucknell, FITC Founder and James White, artist and illustrator extraordinaire.

Last night in Toronto, wandered around briefly and sang sonnets to the full moon, perched on top of downtown like a Christmas tree star.

And due to all the air traffic control issues as of late, hung out at the airport way too long awaiting the rescheduling of my cancelled flight back to NYC, watching raindrops bead on the tarmac. The down-time was welcome. More hours with my book and headphones before jumping right back into the grind in the ol' Man of of Hattan.

Was a pleasure Toronto... hope to be back again soon.

Flight

A quick piece. More of a warmup really. I don't really know. So here she is. Or maybe he? Is it rude to ask?

The Great Discontent

Today the wonderful Tina Essmaker and Ryan Essmaker, the power couple behind The Great Discontent have released an interview with me on their site here. It's an incredible honor for me as I've been a huge fan of their site for a long time. It's an honor to be included among those other names up there. I'm also pretty amped on the enormous 3D header image they used for the first time for my article.

I think the best part of how TGD operates—their bold, beautiful, simple design aside—actually all happens behind the scenes. They do all their interviews in person, spend time getting to know their artists, and it feels much more like hanging out. Tina, Ryan, and I enjoyed some Murray's cheese and beers in my studio and just caught up about life in Manhattan, juggling our day jobs, and striking that magical personal-work-creative balance. I felt utterly comfortable. Despite his insanely busy schedule, Ryan then came back again to my mini live-work studio to shoot photos for the interview right before trying to jet off to LA for a work trip. These 2 are superstars... I'd really keep an eye out for them and their projects to come...!

Here are a few of the other photos Ryan snapped on his visit.

ZSO-NYC 

This, That, The Other

Life is good. Fun is happening. Drawing is happening. Sleep is sometimes-mostly-usually-happening. And the meteorologists assure us that spring is about to be happening as well. Lately I've been most inspired creatively by a sense of schedule, health, and home.  My new extracurricular has been learning to ride my first road bike, a sport perfectly fitted for ex-runners who's bones hurt but need pain and endurance. A sprinkling of life photos.

The world would be a better place if we started every blog post and news story with a photo of our cats being cute.

Watched the Red Hook Crit and basically broke my brain trying to figure out how the hell these dudes make the turnarounds of this loop without brakes. 

Rog hard at work building my mini bike. Although I'm more than willing and eager to help, I still don't quite possess the know-how to do much more than sit on the couch and document.

Commencing building my hours on the bike. 16 years of being a runner, it's time to trade in my sneaks for a road bike. For the sake of my old lady joints...

Cat 3 race on the first loop. Great race to watch because it was such a short circuit we got to see them every few minutes.

SixCycle boys with worn out legs right after their race and right before they raced again in the pro 123 .

The absolutely wonderful Ryan Essmaker of The Great DIscontent came for a second studio visit to shoot some portraits for my upcoming interview. I'm pretty excited. I've been a huge fan of theirs for a long time.

A bunch of my drawings spread out on my drafting table to show TGD a little of my process.

My favorite part about nesting into my new studio has been obsessing about rugs. I've been so inspired by all the colors and patterns of antique Moroccan, Turkish, and various eastern rug styles. I feel like I could spend a lifetime learning about them. Rug weaving has to be one of the most incredible art forms of all time.

Disclaimer: Spending too much time alone at your desk can result in animated gif selfes.

Letter D

Ah yes, my personal series continue at snail pace. Letter D. I wanted it to be al about textures and pattern.