Sketch Diary - monster day

Creature feature! So a little known fact about me: I like drawing creepy things. Monsters, creatures, aliens, abominations, whatever. There's a lot to be learned from drawing natural human forms and I love classical portraits but there's something freeing about losing all constraints on the imagination. Want to add an eye on it's elbow? Sure. Maybe switch the mouth and the eyes? Go for it. There are no limits. I've gotten weird looks from people sometimes and I know it can be scary for parents and caregivers out there to encourage a child's imagination when they are drawn to possibly horrifying ideas, but please encourage them anyway. I tell family and friends all the time about how glad I am that my parents let me watch imaginative, though sometimes frightening, movies and video games. I'm getting older now, so these were movies like Alien and Aliens, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal. And I was 5-7 when I saw most of these for the first time. Now, I didn't fully comprehend them until more recently, of course, but the imagery was so impactful that I continue to use these films as inspiration today. I'm not saying run out and show your child Prometheus. I just want people to think about how limiting the imagination to only soft, safe, or classical exposure doesn't have to be the only way to go. We don't have to be scared... of being scared.

Phew, did not think that was going to be so much to type. So about the actual sketches: I looooove my razor mouth dude in the upper right corner. It's very 'sandworm of Dune' inspired. Don't know what's up with the other guy on the right. I was watching The Thing at the time. And the guy on the left was going to be a real monster but turned into kind of an alien in the end.

Sketch Diary - just another pretty lady

This is a sketch from January but I'm behind a day or two on my sketch diary. I can cheat. It's my diary, after all. So this was a quicky done on the train one day that I was going into Philly for freelance work. I'm trying to get back to sketching just what I see in my head at that moment instead of thinking about it too much. 

I don't know what to title these posts. These sketches rarely get so refined that I can give the characters a name or association of any kind. But maybe I'll do that. Whip out a baby name book and just start naming these people. 

Sketch diary

A quick pencil sketch of a dancer waiting her turn. I was supposed to be doing warmup posture sketches, like 3 minutes per pose. But I didn't make it past the first pose. Ah well. Next round.

Sketch diary

Time to start a digital record of my sketches. For motivation? Indeed. But also so I can share my journey with some of the world. One of my favorite things to do when I make a new artsy friend is to browse their sketch book. It is such a raw look at a persons thought processes and I feel more connected to these friends after viewing their sketches.
So here goes. This was an attempt to get back into color pencils but... I still don't like them much. I'm too impatient at this point in my life. Watercolor and markers are much more satisfying for me.

Oh god this photo is terrible... tried taking it with my phone to see how I liked blogging from my phone. Looks like that won't be an option.

Useful Design Tools: Google Drive

'What?' You might say. 'Design tool? Google Drive doesn't have anything to do with design as we know it!'. And in a way, you'd be right. Drive has a drawing tool but I haven't found much use for it yet. And then there's all the little add-ons like Conceptboard or Mind Map but I still prefer a good ol' fashion spreadsheet most of the time.

But you want to know what I encountered? While freelancing with a very small company recently, I was bombarded by their awesome use of Drive. It was a real 'duh' moment for me. Of course! Why not use Drive to store everything! As the day went on, it started to look more and more like an asset library and I was finding myself getting more and more excited about the possibilities.

The Cloud. Que the ooh and aahs surrounding this buzz word. But seriously folks, it has the potential to be a powerful tool. In my mind, small companies and individuals stand to gain the most from these tools. Obviously one of the best things about Drive is that it's free. There's Dropbox and other tools like it but none of them have all the other features that Drive has, at least not for free. And there stands another great thing about Drive - it's a tool box.

Remember way back when it was just Google Docs and it was goofy sometimes and didn't always work as awesomely as we all might have hoped. All you could do was upload other doc or excel type formats and pray the formatted properly. Then things just kept evolving until WHAM they made it a 'drive'. Now I can create a document, spreadsheet, form, presentation, or basic drawing, the formatting actually works, add people to it for editing or viewing only, and create folders to organize all this stuff in. THEN I can add any kind of file, regardless of Drive's ability to read it (yet!) and organize that into these folders and subfolders for these same people to use.

Amazing, I know. In case you're still confused at all about the awesome power of this setup with regards to a small company or individual, let me further explain that gig I mentioned earlier. Only two of us were there, the editor and myself as the designer. It was a small newspaper style publication, about 30 pages. There were no servers, no company emails with huge file size capabilities, no giant backup drives to pull files from. I assumed the worst - going back and forth with usb's or something similar. But no, the editor began sending me all the files I would need via Gmail and Drive. It was like magic. And as I finished a round of changes for her to review, she'd make her own changes on that version for me to add in while I moved forward with other changes on other pages. It was like magic. We were a model of efficiency. And I knew that if something happened to those computers, we would have the last round of changes saved via Drive. Being a freelancer who has often worked without a backup drive, I cannot tell you how comforting that was.

I'd love to hear what other folks have to say about Drive so please leave a comment. I'm going to go dive into the forums now to see what others have to say about this so there might be some edits or second post on this later. For now, this is just my experience and understanding of Drive and how it can relate to workflow efficiency. Can't wait to use it with the next client!

with love- M

Photos: Katrina and Brian sunset photo op

Another photo post! This was a very spur of the moment shoot I did with some friends during another friends wedding. It was at a lovely country club this couple asked if I could take a photo of them together. I stood up excitedly and thought "A photo?! How about 100!" and hurried them outside to find a good spot.

I got to hand it to them. They had their poses down pretty good. I don't remember having to give any corrections to their posture or anything, which is rare. Looking back, I wish I had taken more time to adjust my settings and do some more close up shots...and I wish I had brought my tripod...and some under lighting... But hey! When it's spur of the moment, I don't like missing these wonderful opportunities for portraits.

I just hope they enjoy the photos as much as I enjoy taking them. Check the rest of the gallery out here.

with love - M

Pregnancy Photo Shoot: Nicole and The Bump

Memories...This little photo shoot was done just a month or so before my dearest friend Nicole had her first baby. It's true what they say, she really was glowing. I definitely have a fascination with how beautiful the baby bump looks on women. Hopefully I'll be luck enough to shoot her again, should the need arise ^.-

Taking these shots was so easy in some ways and so hard in others. Easy because Nikki is almost always so picture perfect, it's hard to take a bad shot of someone who smiles so genuinely. But super hard because I was stressed out she wouldn't like how she looked in the photos. Even if I thought she looked fabulous in a certain pose, it can be hard to convince pregnant women of that fact. Sometimes all we see is all that extra weight, right ladies?!



But I stand by my choice of shots. I wish I hadn't made her get up and down and walk all over the complex as much I did. I think she's forgiven me.

This is my favorite shot. Click here to go to the full album. New growth, new baby, new beginnings.


with love- M

IFTTT: So many possiblities

Old hat to some, looks like Latin to others. IFTTT. If This, Then That. Such a basic concept but so important!

I remember taking my first logic class and having my mind blown every time my teacher walked us through an especially difficult equation. Maybe I'm not the logic master she hoped I'd grow to be but I sure do appreciate the impact it can have on absolutely everything. Case and point is this wonderful project, IFTTT.

Basically, there's a trigger (if this) and an action (then that). How about a real world example. If I drop a ball from my hand, it will hit the ground and create a sound (and then bounce all over the place and make my dog go nuts). In our online universe of websites, all separate and unique, this can become a similar equation. I can tell my blog to post to google+ in it's settings menu so it knows 'if a post is published, then send a blurb to her google+ page about'. Genius, right?! But what about facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and the rest of the social network sites out there?

After a short while, I suppose folks started to realize how irritating and time consuming it is to manually post to all these different avenues of social-ness and a revolution happened! Well not really, but some smart people in San Francisco decided to create an easy to use website with equations that anyone could create and use (yes, still talking about IFTTT). They call these equations 'recipes'. Makes it easier to swallow for those of us who loathe math. Anyone can make a recipe from any of the many 'ingredients' or pieces of data (like a post url).

But the fun doesn't stop with social networking! It can use data from emails, calendars, news sites, and just about anything else with text. It's quite inspiring for me. A permanent addition to my web arsenal.

with love- M 

Blog Switch: Leaving Wordpress

And back to Blogger! I started messing around with Blogger when it first came forth years ago but at the time, Wordpress was way more appetizing. Now the tables have turned and I find myself using more and more 'google stuff'. Looking forward to some quality time here on my blogspot.

A quick update on some different compartments in my life.

1. New house in April. Very exciting but very stressful. Had to say goodbye to a beloved freelance gig because of the move.
2. Got to experience a bunch of cool (and very different) freelance gigs in Philadelphia and Wilmington since then.

And here I am trying to keep up.

Some fun illustration stuff to keep the blogging hounds at bay.

Big & Blooming - My Etsy Shop

Ring the bells, wake the dog, slap the fat lady. I have finally done it. Check out my new Etsy Shop called Big & Blooming. I'll be dedicating this shop to mostly kanzashi (that's Japanese for hairpieces) and maybe some fine art giclee prints. Also, I'd love to know what you think of my pieces. I have quite a few more pieces to upload so be sure to check back.

Wow, nice changes...

It looks like Blogger is kicking it up a notch with these templates and customization features. I was going to have the non-profit group I'm working with create a WordPress account and flikr but now that there are more options here, I might have changed my mind. Picasa has loads more free space for photos than flikr and non-profit organizations love there freebies.

In case you miss seeing my stuffs, I've been pretty regularly updating to MeredithDesign. I'll keep an eye on this account as well in case it starts looking tastier than WordPress but for now, I'm staying there.

New blog at WordPress

I've decided I like the design and configuration of the WordPress blog setup more than that of Blogger. I hope you'll follow me there!

http://meredithdesign.wordpress.com/

Photography- Kristy unicycle series

This is a quick update on some goings on. Last weekend I took some fun shots of a friend in Philly and ended up really enjoying them. I tried to pay closer attention to lighting and placement as well as the arrangement of all the lines in the background, metal poles and so on. Kristy was a great sport and I hope I'll be able to do something like this again in the near future.

In my self promotion sector I've hit a snag on getting new business cards, unfortunately. I thought I was all settled on the logo and then name of my design group and then... well you know how it goes. I'm now brainstorming once more for that perfect fit. The name above all names that fits my niche. How do you sum up a person or an entity? It's such a daunting task. The best part is that I have such an easy (I say easy but I mean easier, creating an identity should never be simple) time helping other people create their image. And yet here I am, walking into imaginary walls and clear glass doors in my head.

Moving on, I have made interesting strides in the craft area of my existence. I haven't really created anything fine art in nature but instead have turned to knitting and light sewing. There's some animal inside me that can't resist the lure of touching fabrics and yarns, evaluating them for different purposes and than creating something from that purpose. I would akin it to giving birth but I have no idea what that's like so we'll leave that alone.

Till next time, thanks for following.

Update for the New Year

We've now been cruising along in 2010 for over a month and I think it's safe to say, I feel lucky to be where I am. My situation is currently thus: One wedding package completed in October, another wedding package being worked on right now, a dvd cover and poster being finished, several personal fine art projects, final stages of setting up formal art and design team/group called Hail to the Dream, and beginning work as a part-time art teacher for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Delaware (Northern). I'm still living at home by the grace of my parents and still don't have a normal graphic design job but I'm still managing to enjoy the little things.

It's taken forever for the BG Clubs job to get started due to a change in their background-check system. Better late than never I suppose. The hardest part is sitting in front of my computer or sketching in my room day in and day out. It gets a little monotonous. I'll be grateful for the change in scenery and activity. Getting paid won't be bad either.

As for graphic design specifically, I feel a little behind if only because I've been more focused on improving myself in figure drawing and fine art color theory. I've been dabbling in all sorts of media from pastels to markers to brush pens to acrylic to watercolor to CG painting. It's been an interesting journey especially in this last month. But the design part of my has slipped into hibernation a little and I'm excited to get it back in the game with this new wedding package and another advertising package for a local non-profit group.

So keep an eye out on my deviantART account; that's where I do most of my day to day uploads of ideas and finished pieces. http://shiroimiko.deviantart.com/ Apologies about the lack of updates on here. I intend to be more active with a once a month discussion/update on this blog. It's on my calender now!

As always, thanks for following along.

Link information and trouble in paradise

Lately I have been focusing on sketching and practicing more in a different, more artsy direction than design. I resolved that instead of uploading those things I have been working here, I have kept them contained to my deviantART account here http://shiroimiko.deviantart.com/

If you're interested in following my day to day sketches and projects, please visit this site.

I should have the more recent invitations I have been working on up soon though my favorite one will have to wait until after the wedding for which it was made in October.

Though several local design groups have nibbled at me and my portfolio, unfortunately no one's biting, or are able to bite in this economy. I can only hope that as time wears on, situations for everyone will start to improve. I am still accepting freelance projects and after my website is up, I will have complete rates available. For the time being, my base rate is $25 per hour and additional costs apply for the more custom projects. Thankfully, for print services I have a local (and very well priced) printer who I have already done a fun invitation project with and will be starting another one in the next week or so.

Thank you for visiting and take care!