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so i finished the piece i was talking about doing at the end of the last post.  essentially the theory is to have the same design on two corners on opposite sides of a square, then have two different designs inhabiting the other two corners.  so, there are three different designs in one block. i’m totally thrilled with the results.

hope ya’ll like it

After the jump is this design in 4×4 so you can check out what it completely looks like. As a disclaimer, i just realized that i didn’t really optimize these (don’t know why cuz they’re flat colors, habit i suppose) so i apologize if you experience a slight loading lag

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here’s a quick update i feel guilty for not posting. i got my fabric back from spoonflower, with the design from my last post, and i love it. next, i’m gonna upload the brown one, that’s above (but bigger) to spoonflower and see how it comes out.  Also i added a new tile pattern to you know, anyway on to my post…

So i’m walking down walnut with kathleen on saturday night, heading to continental for a quick bite before going out, and saw this amazingly tiled brownstone entrance way. It had a more challenging design, than what i put above, but they’re both based on the same theory. Plus, for a first attempt, i’m pretty happy with the results.

Essentially, i’m thinking of using the design on the left as a starting point, to try and recreate the type of patten that was on the foyer wall. First off, i need to design a tile with a center peice (haven’t figured out what that’s gonna be yet) that is integrated with the corners, which are quarters of three different designs. Two of the corners are identical while the other two aren’t, so when the tiles are put together the identical designs give the wall a diagonal flow.

i’m thinking the two identical quarters should be something that’s on the simpler side (don’t think i’m end up using the ones that are on the pic) because with the center and the other corners being a bit complex you’d have no tranquility on the wall.

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Got my order back from Spoonflower and i don’t really like it. They did a great job printing out what i ordered but, being the type that sometimes forgets to think, i uploaded the 150px version (that in print it was 1″ square) of my design M. So what came to me in the mail, that i must say was incredibly fast, looks like a jumbled mess.

So, i recreated M and uploaded the image on the left to my Spoonflower profile. One of the interesting things, about the original, is that because my image was so tiny and they printed the whole thing, including the gradients, exactly as i uploaded it, the little black stroke caused my reds to look orange. So the stroke went from black to white and from 1px to .5px, hopefully that helps with the colors. Plus, the final version, was resized to 150 dpi (which they print in) and kept at it’s original 319px square, making it’s print size 2.26 inches. I ordered swatch of this new design, i’ll let ya’ll know how it comes out.

So i got a comment from Dana and she recommend that i check out Spoonflower. I was like OK. So this morning, hungover from celebrating with my friends the night before with a slight headache, i went to the site and did it. i created an account, uploaded a few designs, and ordered M’s to be printed on a 21″ x 18″ piece of fabric. A jpg of what my fabric will look like is after the jump, when it comes in i’ll take pics and let you know more about it.

But what was really cool about all this is that, you can have the design you uploaded oriented in different ways and one of your choices it to have your design staggered. because i wasn’t sure at the time, which design i was going to buy i uploaded a few. One of them i put up, is one of my all time faves, Kathleen’s Flower Tiled. When checked out this one staggered, i was totally inspired and floored because it had never ever downed on me, in all the years i’ve been doing this, to stagger my tiled pieces. So all i had to do was tweak the original a bit and now it’s turned into a wavy border like piece.

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So not last weekend but the weekend before cassie, kevin, frank, and i went on a south philly house tour, it raises money for street cleaning in the neighborhood, and we saw a house that had wall papered just one wall behind the toilet, and it looked cool. Like, when’s the last time you saw wallpaper (we aren’t counting the stuff that you were ripping out because it had been put up about 40 years ago, all over the house, with pink roses and ribbons on it) let alone that looked good…

so i got an idea, i’m going to sorta wall paper a wall in my bathroom : ) actually what i’m going to do is print up the pic to the left (which is just my F’s Tiled colored in) on beige charcoal paper (so it has some texture) in 5×5 inch squares and paste it to the wall in front of my toliet… it won’t take up the whole space but should, hopefully, look cool.

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Finally took a photo of it…

These aren’t the best… it looks much cooler up close… here’s the original drawing and info

so my next project is…. i’m gonna try to draw stella and buddy… i tried it with my brother’s car and here’s how that never finished piece turned out…

So i totally just got done with this bad ass printmaking class at the fleischer and now all i want to do is make card board cut outs and print them…

i cut Roped Butterfly out of a piece of illustrator board and pressed it…

the edges of the embossment came out pretty crisp, my teacher suggested in the future, use watercolor paper, instead of printmaker paper. She explained to me that the fiber’s in watercolor paper was denser, so would hold more water from the bath and be able to expand more.

i’ll get back to ya’ll with more : )

So, It’s been forever since i’ve actually posted…

so here goes…

i’m still on freehand mx… i haven’t wanted to switch to illustrator yet… i can’t stand how you have to have a separate document for for each thing you do… i like having one document and it having my original and all it’s variations in one spot…

i’m taking an alternative printmaking class… that’s pretty cool…

toyed with the idea of putting together a book… it would be around 85 pages and feature my work… i kinda put it together, printed it out, proofed it but haven’t moved on from there… it’s pretty cool though seeing all you drawings displayed in a central location like that…

in short, i’m getting back into the groove of things and it’s pretty alright : )

hopefully i’ll be posting some new things today also…

i’ve found that this little freehand attribute has freed and hassled my life in equal degreess since i found it

because of it i can draw a shape and automatically see how it’s going to knot in a number of different degrees. So i have to fight the urge to not just end the piece there but to pencil and paper the mirror like i would on the computer. the beauty is that this eneviably allow for the shape to grow and the final piece to have more drama than it would if i had taken the easy route.

i do love the tool though because it makes it easier to take the peice from pencil to vector and it allows you to play with minute spacing issues that are just too cumbersome to recreate with lead.

i’ve found it’s easier to use the tool with the guides on, but then again i’m one of those that feels very safe in grids. It’s one of the reasons i’ve choosen to live in center city philadelphia for the past nine years.
though I must warn new users, that also happen to be perfectionist, that one of the things it does bring to notice is symetrical imperfection. epecially if your shape is freeform and is to be knotted together after the mirroring. Meaning you take the peice and mirror it, lets say 8 time. so that a part of each peice it being overlapped by the ones on either side of it, in preperation to knot all the peices together in order to create the final peice. On your pencil original the peice always fits together : ). But many time it’s when this overlap occurs you realize that spots might be misshapen and have to be fixed or enhanced, depending in if the uniqueness is a good or bad thing, them.

So don’t ever assume, that the original shape you drew is the one that looks best when mirrored.

I’m putting together this blog to display and talk my art plus journal the path to hopefully becoming a professional artist…

Currently i run Celebrities.com and love it, but in a few years i’d definatly like to not be 9-5ing…

So back to the blog… Specifically i’d like to discuss some of the theories behind how peices were drawn (past the mechanical) and why they look the way they do

to start with all the peices were originally drawn with pencil on graphpaper but by introducing a computer i’ve been able to add muniplations like tiled work to the fold.

This weekend i’m headed up to the Stationary Show at the Javits Center in NYC and afterwards will be busy posting new peices and adding discriptions to the existing one.

talk to ya’ll then,    missy

so let see how much i can write before it gets outta whack. This is a wonderful oppurtunity to be able to display my art and there are a few people i would like to thank because if it wasn’t for them this wouldn’t be here. First off…

My mom and Kenny, Chris for opening the flood gates, Kathleen for talking Art shop, Debbie for wanting a tattoo, Ian for giving me freehand, Mike G for buying me books, joey for telling me about the stationary show two years ago, woody for helping me with my printer, mike b for being one of my biggest supporters, and of course frank… oh where would i be without him… wouldn’t want to know : )