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I've been working on a few private projects in my spare time.  The first is a business card I worked up for Casual Connect and other events.  I edited the typography on one of my portfolio images to work as a promotional piece with my information.  It is fantastically fun to hand out "Admit One" ticket stubs instead of business cards.  I did change my phone number for the web version, but you can still imagine what it looks like.

The other two are little side illustrations that I am working on in my spare time.  The first is really close to completion.  Most of the image is refined, I just have small objects and textures left to paint.   The second one has been slower coming along.  I've done about 6 color studies and I haven't found one that sings yet.  I'm giving it a break for the time being and focusing on work illustrations.  I'm hoping I'll have a better idea for it after I've given it some time alone.

I'm always trying to find new ways to improve my work flow, productivity and general "oh my goodness, this is so much fun that it shouldn't be called work"-ness in my daily routine. Two things I've discovered this past month, that have helped me in the art cave. 

The first discovery is Rescue Time.  It's a time management application that monitors all of the programs that I use and records the data.  It tracks how long I'm using programs or where I spend the most time on the internet.  I can group the programs into categories.  Photoshop, Painter, Thunderbird, etc get the very honorable "work" tag.  I then mark everything else as "recreational" or "waste of my very precious time". The application runs in my task bar and any time I would like, I can log in to the Rescue Time dashboard to see all the information condensed into bar graphs representing how I spent my time, daily, weekly, and monthly on the computer. It's like my own little supervisor man, with a no-nonsense expression, a white button-up collared shirt and a bad comb-over.  Perhaps he's glaring over a clip board with plentiful graphs showing how I spent entirely too much time reading RSS feeds this morning. 

If you're self-employed and work on the computer, I'm sure you can understand how useful this is. Firstly, it keeps me on a solid 40 hour week. Previously, I've been prone to workaholism because I would be unsure whether I put 40 hours in photoshop or if I had spent half of it emailing clients and marketing myself, so I'd usually do over-time on the weekends to err on the side of caution.  More importantly, I now have a very good idea how long it takes for me to create an illustration.  Knowing the actual hours spent on a piece is keeping me well informed and unbiased on how much to charge clients for the creating and revising process as well as communication.    Sure, I could keep my own hours just by watching the clock and rigidly enforcing my time on the computer, but Rescue Time makes it so much easier and takes into account all the nuances in my workday (coffee breaks ftw!). I'd seriously recommend it to anyone who is wanting to monitor and control their hours spent on the computer and who doesn't want to physically monitor it themselves.  It's been a huge help this past month with my time management.

The second improvement to my work flow this month is Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.  Oh how I wish I could write poetry because it deserves a beautiful sonnet.  I would compose in perfect rhyme about how lovely it accents my Cintiq and recognizes pen pressure with the ease of... something poetic.  I honestly don't know why I didn't try this program sooner.  I'm sure some of you are staring at me, thinking I must have been living in a rock cave with a chisel making my digital illustrations. Ok, so I should have tried it sooner, but I did try it last week.  This program's pencil tool responds so well to pen pressure and creates beautiful line widths.  I've seriously cut my sketching time in half, because I don't have to spend a lot of time cleaning up my line work.  Sure, I still go through a lot of layers until the drawing is properly refined, but it's that final line work that it has improved dramatically.  Since I've started using it, I've noticed that I'm sketching a lot more, which is always a good thing.  Below are some of the results of my feverish doodling with Sketchbook Pro.

 

 

Earlier this year, I was contacted by the lovely people at Amaranth Games to do some background art and other game assets for a time management game, Yummy Drink Factory. I was told it would be a casual game in which you play as a barista who serves drinks to various fairy tale creatures. I jumped at the chance to illustrate for them and there was probably some excited squealing too.  I love things that are quirky and cute, so I knew that it would be a treat doing the art for the game. 

I spent a few months working closely with the game designer and she gave me a lot of freedom to create some unique and colorful backgrounds.  At some point, I was even asked to draw a bowl of warts, which was oddly delightful.  I believe I sat there with a stupid grin on my face while I was drawing them. Honestly, I made them look quite tasty.

While I was smitten with drawing warts, the wonderful Claire Belton created some fantastically adorable creatures to inhabit the villages and various game assets as well. Together we managed to cram all the cute we possibly could into this game.  So I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart.  If you're diabetic, I'd avoid it, because it's awfully sweet.  

As you can imagine, I've been eagerly waiting for the game to be announced so that I could share the artwork here on the site.  The game has now officially been released over at the Amaranth Games community.  There's even a nifty one hour trial version available for download. Later this month, it will be available at some large game portals. I strongly urge my fellow gastropods fanatics to check it out.  I, in fact, challenge you to find the slug on a stick in the game.  Oh yes, there's a slug on a stick in the game.  That alone is worth the $20.  

Hello everyone! I had a few months of staring at the redesign of the site and realized it felt a little impersonal.  It needed more... Karen.  So I talked to Mr. Web Dev and he put this blog together for me.  For that, I am thankful and I will try my best to put it to good use. I plan on sharing tidbits of my process work, news of my current projects, and some photoshop goodies with all you fine people. Mostly really, I suspect it will be flooded with process work and sketches. While I'm typing up some new entries, feel free to check out the links.  I added some of my very favorite inspirational artists and friends.