either or

  

Few little sketchbook watercolor things.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas. I'm looking forward to getting some new work done and enjoying the mild Florida winter for a few weeks.

Merry Christmas Y'all

This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

Sketchbook page

Have you seen the thumbs commercial? I got to work on our pitch for the thumbs commercial, it was entertaining to say the least. Weird to see it on tv though. It's as creepy as I expected.

These are all from a project I can not talk about but I'm allowed to show some stuff. This is about 1/50th of the amount of work I did for this project, and it was all in illustrator. I learned a lot about illustrator. Anyhow, soon enough you'll probably see more of these, for now, enjoy

 

Not even an hour after this was posted on a Publisher's Weekly blog, I sold out of Penelope prints. A couple people mentioned that they were librarians, and a few asked me to send the prints to their library. Having been a librarian for 4 years, I was happy to oblige. I've put the shop on vacation though, I'm driving to Florida tomorrow and can't take all my printing/packaging stuff with me. Hope everyone has a great holiday. :)

flamenco

Reel FX had a flamenco dancer model last night at figure drawing, I like drawing big ol' poofy dresses. I tend to draw quickly and get impatient, so I drew the above pose a few times.

Towards the end of the figure drawing session, it started sleeting, and finally, snowing. They don't warn you about how surreal post-college life is. All of sudden you're in Texas and it's snowing and you're drawing a flamenco dancer. Life is pretty strange.

In other news, if you aren't done Christmas shopping, I'm selling some prints on Etsy :) If there's something of mine that you like but that isn't on there, shoot me an email. Take care!

Thai

Spring Rolls - I didn't get a picture of the one I made because I ate it :]

So, yesterday I took a Thai cooking class at Central Market in Dallas. I've always loved Thai food, and I've attempted making a few things at home but nothing ever came out great. The class was so much fun, and now I feel like I can make this stuff with more confidence.

Red Curry with duck, eggplant, tomatoes. 

This is a shot of the kitchen where we worked, this is only about half of it though. The mirrors up top were cool because we could easily watch everything that was going on.

Clockwise from upper left, two woks of pad thai, panang beef curry with homemade curry paste, tom ka gai, and the red duck curry. We also made spring rolls but like I said, I ate mine before I got a shot of it, so I had to do a watercolor in homage. And to justify posting all of this on an art blog :)

It's starting to really cool off here, and cooking always makes my apartment feel cozy.

How to fix our troubled economy...

I recommend printing a bunch of these and trying your luck.

To explain... I can finally show you something I did at work because this was cut from a commercial I worked on. 

We were doing a series of stop motion animation commercials about recycling, and so logically, me constructing tons of paper props was the best way to be environmentally friendly :) Since I think it's illegal to scan and print money, (even as a prop?), I did a cartoony one to fit the style.

The stack down there is about 1/10 of the amount of tiny fake money I made... printed... glued, bound, and then glued into stacks, and then the client decided against it, so... I know how animators feel when their shots get cut. But, at least I was left with stacks of tiny fake money to leave on co-workers' desks.

And then... cats.

My sister is getting married in June, and I've agreed to do all her wedding stationary, starting with Save the Date cards, which will feature her and her fiancee's three cats (yes seriously). I wanted it to not be crazy cat lady-esque, hopefully I succeeded. This is just what I have done on the kitties.

And, a sketchbook page/lil painting.

specificity

Emma - digital

I don't think this is quite done yet.

Sketchbookins

Also, this is why I don't get more done at home. I bring my tablet home to do some work and there is always a kitten on it. Dawwww.

After a really hectic September, involving a fender bender with an 88 year old man named Ed Butts (pictured here) I am grateful that October has been a little easier to handle. My mom and sister are visiting next weekend, which will be cool because we're going to see King Tut at the DMA. I'm flying to Orlando the following weekend to see Drew, and maybe head to Sarasota for an evening. I wish I'd been at Illest this year, but from what I've seen of pictures and heard from everyone, the show was a success and I'm proud the tradition lives on :)

Hope everyone is well!

eucalyptus

First off, here's a beetle.


Also, a little close up of a work in progress-

I haven't done much stuff for myself lately, busy with the 9-5. Work has been lots of fun though, I can't wait until the stuff is actually able to be shown to other people, we've been on some really cool projects.

Been cooking lots and playing with the kitten. Feels weird, for the first time in 16 years, having a September where I'm not in school.

engines

I finally broke down and got a kitten. 

I was trying to put off for a few months until I could properly afford it (pet deposits, vet bills etc) but there was an opportunity to save a kitten and I couldn't pass it up. Brandon Oldenburg found two kittens in a grocery store parking lot that had crawled up into a car's engine. When the driver came out he said that he'd pulled out 5 kittens earlier during the day, and was amazed that there were still two kittens in there, they had ridden in his car's engine for a few miles and survived.

Brandon couldn't keep the cats, so I offered to take one, and someone at work took the other. When I picked her up, and she was all grungy from the engine, so I gave her a bath when I got her home. This is what she looked like before her bath, but after Brandon's 5 year old daughter started decorating her. Circus kitty?

 
Anyhow, I named her Ginny, in part because I liked the name, and because of her love of engines and tight mechanical spaces. She has already climbed behind my dryer one night, and under my dishwasher yesterday, when it took Sarah and me two hours and a screwdriver to find her. Luckily she was fine, and I've since then kitten-proofed my apartment.



Hopefully I will make some new stuff soon. If anyone has good advice about shipping 13x19 prints, I am having trouble finding envelopes big enough. Trying to set up a way to sell prints. If you have used a service of some sort with great success please let me know. Thanks!

Orchidozer

Small update at www.emcguire.net

Also, I'm in the process of updating my blog so that I can finally have an RSS feed and use/be used by google reader and such. In the process of switching over my links I'm sure some obvious ones were lost along the way. Drop me a line if I've forgotten you.

Two Deities

Two Deities

I did these for the weekly challenge at the 2012 forum. 

These are a bit of a change for me, but I like how they turned out. Trying to incorporate some of the stuff I'm doing at work into my illustration stuff. I really enjoy my job at Reel FX, I feel like I'm learning a lot and trying some different methods, and they seem to treat the artists pretty well. I won't be able to show any of the work I'm doing for a while though, which is probably a good thing, I can brush up my designistrator concept art chops in the mean time.

butternut

This is actually Caran d'ache pastels on gessoed board. They're water soluble pastels and have some neat effects wet or dry. Pratt introduced us to them, I think. They were the only supplies I didn't leave at work over the weekend, and I felt like doing something to unwind.

I really like my job, and I'm slowly adjusting to the 9-6 routine. I am glad to have some good company as I adjust to Texas life. It's a state of mind, I've heard, but I'm still not sure what that state is. I thought that an entire life lived in Florida would make me heat resistant, but it was 105 today, and unlike Florida, there is no afternoon shower daily to cool things off. There isn't the sauna-like humidity as much here, but just a sense that you are slowly dying with every additional second you spend outside. I look forward to seasons.

As soon as I can afford it, I'm going to get a pet, I need a lil buddy in this echoey apartment.

dallas blues

Well, I'm moving to Dallas in a few days. I've accepted a position at Reel FX in Dallas, as a graphic design apprentice, so I am packing up and getting ready for the real life stuff. I'm pretty excited, after living in Florida for 18 years, I'm ready for a change.

Wish me luck y'all.

sprouts

Today is my mom's birthday, this is a card I made for her.


Quick gouache sketch, I'd like to add some design elements and make it more into a book cover or something.


Ha, another country living sketchbook page. There were cool clocks, I had to. I want to add some stuff to this too, the bottom feels empty.

The one redeeming quality of summer in Florida, is that there is always incentive to stay inside in the AC and catch up on reading. Sometimes it is as rewarding and interesting to read young adult books instead of the usual fiction, usually I can finish them in a day, so it's refreshing, and gives me more of an idea of what kids are into these days. Per my mom's suggestion, I just finished reading City of Ember (and the sequel, People of Sparks) which she says her 6th grade students loved. If I had read them sooner I would have included them in my thesis, since they're both a bit dystopian. The first one is being made into a movie, coming out around Christmas (with Bill Murray, yay), and I wish we'd all graduated earlier, just to have had the chance to do the concept art for this movie. Post apocalyptic underground city that's all decked out with steampunk stuff, and pipeworks and funny light fixtures for all.

Also reading Adrian Shaughnessy's How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, which you can pretty much replace "graphic designer" with "illustrator" and the advice rings true across disciplines. I think the book should have been required reading for our portfolio class, it's a much better overview of the industry than we ever got. It's a bit of an affirmation that all young designers struggle during that first 6 months after graduation, and goes into the mindset needed to be okay in this world.

So, I hope everyone is well. Make yourself a cucumber sandwich, cool off and take care.

something under my bed just sneezed

Good Golly, emcguire.net has been updated?

Yes, finally. Still needs some tweaking, but I am pretty happy with how this version came out. Let me know if there are any problems I've overlooked.

Other excitement, my sister brought home a three month old kitten that is only slightly bigger than a grapefruit and named him Dexter. Which is better than kitler, which is what his original owners were calling him because of his little white mustache. He is darling.

til next time, adieu.

minty

This is the next in the sequence of sunrise images. I wanted to do something that would force me to deal with colored light, though this is still pretty subtle.

I'm currently reading this year's Pulitzer prize winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and it's kind of written in Spanglish, so I'm trying to conjure up whatever 10th grade spanish I can remember to make sense of the thing. Next on my to-read list is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I had planned to include in my thesis, and will probably want to do a cover for if I end up liking it. The book has a pretty cool cover as it is though. For now, adieu.

belfry

I got a thing for cozy old buildings. One of the things I miss most about New England is the architecture, nothing in Florida feels like it has quite the same history or charm. If I make it to The Homeland this summer, priority #1 is taking pictures of interesting houses. 

Funny how things can end up being major influences on you, not just other artists but really your environment growing up. My mom has subscribed to Country Living for as long as I remember, and though I'm in no position to revamp a seaside cottage, that aesthetic seems to be ingrained in me (teapots!). I've been going through the old issues and drawing whatever buildings catch my eye, so expect more soonish.

NEW?!

New Layout, hope you like it. :]

heirloom

Not sure if this one is done yet, though it is fitting mayhaps that my first post-graduation piece should be a sunrise (or sunset, I suppose.) This is part one of a longer series I want to work on, this way of working is relaxing to me. 

I went to Oklahoma for a week to visit Drew's family, and on our way back to Florida, our flight out of Oklahoma city took off at about 6 in the morning, so we go to see the sun rise from thousands of feet up in the air, it was pretty crazy, the light was pure pink and the horizon had this odd mist to it. I guess normally I'm not awake in the morning to enjoy these things, but sunrise from an airplane was surprisingly beautiful.

Here's an obligatory airport drawing. :)

Now that I'm done with school, I have a lot I've been meaning to do but got pushed to the back burner during the whirlwind that is senior year/thesis/job hunt/meltdown. Now, it's nice to have the time to make some new work, redesign my website, all while going through the piles of boxes in my storage closet of a room. Not moving out over last summer meant I had a accumulated a lot of stuff, and every time I have to move out, a minimalist lifestyle always seems so appealing, especially right now. If all else doesn't work out, I'll buy a Tumbleweed House and try my luck in the mountains. 

THESIS ENDS

1984 by George Orwell
Ink on toned paper, Digital


Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Pencil drawing and Digital


Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
Pencil drawing and Digital
This book was a short, nonfiction reflection back on the predictions from Brave New World that came to fruition more quickly than expected. I used the two novels as an opportunity to do a sister cover to the first piece


The Giver by Lois Lowry
Watercolor and digital


The Children of Men by P.D. James
Ink drawings and Digital
a note- the book is absolutely nothing like the movie. Both were very well done, and took place in the same world, but the plots were very different. The book was much more of a character study of what the effects of the inability to have children had on the whole human race, instead of the action being driven by one event. I wanted to kind of show that the world was messed up, and so Trish suggested I have the kids upside down, as nothing in their world quite worked anymore.


Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
Ink drawing and digital


The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Digital
Ended up never putting type on this one, I didn't feel like it needed it.

A few people have asked me about prints. All of these are available as 13"x19" prints for $20 each, just email me or leave a message on here.

To explain, here is a summary of my artist statement-

Dystopian Literature - Negative or undesirable societies, visions of "dangerous and alienating future societies," often criticizing current trends in culture. These books describe the state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad, characterized by oppression, the effects of pollution on the environment, or any suppression of humanity
Why I picked this topic- I loved these books in high school, and wanted to create interesting covers that would reach a wider audience. The novels remain very relevant in warning against current issues in our society (for example, wire-tapping, genocide, global warming) and possible futures if we aren't mindful of ways to prevent these outcomes.

About a month into the semester I was starting to really worry about my topic, I was scared that it was too negative (for applying to Hallmark and Children's book publishers), that the books were too overwhelming, but all in all, I'm really glad I picked something I cared about, and the work didn't turn out to be too negative at all. I wanted to use this semester to create a body of work that really reflects on what kind of person I am and where my interests really lie. After doing the covers for Black Swan Green and Double Bind I felt like it was an affirmation that books are, and have been, a very important part of my life (sup librarians). I have always loved reading, as much as I love art even, and wanted to do a body of work that scratched the surface of that, and wasn't just work I knew would get me hired somewhere.

After long projects like these you always feel like there was more you could have done, but I'm pretty happy with the books I chose, and was happy to hear from some people that they'd read them and liked them as much as I had. 

To everyone who came to the show, thank you, hope you grabbed a postcard :) To the other illustration seniors, I think we had a pretty rockin show. I am really proud of our class.