Fall

The Friendship Riddle

Hello, dear blog. It's been a while. I ended up with a very busy summer. But now, as it starts to cool down, my schedule has finally given me some breathing room. So I went ahead and updated emcguire.net, and these are a few of the new things you'll see there.
The Friendship Riddle was a new cover for Bloomsbury, and I was happy to team up again with Nicole Gastonguay as my art director. I also illustrated a few stories for American Girl Magazine, you can see a few images below.

And, last but not least, I've been doing my best to keep up with Inktober, the yearly drawing challenge started by Jake Parker. I've been posting these scattershot all over the internet, but mostly on Facebook and Twitter.

I've often wondered, as blogs have mostly been giving way to Tumblr and the more ephemeral nature of social media, if there is a point to having a blog anymore. I feel pretty attached to my little blog though, and I still enjoy reading illustration blogs for those who still keep them. It feels a little slower, but it's a format I think still has merit.

So thanks for reading, hope all is well.

Summer

Firewood

Finished up this piece from an earlier sketch. I'm using this image as the cover for my new portfolio too, which I'll have at LA SCBWI in early August. Hope to see you there!

Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Nantucket

My seventh Nancy Drew cover! It's finally full on sunny and summery here, I thought this image was appropriate as we head into Memorial Day weekend. Being native to Massachusetts (alas, no vestiges of my accent remain), it was neat doing a Nantucket themed cover. And, yes, I know that Brant Point lighthouse isn't that big!

Detail:

Til next time, take care.

Wedding

 Now that I'm all married, back from Hawaii, and back to studio life, I hope you'll indulge me in showing off some of the work we did for the wedding! Creating some fun art for our wedding was a big priority for me, so we tried to include some illustration at every opportunity. Starting of course, with our wedding invites.

Since we'd already done a portrait for our Save the Date, I figured the invite shouldn't just be focused on us. Our cat-plane-powered flying machine made for a nice backdrop to fit in all the wedding info we needed. It was also a slight nod to the cacti and succulents we were going to have in our centerpieces. A lot of the little banners and signs from this design were used on other materials too, like our programs, table numbers, etc.

The main design, along with some side panels for extra info, were attached to these craft paper mailers (from Paper Source) with an RSVP tucked inside.

The whole thing was sealed with a blue sticker and a Texas stamp! Many of our guests would be traveling (neither of us are Texas natives), so we wanted to get everyone a little excited about visiting the Lone Star State, without going crazy overboard with the Texas theme.

And if we hadn't bitten off enough to chew on, we thought it'd be fun to illustrate our cake topper! This was a bit rushed (finished it 2 nights before the wedding, eek), but it was nice to really collaborate with Drew on something. He designed the dragon and layout, I finished up all the girly parts. Every wedding needs one dragon, right?

 The whole thing was cut out and held up by bamboo skewers. (Thanks to Bridesmaid Elise for this great shot!)

And, at the end of the night, we sent folks home with some candy, a little magnet to show off their new-found Texas pride.

So, hopefully that wasn't too diabetic coma-inducing. I know weddings aren't everyone's thing, and I didn't expect them to be mine, either. But I had a lot of fun with it, and at the end of the day, I'm just happy to be married to Drew. Here's to years of art and love ahead-

Til next time, take care!

Save the Date

Man oh man, planning a wedding is serious business. I'm marrying Andrew Olson in like 2 weeks. Pretty crazy!

It occurred to me that I hadn't posted any of my wedding stuff online though, so hey, here's the Save the Date I designed for our wedding! I designed our invitations too, but those are another post for another day.

We printed these using GotPrint, since they had more interesting shapes to choose from. It helped them to feel slightly more custom, while not having to actually die cut anything.

Here's the final product-

There are many more illustrated materials to come. Pretty sure I spent more time illustrating stuff for the wedding than I did picking out my dress, but I'm not surprised.

Hope all are well.

Valentine

A quick extra post for this week- a valentine for Drew.

Time of the Fireflies

Time of the Fireflies

Time of the Fireflies wraparound

Here is another cover for the wonderful Kimberley Griffiths Little and her new book, The Time of the Fireflies. I previously did covers for two of her other books- When the Butterflies Came, and Circle of Secrets. Her stories always have so much lovely material to work with! This new one is out in the summer.

And some sketchbook work-

And oh yeah, I got my studio set up! Can you spot both of the cats investigating it? I love working in here.

It's been a busy winter, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Hope all are well. Take care!

-Erin

Nancy Drew + Sketchbook

Hey, look at that. It's 2014! Here's some new Nancy Drew Diaries, my 6th cover for the series. Painting a moonlit camping scene was a treat though. And without type-

Also, I scanned the last batch of sketches from the past few weeks. Many of these are on Instagram as little snippets too. My sketchbook has become a very relaxing outlet for me.

Here's to another year of making art, illustrating books, and all that other good stuff. Take care!