Books!

Over the past year I had the rewarding opportunity to illustrate my first ever books with Disney and Random House! The team at Disney Publishing feels like a big family. Working with them has been amazing. These books have also allowed me to experiment with various styles which I'm grateful for.

Alice: A Matter of Time is a collaboration between myself, Olga Mosqueda, Jeff Thomas, and Rich Tuzon. Sue DiCicco did the layouts for Berry's Sweet Surprise and I did the paints!

You can find these at larger bookstores or on Amazon:

Zootopia Little Golden Book

Berry's Sweet Surprise

Alice: A Matter of Time

 

A Madeline animated movie?

I wish for an animated Madeline movie a lot! I grew up with this series and wanted to interpret it as a full-length feature. Here is a bit of what I imagine it to look like. I feel like I'm just beginning to get to the look of it, so it's kind of an ongoing project. I think a large scale Madeline film should feel like a mix of Amélie (whimsical), Coraline (quirky), and Tangled (magical) in mood... with a soundtrack by Yann Tiersen as well as lots of great accordion tunes! Now I just need to go to Paris ♪

Mock poster painting of the girls "leaving the house at half past nine"

"We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all we love each other"

"Where's Genevieve?"

And here is my grad wall! If I had more time I would have gone all-out and added vines, streetlamps, and maybe a fake gramophone. But I'm happy with the way it turned out :D

Long time no update, I'm on tumblr most of the time nowadays!
In the spirit of Halloween month, here are some witchy girl sketches~

Surfing cats

An illustration inspired by summer weather and my love of cats. I don't know how to surf, but drawing this made me wish I did!

Guess who just started watching Sailor Moon? :)
I can't believe I missed out on this show when I was a kid. I think I would've been crazy about it; even at age 4 I used to draw lots of girls in dresses and jewels.
Here's a quick illustration I did that I had floating around in my head.. I am always indecisive as to whether I prefer flat or painterly style, so I switch it up a lot. I think it doesn't matter as long as I have fun with it!

Tree

Thumbelina

Character updates

Here is a lineup of characters I designed a couple of terms ago for an Egyptian twist on the Sleeping Beauty story. I'm thinking of making the "Scorpion Queen" (aka Maleficent) more evil-looking. Working on updating some new story beats in the meantime!

And some fast sketches of reptilian pirates :D One of the heads in there is from Rango...

Rembrandt Master Copy

This blog is kind of all over the place... excuse the mess! But I just realized how I never posted one of my favorite paintings I did and wanted to share it, cause I'm super proud of it! It's a master copy of Rembrandt's "Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem". The final painting isn't that big - about 23" high - so all the little details had to be done with toothpicks. I finished it in Richard Houston's summer painting workshop a few terms ago. Oil on panel and took about 2 months!

Let's go for a ride!

A quick illustration inspired by Pascal Campion and my trip to Venice!

Catfish

This is a piece I started one day and ended up getting carried away with. I started out drawing just the sailor cat and then thought it would look cool with some cat mermaids. The composition looked too "balanced" so then I threw in jellycat too. Word play fun! I'm thinking of putting together a children's book with this theme when I get some free time :D

Girl's Best Friend

A little girl and her wolf pup!
I admit I've been neglecting this blog because I've recently gotten addicted to Tumblr :D If you've got one and would like to follow me, I'm at vivedessins.tumblr.com!

Daisies

I saw a cool hairdo on Pinterest and used it as a chance to try out some different Photoshop brushes!

Happy new year!

Car sketchin'

Some marker sketches from the 2013 Car Classic which I threw into Photoshop and fiddled with. I wish I could have drawn all the cars because there were sooo many cool ones. But I took lots of photos! The chrome DecoPod Scooter is my favorite.

Watercolor sketches

What a dead blog! I should get in the habit of updating whenever I finish a piece. Thanks to my followers for still dropping by :)

With so much digital work at school I feel like I haven't painted in ages; that's gotta change soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share some long-overdue sketches I did when I was in Venice last year. Long story short, I've never visited a place that made me want to paint 24/7 like this one does. 

The fish market that opens every morning at 6am, with seagulls surrounding the back dock waiting for scraps of fish thrown out by the vendors. The red awnings were beautiful, and it was a challenge to capture the light hitting them front and back.

 Sculpture detail from the side of the Santa Maria della Salute

The above two are the same towers done from the side and front, while the sun was beginning to set. It was right near a canal where a wedding was taking place - in gondolas!

San Rocco - did you know John Singer Sargent painted here too? Needless to say it felt very surreal to be sitting in the same spot he did, seeing what he had seen a century ago. I tried very hard to channel that same energy he has in his paintings. An impossible task, but nothing some more brush mileage can't fix!

Morning Roses

Digital life painting practice using some roses from my yard

Painting updates