Red-winged Blackbird

There are a handful of local birds in Wisconsin that mean a lot to me. Some remind me of memories, some of feelings or emotions..and some as a reminder of where I come from.

This is the Red-winged Blackbird. A feisty little creature that I always see throughout the summertime months. I more often see them when I drive up north to my parent's house, where I grew up. When I see these birds, I'm reminded of my childhood home.

I have also been witness to many fights between Red-winged blackbirds and crows. When crows get too close to their nests, the blackbirds nose dive and peck away at them, working in teams to scare the invaders off.

Similar to this, there is a story about these birds that my Mother told me. She was riding home from school one day on her bike. After she passed under a tree, a pair of blackbirds flew out and pecked at her, essentially chasing her all the way home. Although this was probably a scary experience for her, the story always makes me giggle.

Baby Stegosaurus

Some weekend illustration fun! Dinosaurs are awesome.

Illustration Promotional Mailer

As a freelance illustrator, this is something I've been meaning to do for quite some time. The online resources for promos seem very limited so I hope that my post will help out someone in the future. This was also a learning experience for me as well... so bare this in mind.

In my envelopes, I included the following: An art postcard, a business card, a self addressed postcard(stamped) and a short letter explaining why I am contacting the art director.

An important aspect of my mailers is the stamped, self addressed postcard. This would essentially be something that the art director would fill out and mail back to me. Hopefully with comments or feedback of any kind. I got this idea from reading Laura Wood's post here. Please give it a look, she also has a lot of valuable information concerning promo mailers. On the postcard it reads the following with check boxes:

-I like your illustrations!
-Please send me a full portfolio
-I'll keep your samples on file.
-Please send me new samples periodically.
-Unfortunately your samples are not appropriate for our current needs.
Underneath is a small section and lines for comments. If this is something you would be interested in doing, be sure to apply stamps on the postcards addressed to you. This makes it easier for the Art Director and will hopefully make them more opt to reply.

For those curious to see the front and back of my art postcard, I posted a screenshot.

Front of postcard:

Back of postcard:

What have I learned from this experience? SET DEADLINES. I originally started the art for the postcard itself back in July. I worked at it on and off and took a long break around the holidays. Higher priorities came up and this project sort of took a back burner for a while. I will say however that when I got around to writing down addresses and sealing the envelopes... it felt GREAT! Even if I don't get any responses with the self addressed postcards, this was still a wonderful experience and I look forward to doing it again later in 2014!

NOTES: I printed the postcards at Gotprint ...ordered some address labels from Overnight Prints ...and got the envelopes from Action Envelope. I chose theses websites for quality and cost reasons and would highly recommend all three to anyone wanting to sent out promo mailers.

Princess Twlight Sparkle

I drew Princess Twilight Sparkle for funsies. Maybe someday I'll stop drawing ponies and get serious... probably not.

Salutations Promo

The story of Charlotte's Web is very dear to me and I decided to create a promo postcard of it! This illustration took me a bit longer to finish as I had fallen in and out of love for it several times since July. But finally it is done! 

Sailor Moon Weekend

I did some Sailor Moon fanart this past weekend. Needless to say I didn't really get anything else done.

MLP- Fizzy

I stayed up til 5am last night finishing this drawing of my favorite G1 pony, Fizzy!