I barely made it but I made it! Happy #kidlitpostcard day to all who celebrate!
I’m actively querying and seeking representation and so so so excited to be back on my picture book journey after a long pause. Hopefully this time, it’s for good. Sending good vibes to all my fellow authors and illustrators out on submission, it’s tough out there! 😘😘😘
#kidlitart #kidlit #kidlitillustration #illustrator
The DoSeum Artist-in-Residence Program 2024!
A daughter/father project between my dad and I, with some help from my husband and daughters too.
If you’ve been following along the last few months you know I’ve been working on a miniature world for the DoSeum Express. It’s been a dream of mine to make something with my dad for many years and the stars had never aligned until now. A friend shared the call for artists with me and as soon as I saw the prompt I knew this would be the one for us. I grew up going to train shows and air shows with my dad and uncle. Many of my memories are putting pennies on the track to get smooshed and shiny! We’d wait for the steam engine to roll by and they’d always take me to meet the engineer. We’d ride trolleys in cities that had trolleys and plan for rides on subways in towns with subways. Not to mention watching my dad and uncle work on their own living room sized layout for years at my uncle’s house. So I applied for the both of us, without telling him 😅. And when I got the call that I was selected, imagine my joy and excitement in calling him to share the news!
He said he’d be my assistant on the project and help my vision come to life. He has great skills in woodworking, tinkering, welding and well…working in miniature! So I got to work concepting this piece based on my own childhood memories that I am now passing on to my children. A little mini golf world with obstacles that all represent special places from my youth — with some crossover of my husband’s childhood — that we intentionally share with kids.
This project took us a few hundred hours to complete, working day and night and sometimes through the night! I worked out in our garage every morning and every evening for months and got to know our neighbors and welcomed in kids from around our little neighborhood to see the progress and ask their opinions. It filled my cup like almost nothing else in my career has to this point. I’m sure it’s mostly because I worked with people I love and was able to share the process with so many.
Thanks doesn’t cut it, @thedoseum ! But thank you for allowing me to make this dream project of mine!
I made this piece for my husband a couple of years ago on an especially hard day. It has been sitting in my studio and every time I find it, it brings a warm smile to my face. I found a little frame for it the other day at Goodwill and I painted the mat and removed the glass and I hope whoever comes in the studio and decides to open it up, finds this sweet message and it warms their hearts too.
#paperart #collage #interactiveart #illustration #itllbeokay #iloveyou #colorpencil #gouache #illustratorsoninstagram
Spots from a book I’m working on. I’m actually testing a rewrite for it with a different location and some different dialogue between them and it’s been a little tough to wrap my head around it BUT I think I’m making progress and might be a little closer to editing some of the artwork so I can send it back out for submission.
I haven’t been in the studio much these days, which breaks my heart a bit. But at the same time, we’ve had lots of visitors and I wouldn’t trade it! I’ve been spending my time freelancing and writing and doing laundry and gardening and working through ballet rehearsals and splashing in blow-up pools and hosting birthday parties and swatting loads of mosquitos. 🦟 😂 This time of year, as a mama of young kiddos, is always super busy so I’m trying to give myself grace and remind myself that any step forward is a step forward.
Happy Middle of the Week!
After a long stint away from watercolor, and mostly working with acrylagouache and color pencil, I decided to bust out a few of my favorites and mix them in with some newer work and I’ve loved playing with them again sense.
Here’s a rooster I did for a test project and I just had so much fun playing with the lighting here and his expression!
#illustration #illustrator #illustratorsoninstagram #rooster #chickencoop
Sweet little things.
The last few weeks have been quite a rollercoaster. I’ve been neck deep in freelance work and one of my jobs suddenly ended last week due to a change of budget and a team shift to move work overseas via Fiver 😅. Sometimes I feel in my groove and sometimes when a job has ended, whether it’s because it’s over or because of unforeseen circumstances, it can feel like I fell off a cliff and I can feel lost. I know lots of creatives who feel this week when a job ends. The work we do is so tied to us in such a personal way. Even though I’ve been in this game for 16 years now and I’m well versed in the ebbs and flows of commercial work and don’t take feedback or changes in scope or the job personally, it still catches me off-guard sometimes when a job ends. But then, that’s a reminder that I love it. All my feelings are wrapped up in the work I make and I deeply care about the work I produce and submit and the clients I work for. I guess sometimes it’s a good reminder that I’m in the right place.
Do you ever get the after-job blues? How do you get re-inspired? Having a creative career isn’t for the faint of heart, even though we’re all sensitive souls. Makes for some tough days sometimes, yeah?
A little belated #kidlitpostcardday illustration. I’ve been working on a story involving this little gal and have been painting her a lot. This one is going to someone with two little girls though, along with a second painting similar to it, and I hope they like it!
#illustration #watercolor #gouache #picturebookillustration
Silly little things before this heads off to @sariverfoundation tomorrow for their Pollinator Tea Party!
Special thanks to San Antonio River Foundation for accepting my application for their miniature art gallery. Last year my girls and I learned all about ladybugs and the stages of their lifecycle, something I was shocked we weren’t taught in school alongside butterflies and frogs! I feel they’re just as important and SO interesting. The came in droves to save the day on our watermelon and cucumbers after the big summer rain and made Thanksgiving of the aphids that were calling our garden “home.” So maybe super special thanks to the real MVPs, the ladybug, Mother Nature’s Pest Control.
#woodcarving #gouache #polymerclay #illustration #miniatureart
Every Sunday we do Screen-Free Sunday at our house. We try to minimize screen-time in general through the week and our kids don’t have their own iPads or anything — though they ask for one all the time 🫠. At first they were bummed about Sundays without a morning show or a video game but over the last few months, these are they days they do not fight at all! They wake up early and get to work, and by work I mean play. They make themselves toast and build a massive fort with their own rooms in it and spend a long time decorating it with stuffies and pillows and books, they’ll make slime (😭 this is one we have to hold our tongue for lol), they’ll play outside, change clothes a million times, read books, draw and paint, make up games etc. They leave a trail all over the house and it can be a little anxiety inducing for us, but it’s a small price to pay to see them having fun and being creative with their time. On these days, they also rarely ask us to play with them or entertain them. Not that we’d mind but it’s good for them to play without us. Yesterday they helped in the garden, raked all the pollen off the turf, built a fort, painted, dressed up, did face paint, read and counted all of their money and asked to take it to the Coinstar machine, so we did.
No shade to those using screens with your kids, we do what we have to do, but this is just a bit of encouragement to push through the whining. Kids imaginations are SO BIG! And they’re capable of so much more than we often give them credit for. If you don’t mind a little mess, and the occasional “I’m boooreeeed,” then I encourage you to find a day(s) of the week that work for your family to log off of it all.
Cheers to Screen-Free Sundays!
My grandfather died on the first day of Winter, my grandmother the first day of Spring. Fitting considering he was quite a moody person and likely lived life with a long history of depression. He wasn’t wanted by his parents and blamed much of his childhood for his existence. They wanted a girl, and got him. He gave hell to all who surrounded him and my dad too, something he still, at almost 75, deals with.
My grandmother was a palm reader. A jolly woman with short, white hair, who looked like the fairy godmother in Cinderella. She often wore pink or blue sweatsuits, Mickey Mouse sweaters and velour tracksuits with white Velcro strapped shoes. She stood proudly at 4 feet, eleven inches, and was a little bit round. Perfect for a child’s hugs. She smelled of cinnamon Certs and carried a very heavy handbag. Her jewelry was mysterious. She wore a circle pendant with a pyramid and a god’s eye and rings she found on her travels to Aruba. She ran into someone she knew at every airport she visited and members of the Lake County Astrological Association came to her wake, in awe and inspired by her life. She was often on TV for her psychic talents to boost ratings for talk shows. She loved me very much and she loved her “posies” as she called all flowers. Fitting for a death on the first day of Spring.
As I’ve grown older I’ve become privy to her skills in motherhood— or lack there of . She was one of my biggest cheerleaders and called me weekly. I can still hear her voice when I think of her, “Hiiiiii Jayme Lee!” she’d greet me. And when we sat next to each other, which wasn’t often because she lived across the country, she’d squeeze my hand and sit really close. It’s hard to imagine her ever being absent for my dad and his siblings. She was so good to me. But the complexities of family dynamics have started to come into focus as some of my own have started to crack and I learn the hard lesson each year that we are all just people trying our best each day. Failing often but hopefully trying again to be better with the next day’s sun.
They couldn’t live together, as you can imagine, him Winter and her Spring, but I loved them both and think of them often.
I’ve hit a rut in writing the last week and a half so I’ve been taking a pause to draw what I’m thinking in hopes of having a visual to inspire me. I’ve been swirling between 3-4 stories in my head and on paper and I think in my excitement, I overwhelmed myself. Coupled with a change in routine while we were out on Spring Break and off my meds, my brain feels mush. BUT this week I’m so inspired to get back to it. I have a full plate of work this week and I have my monthly meetings with people I adore that keep me accountable and help to fill my creative cup. The girls are back in school today and I feel like I’ll hit my stride again soon.
The ladies in my critique group suggested I take it slow this week and take care of myself to help ease me back into an inspired flow and they’re right. It’s just hard when your idea of taking it easy is still working haha. So I started a little calendar for the week, planning my hours out each day so that they’re productive but not overwhelming. I tend to hermit in the cold and this will help me push through. Despite it being cold, the sun is out here and I think it’s saying “though your production may feel dormant, there’s still growth happening and things will come to bloom.” I hope you’re looking forward at your potential and not at your feet in the stuck mud today. But if you are, know that the mud isn’t a bad place to be, it’s where roots grow and it’s where you pause and gain energy to keep going. Happy Tuesday, pals.
