Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays everyone! To celebrate the season, I have a new print available in the shop. I am also putting the original illustration up for sale. This is the first time I'm offering the original, and I'm pretty darn excited about it. While I take great care to ensure that the prints come out beautifully, there is something extra special about a one of a kind piece.

Time to put on Elf, which is my absolute favorite Christmas movie,  and finish the rest of my wrapping!

inspiration monday

image via troubadourcottage. © Shaun Tan, 2008.

Today's inspiration comes from Australian artist Shaun Tan. He has written and illustrated several books including; Tales From Outer Suburbia, The Arrival, The Red Tree, and The Lost Thing. His work is so dreamy and beautiful, stunning and surreal. He's won a gazillion awards, and rightly so his work is very touching. You can learn more about Shaun and his projects here.

illustration friday is burning

I had hoped to make this weeks Illustration Friday a much more elaborate affair. I envisioned a scene complete with roaring fire and hungry campers, but I got swamped with custom work, so this lil guy will have to do!

magazine love

One of my illustrations is in the current issue of Literacyhead! (Vol. 1 Issue 24) Literacyhead is an online magazine which provides lessons for teaching literacy through art. You can read more about their mission here.

 My work is in the 'Visual Vocablulary' section, and can be seen here. It's at the bottom of the page, so be sure to scroll down!

the aliens

I just got back from a super fun trip to Boston. Mister is in a play there that opened this past weekend. He plays Jasper in Company One's production of Annie Baker's play "The Aliens".

The show is amazing! It's centers around two 30 year old drop outs who hang out behind a coffee shop in the fictional town of Shirley, VT and the 17 year old coffee shop employee who they befriend. Annie Baker wrote a beautiful, heartbreaking play and director Shawn LaCount does a wonderful job bringing it from the page to the stage. Alex Pollock is pitch perfect as KJ, Jacob Brandt is tender and endering as Evan, and Mister gives an intense and honest perfromance as Jasper.

I am so proud of the entire cast and crew of "The Aliens". If you are in the Boston area, I highly recommend going to see this play. You can read the reviews here, and go here to purchase tickets.

illustration friday is spooky

Illustration Friday is a wonderful website that provides a topic every Friday, and participants have a week to come up with a piece that reflects the word. Then they upload it to the Illustration Friday website and get to share their work with a community of artist.

It's a great concept, especially for people like me who sometimes have trouble being completely self-directed. I've always felt, with regards to illustration, that limitations can be really freeing. That's a huge part of why I love working with clients on custom pieces.

 I've wanted to start contributing to Illustration Friday for a while now and this week was the perfect week to start! So here is the first in what I hope will be a long succession of Illustration Friday posts. The topic this week was 'Spooky' and the print is now available in my shop.

inspiration monday

image © Heidi Kenney, My Paper Crane.

Today's inspiration comes from Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane.  I've been following her for several years, and am such a huge fan! I first stumbled upon her when I got the idea for Two Happy Apples and started to wonder if it was possible to make a living making art. When I discovered her work, a whole world of professional artists and crafters opened up to me.

Her blog is great reading, especially when I feel like I don't have the energy to be creative. She runs a very successful business, bakes constantly (her cakes are amazingly elaborate!), is an very hands on mom, somehow finds time to hunt for thrift store treasures, and oh yeah she just wrote a book! You really should check her out, I have no doubt she will inspire you too.

marcel the shell is the cutest

Jenny Slate, of SNL and Bored to Death, and Dean Fleischer-Camp have have created possibly the cutest animated short of all time. Seriously, this thing is so sweet,  I've watched it about a zillion times. And if you haven't seen it yet, please watch it here. It will make your day, I promise.

facebook

Two Happy Apples has a Facebook page! It's full of news and updates, and I hope to offer special deals to Facebook friends in the near future. Check it out!

this is. . . inspiration monday

This weeks inspiration comes from Miroslav Sasek. A Czech born illustrator who first studied architechture, and later became known for his "This is. . . " series of books. This series includes such titles as; This is London, This is Paris, This is San Fransisco, and This is the Way to the Moon.

His work embodies is everything I find appealing about 1960's illustration; gouache, angular figures, flattened space. To me, this aesthetic feels simultaneously modern and vintage, like mid-century furniture. A lot of great illustration  came out during this time, actually. And today there are illustrators, like Matte Stephens, whose work pulls heavily from this tradition. So thank you, M. Sasek, for being an inspiration to all of us!