NWI Comic-Con

We had a great time at the NWI Comic-Con Sunday! 

It was our friend's, Celina Barajas, first time showing/selling her art at a convention, so she had a great time! Her artwork is behind us, the Hello Kitty mash-up drawings. 

What a fantastic turnout for the NWI Comic-Con's first year! It was great meeting everyone and we're looking forward to next year's convention!

Next convention on our list is C2E2 April 25-27th! :)

Art Thieves

Beware of online art thieves! We only sell our art online at Etsy and at Spreadshirt. (possibly society 6 eventually) If you see our artwork on any other site, it is not legit and the sellers are illegally profiting off our art. Please notify us and we will take immediate action against them. Most likely in these cases, they are stealing all or most of the artwork in their online shops. (Apparently Etsy has a huge problem with this. We recently stopped several sellers using our art on cell phone cases.) Please be aware when buying online that you're buying from the artist and not a thief! One way is to check to see if the style and quality of the drawings all match or is a hodgepodge of random images. They will even sometimes claim that all art is done by them, but it can be obvious they are lying. Catherine and I make our entire living off of being artists through freelancing and selling art on the side. It's disappointing every time we find someone stealing another artist's artwork.

Three Mermaids

(my post titles are sooo not creative.)

Anyway, here's another mermaid piece. ;)

Now on Tumblr!

I just joined Tumblr yesterday, and am still getting acquainted with the site. (As if I need ANOTHER social media account!) Please feel free to check it out, and also recommend artists to follow. Thanks! :)

catherineandsarahsatrun.tumblr.com

*EDIT: I went back and made this a joint tumblr page with Catherine.

Another Mermaid!

Here's a small mermaid piece. 

It's intended to be printed very tiny for a necklace. 

:)

Animation Reel

 

Catherine and I edited together a new animation reel to reflect the increasing amount of digital animation we have been doing for the past few years. Instead of a written out shot list, we have it listed on the bottom of each shot. We did the character animation- no CG or special effects in any of these shots. Please ask us if you have any questions.

Most of our animation work is for Calabash Animation, but you'll see some personal work and some other studio work in here as well.  (Sadly hand drawn animation is very rare to come by now and we use Toon Boom Harmony for almost everything.) As you can see, Trix has also gone away from being traditionally animated to Harmony animated. I love the style, but prefer hand drawn. Times are changing! For more hand drawn, paint, stop-motion animation, check out my other videos on my youtube chanel. ;)

Child Study

Here's a lunch time drawing from a photo of a creepy child statue from The Art Institute of Chicago. 

This one is from their Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art Gallery.

I'm Flying! An evolution of a drawing

Here's the evolution of a drawing titled "I'm Flying!" I was out on a walk one September afternoon about 1 1/2 years ago and encountered this family. They seemed to be having a great time with their father, and the little girl looked at me and exclaimed, "I'm flying! I'm flying!" That totally turned a bad day into a more hopeful, beautiful one. I only had time to sketch the bottom right drawing at the time. Last week I finally went back to it, and thought I would share how it developed.

An Honest Living

Last night many former students of The Drawing Workshop came together to attend the premiere of a new documentary, An Honest Living, by director Jordan Freese. It features four artists, one of which is George Sotos, our former teacher of The Drawing Workshop. The film explores the concept of artists having to do their day jobs: teaching, office work, house interior painting, in order to make a living to support their own art. It has special meaning to all of George's former students, but regardless, I highly recommend this film to all artists because most of us are in the same position. The director himself is caught in this too, which brought about the making of this film. He is an IT guy by day, and has made this film for over three years in his spare time between attending classes and working around the artists' schedules. It was well worth all the hard work!

(A photo from after the screening. There were several other larger group shots. We'll have to try to get those.)

It was such a joy to reunite with George and former classmates last night in an evening we will never forget!

There is another screening this Thursday night January 30th at 8:15 pm at The Gene Siskel Film Center. Please check it out if you're in the Chicago area or follow the film's Facebook page to see if the film gets into film festivals.

Here's a wonderful short review of the film: http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/01/24/an-honest-love-letter-to-chicago-arts

Mermaid

I drew this on the plane thinking of warm, sunny California! It would be nice to do a series of mermaid drawings in a similar style.

Escaping The Snow

Catherine and I woke up at 4:30 and walked to the train through deep, unshoveled snow. We made our escape to the airport and flew to California to visit our sister who is currently travel nursing there. Hundreds of flights were canceled, but ours was just delayed, so I drew this while waiting.

*Update: Yes, we missed the horrible deep freeze Chicago and much of the country was hit with. What great timing! ;)