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A year ago I started my first freelance assignment with Bealls Department Stores. They asked me to create a series of Florida icons for their in-house brand Sunbay. They were scheduled to purchase 5 designs, but upon seeing all 10 sketches they decided to purchase 7 finals. Here are the 7 final designs I turned in:
The in-house artists then prepared the artwork in the color palette for that delivery, and the buyer chose which pieces they wanted to purchase. There were different designs purchased for Misses, Petite and Positively Plus. And the artists also created an all-over repeat using the icons, which were used on the 3/4 sleeve shirts.
Here are some examples of the basic v-neck tees that are in stores now:
Positively Plus:
3/4 Sleeve all-over print:
These are just the images I was able to get from the Bealls online store, there may be more versions in-store. Here is a link to the Sunbay section. Keep in mind that this link will eventually expire.
Copyright © 2010 BDSRCO, Inc.
So I tend to let my personal posting get piled up in a to do list and that results in posts with pieces I did 4 or 5 months ago. I plan to get caught up this week, so I could use the accountability if you don’t see me post anything soon after this. Just say, “Hey where’s the art you promised to show us?”
In an effort to save some money and also make gifts more personal, I often make my greeting cards for friends and their special occasions. It also can be a good way to get something I’ve been wanting to try artistically out of my system. Sketchy flowers have been a big trend for a while now, one that I really like actually. And this will end up being a versatile card I can pull for other occasions that I don’t have time to make a whole new card for. (Sorry if you see this and then end up getting this card for something, I’ll try not to do that!) Anyway this one was for my good friend Mariel’s college graduation (she graduated in December, so it would have been hard to find a grad card in the store that time of year anyway ;) Congratulations again Mariel! I’m very happy for her as she went to school to become an educator and has already secured work, way to go!
I drew the flowers in black pen and ink and colorized/arranged them digitally. :)
A few months ago I was given an interview assignment before I started working on projects for the Home division at Bealls. I basically had 24 hours notice to do a bed in a bag design. I never posted it, but here were the results:
I wanted to keep to a pretty conservative theme and color palette to show that I can be sensitive to the Florida customer.
And yes that bedroom template might look familiar. It was the one I created for my Culture Pattern Bedroom, but I was glad to have something ready to use on such a quick project.
Here is a little something I can post now! This was another gift for my friend’s mother who loves her garden. See previous notecard design. I completed it in October, but it was a Christmas gift and I couldn’t spoil the surprise!
I gave the client the option of having their notepad with or without lines, for future re-ordering as well. Personal stationery is always fun!
I guess I forgot to post this, but I made it a few months ago anyhow. I think I would redo the pattern, I’m happier with the color scheme and the flats I made to apply it to.
A friend and now client of mine commissioned me to create some personalized stationery as a birthday gift for his mother. As she has now received her gift it is safe for me to post this online. This is a digital painting I did of my interpretation of her described garden. I was given much artistic freedom to create the vision as I chose, and only descriptions, no photographs, of her actual garden. Which made this a really neat project to work on! I’m happy with the end result as a painting and the client’s mother is happy with her note cards. I’ve included so many specific plants from her garden that I think this is what makes it personal. You might not be able to pick them all out online, but among others there are: roses; lavender; balloon flowers; dianthus; geraniums; thyme; sweet woodruff; myrtle; Russian sage; butterfly bush; goat’s beard; hydrangea; maple trees, and spiderwort. I did create the original at a much larger scale than the note card dimensions for the possibility of larger printing.
I know that I have not posted anything in quite a while but I have been working on a lot of different things actually. I’m surprised and also happy to say that I’m making a decent living on freelancing – some design, some illustration (probably about 50/50). I’m doing work for a local publication/crafting materials company called TJ Designs. It’s mostly design/layout work for packaging and print materials related to vintage themes and ephemera for Altered Artwork, Card-Making, Rubber Stamping, and Scrap-booking. Since they are products owned by the company I can’t really post much from what I’m doing there.
I also have been continuing to freelance for Lotus and Knickers for which I plan to post a lot of the design work I’ve done for our advertising, eventually. (Up till now I’ve only posted illustration work.)
My biggest and most exciting client in my life right now though is Bealls department stores. I wanted to wait a little while before posting anything about it in case it didn’t work out. I also won’t be able to post a lot of things I’ll do for them until after they are in stores. But here’s a little bit to show what I’ve been doing so far:
When I first started interviewing they asked me to do some “Florida Friendly” icons as sort of a test run. This was all the direction I had so they are for a variety of customer demographics and aren’t based on any of Bealls’ actually lines/or current color palettes.
Shortly after the interviews they gave me my first freelance assignment! I was given 4 patterns that hey had purchased at a trade show and was asked to translate them into vectors/perfect repeats for their pattern library. Here they are: one 1-way repeat and three 4-way repeats.
Copyright © 2010 BDSRCO, Inc.
Or at least that’s what they used to say this time of year when I worked at Best Buy for our target shoppers…anyways. Hurray for graduating! It took me 5 years with a major change from computer animation to illustration, but I finally graduated from Ringling (School) College of Art and Design, with honors. (I only put school in parenthesis because I did enter RSAD and graduated from RCAD) But I’ll be getting that BFA in the mail sometime this summer! So I’ll be getting some better pictures to add to this post later, but there’s me and my dad! My parents brought me the most perfect rose that they had in their garden. And on Saturday night I thought it was just too pretty to pass up so I did a watercolor for a Mother’s day gift to mom. Went down to their house Sunday afternoon and made dinner for her, we had a nice relaxing time. ^_^
So I was very inspired by the Hallmark workshop and felt the need to continue making pretty cards after we were all done… I also had a lot of beautiful reference that I had taken at Epcot last year during the International Flower and Garden festival. It just happened to still be going on during our Disney anniversary trip, so I took advantage. ^_^
I really wanted to play with contrast in shape and line…so I started in my sketchbook and then moved to the computer.
Okay, so the Hallmark workshop was really fun this year, we did a lot more creating and learned a lot more about what it would be like to actually work for Hallmark.
Here is the editorial I chose, from the ones they provided, to design a card for:
Here is what the front looks like closed:
Front and back of the exterior – see the heart sunset is a cut out:
I ultimately think I made the card assignment a little harder on myself than I needed to, simply because I chose editorial intended for a man and I tend to have much more feminine/children style. I created something that I know my husband would like to receive – but probably more because it would be from me, than he would necessarily have liked it if I had picked it out for him at the store. I did my best to man it up-using a more angular style and going for more of a sunrise color scheme than sunset. But it’s probably still too girly.
So they also had some little side assignments for us like drawing a deer, (or flower or bird), in multiple styles for different types of card recipients. i.e. masculine, feminine, funny, children, etc. So we doodled in our sketchbooks for about half an hour.
On the first night they had us illustrate words and phrases, and I was a little put on the spot because I don’t usually doodle words. After I went home and played around on my own I started to really like the idea…just wished I had been doing it all along before.
