Michelle Jackson

Here’s my very first aceo done for Monday Art Day, where artists can trade aceo’s with other artists, among other things. The drawing was done with Prismacolor Premier 005 point fine line marker on bristol. The Prismacolor marker is awesome! I’ve worked with other brands of fine line pens and markers, and am really pleased with how this handles. There seems to be a little more tip, so you’re positioning is not limited, and the ink flow is constant.. even after leaving the cap off for a few hours. I’d recommend trying them out.
Rounded Square Clouds & Flowers

A simple & quick illo from a sketch for a girl named Tulip, who indeed loves tulips from her tulip garden.

Cheers!

To bring in the new year, here’s an illustration.
May much happiness, health, and prosperity come your way this year!

I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with my blog for sometime. My husband and I have been transitioning back into the DC/NOVA metro area since early December from our unfortunate relocation to NC. Lucky for us, it’s been pretty smooth. After we came back to VA, everyone we passed on the street said that “NC is for the retired.” Now they tell us! We definitely appreciate the things we took for granted before we left, so in saying that, I’m glad that we took the chances that we did when we decided to move.

So now instead of sitting on my bum all day looking for a job in NC, I’m doing it in VA, with much better results! I honestly can’t wait to start working again.. this whole temporary retirement thing has had me bummed out and stagnant… Posting something up on the blog has brightened my day though, so maybe I’ll continue to do a little more of that! The sketch above is a snippit from my M2 spread 40 on my sketchdump blog. Cheers!!!

Wishing everyone a wonderful happy holiday season, and best wishes to the New Year! Hope Santa brings you what you wished for this year!
CHEERS!!!

Just got my CS3 Design Premium, and am sooo loving it… and it’s soooo fast on my new super fast computer (compared to my old frankenstein), that I actually had the motivation to create some concepts for a new ID!!! Here’s what I came up with first…

this didn’t quite work out the way I had anticipated, but it helped get the juices flowing…

Here’s concept numbah two that I took a bit further. This, I felt, had a simple, sophisticated, yet dark, and playful feel to it that I thought represented me a little more than the all out bubbliness of the first concept. I’m also liking the Raspberry and dark gray combo.

ID Concept with black background behind lettering:

ID Concept with 90%Gray background behind lettering: (can you soooo see these as little MOO Stickers!!!)

Business Card Concept:

Would lerve some feedback from you!

felt the urge to paint, and a sketch of owl eyes had been haunting me for some time. I really like how it turned out. I made it such a process, which is something I don’t normally do, since I like to get things done in one sitting, but it felt good to see what came of my patience!

He’s a cutie, and makes me smile when I see him starin back at me.. although it can be a little creepie at times to know you’re being watched, no less, by detached owl eyes.. yoiks.. He’s been begging me to make some prints of him, and maybe put him on some stationary. What do you think? Should I listen to him?!!! You’ll have to suggest some name’s for “him” since he doesn’t have one yet.

Hoot Hoot Hooray..

ok.. I’m the biggest kidult EVER.. my friend sent me this link today, and I just about booked a flight to Japan, just so I could use this phone… The phone has been Hello Kittied out.. inside, outside, even sideways, and the graphics are neato.
Check it…

gimme.gimme.gimme….

This sounds like it’ll be a fun show!!! I can’t make it, since I’m quite a few hours away, but hope those in the area will show their support for the arts! Check out the artists at artdc.org
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WASHINGTON, D.C.—artdc.org, a Washington, D.C., artist’s forum, presents “Art in Transition Continued” on Saturday, October 13, 2007, in the future Greater Goods building, 1626 U Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20009. Doors open at noon; an art party is 6 p.m. to midnight.

“Art in Transition Continued” is the continuance of a group art show held in 2005. For the first show, “Art in Transition,” 27 Washington, D.C.-area artists displayed their work in four transitioning commercial spaces in Silver Spring, Md.

This year’s show is in the future home of Greater Goods at 1626 U Street, NW. This “empty” building provides the perfect opportunity for an organization such as artdc to host its own art show. Jesse Cohen, founder of artdc.org, explains, “Transitional space provides an opportunity to develop grassroots art shows, which currently aren’t available through existing spaces.”

The participating artists are: Steve Mead, Antoinette Wysocki, Jodi A. Patterson, John N. Grunwell, Dan Rosenstein, Alexandra Zealand, Alexandra Silverthorne, Kim Reyes, Emily Berl, Christie Ortiz, Rhett Rebold, Raju Singh, Steve Loya, Stephen T. Hanks, Matthew Best, Graham Meyer and Adam Eig.

“A unique feature about this show, aside from the great art,” Cohen says, “is that the artwork was selected by an external jury member who does not have ties to artdc.org artists.”

Mark S. Waskow, art collector and founder of the Waskomium in Burlington, Vt., is the juror for “Art in Transition Continued.” The Waskomium is a collection of contemporary art.
Waskow selected the work of 17 artdc.org members (there are more than 1,500 members of artdc.org). Pieces include 2-D, 3-D and installation art.

“He (Waskow) juried the art from artdc.org’s online gallery,” Cohen says of the selection process, “based on the idea that you can experience the presence of a work of art through its image.”

A fellow artdc.org member recommended that Waskow jury “Art in Transition Continued” because of Waskow’s support for the development of art communities.

Through events like “Art in Transition Continued,” artdc.org initiates artist discovery, encourages art discussion, advances creative development and promotes art collection, with the goal of developing movements in Washington, D.C. artdc.org provides virtual real estate for artists and art organizations. artdc.org aims to bridge the communication between artists of all mediums, galleries and collectors. With this goal in mind, the aim of artdc.org is to develop face-to-face relationships in addition to those in the virtual world.
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http://www.tabathamarshall.com/tm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1614&Itemid=1

I made it this week, Hoooray! I’m really happy that I could make some time this week to participate in IF. It’s been a little hard lately, I know I keep saying that. This was designed to be the front of a card. It was sketched out on textured lined cream cardstock, outlined in pen, and colored in with watercolor colored pencils. There’s some tweakage to be done, but I love how the banner at the top turned out, overall, and being spot-on with the hand-lettering. (I never can get that right.)

Here’s another little sketch of something goofy I like to do when eating oranges.

Watercolor (in progress) done from a doodle. The idea was to show a geisha losing her virginity for the first time, by showing flowers flowing from under her dress in the wind. When I had finished up with the sketch, it looked like maybe she had let one go and was bashfully saying ‘oops, I tooted’

Even though that’s what it looks like.. I really like how the flowers and lines flowed from the dress. I may just carry this over to the watercolor anyway!

arrr.. matey..

Still trying my hand at digital painting. I finally was able to devote some time to it! yay!
The sketch was scanned in this evening, and digitally painted in Photoshop. The middle piece is a chip from Vegas. A friend had gone recently, and brought me back this token chip.. and who better to guard the chip then a swash-buckling peg-handed pirate.

Hope ye like me bootie.. aarrr..

This is an old old drawing I did for an art class. It must have been right when I started high school from the look of my signature. I grew up as a foreign service brat, and had lived in Zaire for a little more than a few years before moving back to the U.S. I really had a hard time adjusting, and really missed many things about Zaire. We had moved months before the country went to crap, so we were lucky to have left when we did.
I still remember a lot of beautiful things about the country. This drawing shows Zongo Falls. We had driven four hours from the city out into the country where some parts of the roads had been washed away. Sometimes when we past little mud hut villages, the children would come out running after our cars to just smile and wave at us as we went by. My experience at Zongo Falls was exhiliarating. Everything was so natural and as it was. Even the restaurant that was located upstream seemed in its place. They served authentic Zairian food, and it was delicious. I ordered Chicken Mwambwe, a kind of spicy tomato stew, and Fu-Fu, a leafy green local favorite. Afterwards a guide took us on a hike towards the falls. He lead us to about the middle portion of the falls so we could see the water coming over the ledge and into the crevice. My brother, friend and I dared to walk on the slippery rocks to look over the ledge a little more and to be in the mist of the falls. So that was some of what I remember of Zaire. A beautiful country and lots of memories!

Hey guys, this message is long overdue. I haven’t abandoned my blogs, and it kills me to not update them on a more daily basis, but I’ve just been so crazy busy lately that I haven’t been able to make the time.
I hope that within the next month or two I can get back into the groove of updating and participating in IF, and Three Thumbs Up again. I really miss taking part in them, since they are such a positive influence.

Hope to be back soon!

Cheers

Learn to spot the warning signs in time – you know you’re becoming a design geek when:

• You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
• You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.
• You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.
• Seeing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
• You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.
• You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.
• You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come.
• You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.
• The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…”
• You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.
• Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.
• The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.
• Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash – and you’re running OSX.
• You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it.
• You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.
• You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”
• Looking at a menu make you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”
• And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…
• You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.
• Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.
• You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.
• You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”.
• You actually understand this post and pass it on to your friends.

hehe!

This is the original sketch I wanted to use for this week’s IF theme, Communication. The sketch just kind of ’screamed’ out!

This is my first real attempt at digital painting. The tablet makes it so much easier to do this. I first established where my lighting was going to be coming from and drew an arrow to remind me. I also started roughing in tonal values of her face. This is my first time doing a step-by-step, and it’s kinda of a sad one.. I’m a little further in the detailing in this example btw.
I placed a colored background in the back to help me see the outline of her face, mouth and teeth. I worked on her facial structure and attempted to highlight and shadow. It’s pretty sad, I know. I also added her hair, but didn’t focus on the details, since I’m beginning, I figured her face would be a good start.
I kind of cheated with adding color. I painted a flat brown tone over the entire facial area, and under the layer blend mode options, I chose ‘color’ which gave me the depth and color I was looking for. I took the eraser and cleaned up my edges some. Using a darker and lighter tone of brown, I shaded and highlighted some of the areas.

I have a ways to go, but had a lot of fun doing this! Must.. do.. mooore…
oy… why does she have an adams apple.. blargh..

I’ve fallen for this little guy, his friends and his adventures.
Amazing how far and how successfully ZINKIA Entertainment, S.L., have come with the making of this animated show. It has hit many international markets already. I hope they start showing the show in U.S. soon!

You must check out their site and blog:
Zinkia Entertainment, S.L.,
Official Pocoyo Site
Pocoyo Blog

Once the burden had been lifted, she felt as light as a feather and ran passionately without a care, spreading her new found joy!

Wow… I’m 30… I don’t feel… 30… I hope I don’t think I have to feel 30 from this point on.. although I have been noticing a few extra wrinkles around my face I could do without.. hhhmm..
I guess since I’m 30 know I can pass on some wise old wisdom to them yung’uns out there.. Age is just a number. Mind the simple pleasures. Life is about living out your passions.

As my wise aunt says.. “Live Passionately.”

Happy Valentine’s Day too! ♥