Julia Rothman: how to make repeat patterns
5.31.2008
I was click, click, clicking through the brilliant eyes of Lisa Congdon's photostream on flickr last night, and came across this photo she posted of one of her paintings hanging alongside Julia Rothman's whimsical wallpaper in someone's home. (See upper left corner of my photo collage). I fell in love with the open white shelving against the bright illustrations.
By coincidence I came across Julia's website this morning, and fate came knocking at my door for another artist inspired blog post.
Her wallpaper can be purchased through Wall Collection, which also is a customizable site where you can upload and purchase your own designs for your walls. (I'm really into pattern design these days, how exciting!)
Julia also keeps a very inspiring illustration blog that features a new art book everyday: Book by its cover.
Recently she also was a guest writer for Design Sponge, and posted a really great tutorial on how to make repeat patterns (no photoshop necessary!).
To learn more about Julia Rothman where you can also purchase her work & patterns, visit her site www.juliarothman.com.
keep in Mind: Illustrations by Irana Douer
5.27.2008
I first came across Irana Douer's artwork a few years ago through the live journal art community, and ever since then have been keeping her in mind.
I love how Irana's illustrations project so much emotion and feeling through her use of color, linework, and vivid smudges. She's constantly carving out new ways to express herself through experimenting in various mediums. Sharing creative projects like making clothing out of paper, and turning the characters of her illustrations into real photographs using models and colorful wigs.
I admire how she's a forward thinker, so original and intriguing!
You can see more of Irana's photography and illustrations on flickr, buy originals, and keep up with her latest projects on her website keep in mind. She also runs a monthly based online art magazine Ruby Mag
Here's a peek at PaPaYa's booth at the National Stationary Show in New York last week before the crowds moved in.
Shawn's been traveling back and forth a lot up north settling all of our loose ends, while I work down here in Ashland. This last week, he accidentally left with my camera in his glove compartment. Dispite bad lighting and dismal weather, my iphone came to my rescue again.
Even Wendy Addison suddenly wanted one, when I took this photo of her with my good friend and inspring creative director Anahata at the stationary show. Wendy's work was featured at Tinsel Trading Company's booth. They are the cutest, so much talent right here! (You can peek into Wendy's studio, The "Theatre Of Dreams" at Ana's blog here, and Pam's here!)
Although we spent most of our time at the show, Ana and I managed to spend some quality time at the Pearl river mart in SoHo. Ah, the lanterns... as my friend Yvonne would say "the mothership has called me home"!
We also visited Tinsel Trading Company in person, what an enchanting store!
Here's a snapshot of jewelry artist Jill Schwartz's amazing booth. She's one of my muses. I keep a folder with images that inspire me, hers are some of my true favorites. The image on the right is one of them, and comes via Earth Angel toys, an online shop that sells her pieces.
I also got to visit some of my oldest blogging friends Hope and Leslie at the show in their booth representing their stationary lines Paper Relics and The Paper Princess. It's been amazing watching their businesses grow these last few years. Such paper divas! We all met in hell's kitchen for dinner one night with our other good blogging pals Jess and Dawn. Jess brought us all lovely handmade bracelets. She sells her artistic jewels at her online shop Junque Revival.
It was such a whirlwind of a week, I'm really glad I got a chance to visit with all them!
I'll be returning to New York with my pals of the PaPaYa crew this August for the big International Gift Show, as one of "New York's Newest". The lure of the big city's already calling to me.
Anahata and I are taking off this weekend to New York for the National Stationary Show, so in the spirit of all things paper I thought I'd leave you with another sneak peak of some new fine wrap designs I've been working on this week at PaPaYa. Two of these patterns are adaptations of my new card designs and the birds on green were inspired by one of Anahata's new art canvas designs. I really enjoy designing things with pattern, I think I've found my niche.
Last night I was visiting Creature comforts fabulous blog, and was really inspired by the way she's visually linked her favorite design and style blogs. I'm still over here flipping over it, it's fantastic!
Over time I've found so many wonderful artists through sites like flickr, myspace, blogger, typepad, etsy... etc. that I've been wanting to share here. So inspired by last nights clicking spree, I've decided to kick into a new category today: Blogging The Artist's way.
I'm fascinated with seeing other artist's processes, and inspirations so I'm really excited about having a visual archive of all of the new sites I'm finding.
I'm always drawn to dreamy imagery that simultaneously has adult and childlike qualities, and a combination of dark and light emotion. They are little digital wonders, and make me want to use terms here like... image apparitions, and happy phantoms.
Her work also reminds me of a cross between two other digital artists that I really admire, Maggie Taylor and Loretta Lux.
Thanks so much for your supportive comments about our move. They kept my spirits up!
After all of this moving around, I'm ready for some serious downtime! We took the weekend to unpack and organize. When I became so tired I couldn't move any more I did what any exhausted person would do, I caught up on some cheesy cable shows. For some reason I keep finding myself watching, "Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane". To be honest, half the time I'm cringing and holding the remote in the air. Just frozen in my tracks unable to turn the channel. She's a force of nature!
I'm loving how the area we just moved to is both developed and undeveloped. To one side of our neighborhood is a vineyard, and the other pasture. Our neighbors have two horses. I've been bribing them with handfuls of baby carrots to try and get them to pop their heads over to the fence. It didn't take long for them to catch on to my little game. Now they come trotting at full speed whenever they see us. I'm seriously fond of them, they are in dire need of some cute nicknames.
Here's a peek into our new place, still plenty of work to get fully settled in, but we're definitely off to a great start.
