Portland Buy Local Submission

Last week I put together a potential cover for the 2012 Portland Buy Local guide.  Portland Buy Local is a sweet organization and I hope that they think the same of me and choose my illustration.  It was definitely a fun one to put together and another opportunity to push the pen and ink with digital color.  It is slowly starting to read more like my drawings.  The problem has always been that when I scan in my color illustrations I lose so much subtlety in color.  It has become so frustrating that I've just started keeping my line and coloring with Photoshop.  As the line starts to read better and better, I become more and more pleased with the new media.

This is probably the first or maybe the second illustration of this sort that seems to have completely retained the line.  The color really doesn't seem to need to be very extravagant.  It's all learning experience though.  I'm glad to have the opportunity to submit to some real projects while trying to figure it out.

I will be getting the documentation of my billboard from the Billboard Art Project printed tomorrow to submit to a show at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I am very pleased, though a bit surprised that they would want the documentation of a project that I had done in the past rather than a new piece.  I guess I'll figure out this art world eventually.  For those of you who have forgotten what that image looked like, here is a bit of a reminder.

I hope you are all doing well and that you are enjoying the very spring like weather that we seem to be having in March.  Best.

Peace
Mike