Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello readers! I apologize for the lack of updates this month but things have been quite busy. I am packing tonight to head home to South Carolina and I promise to write more over the holidays!

crazy month

So my month has been crazy: I was in a hit and run auto accident over a week ago and I'm now in the market for a new car. This has been a learning experience in many ways for me, dealing with the insurance company, the police and car salesmen. It was unfortunate to be in the accident, but it was a good situation as there were 2 witnesses and many helpful people who stopped to help me. One of the witnesses even followed the guy when he drove off and found the vehicle the next day! I was suprised at his kindness and effort for a girl he'd never met before. So the police investigated and found the owner of the car lived in GA and had let a friend borrow it who then let another friend borrow it who proceeded to run a stop sign going over 40 and hit me. Thankfully I wasn't hurt, and although my car needs to be totaled I can still drive it while I'm looking for a new one.
This has been kind of a further push into adulthood. Last week it really hit me how soon I will be done with college and taking on more responsibilities. Scary and exciting.
It's fall break right now and thank goodness. I need this extra time to have a chance to relax and get ahead on schoolwork. And to be car shopping. But it is going well so far and hopefully I'll have found a great one in the next few days!

sketches

For my Illustration II class, we have to keep a sketchbook and upload an image every week to a blog that our professor keeps. I figured I'd just place some of my sketches here for fun. The first is from my personal sketchbook and the second from my class one. They're done with different mediums, pencil, pen and ink, watercolor pencil, and some digital coloring in Photoshop. Fun stuff. (Just click on the image for a larger view.)

goodbye September

It's the last day of September and yesterday marked the first crisp fall air. I was ecstatic that the rain stopped on Sunday and that it has stayed out and brought a slight chill to the air. All that dreary rain for the last 2 and half weeks really brought my mood down. But I am cheery again, and have many things to be excited about. It's almost midterms (how did they come up so fast?) and I'm working on many projects. I'm doing a brochure for Etsy.com, the marketplace for all things handmade and have been creating custom illustrations for it. It's due next week and I have a lot more to do, but I feel really good about it. It's been fun, except for the times I stressed way too much. It's crazy how just a simple thought like "I have no time to do anything!" can spiral into a huge snowball of negative thinking. I'm working on re-prioritizing my life at the moment as I have been putting too much time into other jobs and such that are important to me, but should come second to classwork. I spent 15 hours at the school today working on my projects and in class. And the great thing is that I don't feel tired or frustrated. I had a really great day. Hitting your stride in a project is one of the best feelings in the world. I have been putting so much pressure on myself and my work that I haven't given myself the chance to enjoy it lately. But that will not happen again!
October is bringing lots of good things like Fall Break, a trip to Atlanta to see family, a trip to Auburn to see my first home football game there, and my birthday. So with all the other great things that are already going on, Life is pretty freakin' sweet right now.

I'm also working on designing and building a website in MultiMedia III right now. We had to choose a musician or a movie to build a site for and I chose Brooke Waggoner, an incredible Nashville based songstress. Here's a glimpse into what I have so far...

think tank 09

Yesterday I attended my first conference with AIGA and now I am a member (finally!) The conference was incredible with speakers Ken & Jenn Visocky O'Grady, Dave Werner (okaydave.com), Ian Dapot and drumroll please....Paula Scher! The theme was Design Thinking, and how to communicate your creative ideas with clients when you speak designer and they speak business talk. Dave shared reasons why his portfolio site was so successful and pointed out that "the harder you work, the luckier you get." A theme that stood out to me personally was the fact that you have to embrace the idea of failure in order to be successful. Risk is necessary to do good work and you might bomb but you HAVE TO TRY NEW THINGS. That is something I struggle with, and honestly I would be shocked to meet anyone who said they never fear that. I do not like to fail. I admit I am a bit of a perfectionist and always want to produce good work. But failure has been a reoccurring word this year and although I have been fighting it, I really want to just let go of success for the sake of good work. Ironic but makes perfect sense.
In other news, this weekend is CreateAthon, a 24 hour non-stop working blitz that redpepper does to benefit 9 non-profits by developing marketing and design for them. I am so excited to be a part of it this year! I've been doing a lot of work this weekend to prepare for missing some classes, but I've spoken to all my professors and will be turning in work early. This week is going to be fantastic.

just for fun.

I've been meaning to post photos of some experimental work I did so here are a few, better late than never. These are some collages done with encaustic wax. Dan Brawner, the illustration professor at WCAD introduced me to this technique last year and a friend of mine and I had some fun with it one day. Viola!

fall is here.

Fall is here and I am ecstatic. We've been only a little over two weeks into the semester but its been wonderful. I even completed an illustration for Illustration 2 (see it at the left). We're illustrating Alice in Wonderland in a series of three. I am working from Chapter 1 and really going for a funky, whimsical style. Design 4 is great too, I'm working on an interactive brochure for Esty, the online marketplace for all things handmade. I feel confident about this semester and really plan to work on polishing my portfolio as much as I can.

redpepper is still fantastic. This week I got to be a part of a photoshoot for Kirkland's, the home decor store. They are a client of redpepper's as of this year and redpepper has already launched a community site (mykirklands.com), a huge sweepstakes, and had all the online members vote for their favorite designers to become "the" Kirklands Designers. There are a total of 5 and they flew in from all over the US to be photographed. We rented out a space downtown and had a fantastic time. I got to help out and capture behind the scenes footage of the shoot and everyone involved. Some of the designers were really goofy which provided lots of laughs. I am continually blown away by all that redpepper accomplishes for their clientelle. They're only an 8 year old company but wow, they are so successful and still growing. I believe one of the best things about being at redpepper is their emphasis on personal growth. No one can get stagnant and everyone supports growth in and out of the office. I'm suppossed to be doing a brief interview for Watkins soon about my experience there, so hopefully we'll get to do that soon and I can post it. I'll also try to post some photos of the shoot if possible. Or at least link to them.
I'm off now to have a great labor day weekend!