Can't DENY it

Apparently, people are supposed to be up, out of bed and conducting actual business prior to 12.00pm on a Saturday.  Whoever made up this arrangement obviously didn't have to stay up Friday night to 3am drawing and watching SBS PopAsia, or they would understand how crazy it is.  As a result of this travesty, SoulStrike has remained confined to the pages of a sketch book, for an extra.  Hopefully tomorrow, with my alarm set, I will be able to get to the only copy shop that seems to be open at all on a Saturday in Hobart and get a clear scan of the work to be applied to t-shirts and promotional items.  Looking forward to seeing and wearing the first SoulStrike T-Shirt by tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, I have been busy researching ways for Liliflora Pretty to become a real business as well.  The aim of the Liliflora Pretty brand is to create artwork for licensing.  This means artwork that can be used on anything from fabric to homewares to giftwrap and cards, to wall art and basically anything else that can have art printed on it.  There's a fantastic free publication called MOYO, which explores the varied and wonderful world of Surface Pattern Design and Illustration.  It's founders also run a website called makeitindesign.com, which features artist galleries and directories, as well as an e-course which seems to be very popular, and the students' work featured in MOYO is of a very high quality.  I'm considering the course, along with Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells e-course and bootcamp.  I will also be adding work to the MOYO directory which allows me to build a profile and upload portfolios of design work, as well as connect with other designers.

Through MOYO, I found out about an amazing company based the USA called DENY designs who make unique home wares, by hand as much as possible, and then print them with art provided by a large group of artists from all over the world.  The quality of their products looks amazing, and the best part is that they're always open for submissions from artists to add to their collection!  So my next goal for Liliflora Pretty, is to create 10 pieces of work (to fill the slots available on the submission page), that really express the unique personality of my work.  Given that I'm still working out what that personality is, this is going to be really interesting!  Above is a WIP shot of my first image "Something Poignant About Life."  I have a small collection of 4 pieces in mind with similarly vague (and, let's face it, slightly sarcastic)  phrases aimed at parodying the hand-lettered 'truism' and 'put a bird on it' trends.  Whilst not being mean about it, of course!

This weeks' Illustration Friday theme was Metamorphosis, and as tempted as I was to do something butterfly related, apparently so was everyone else (except the genius who drew about the evolution of Charmander through to Charizard, which is just genius)!  So I decided I better practice some hand-lettering by illustrating fonts changing from a classic 'carnival' style, to a gothic graffiti style instead.  Hopefully I'll just get this in on time!

Emma