New Shop New Stuff

 Custom charm book for a friend.

 New packaging!

 New charm book and earrings, now up on our click-to-shop site!

Just got a BigCartel site to help with shopping!

Color Doodles

This one is less of a color doodle. Normally when I do "Asian inspired" things, it involves me hashing together a lot of things and getting kind of messy with crossover between various types of Buddhism and what people are wearing. Anyways, wanted to do something with green and pink.

 

First two doodles I did of this guy/lady/whatever. Japanese influenced I guess. For the most part.

Experimenting with color and movement. These drawings were all done in one of those paper back Moleskine's with a Staedtler marker.

 

Two newer ones, um Japanese influenced, and Korean, both with the lotus motif and Eight Fold on the right hand one. Yeahhh...Back to work~

Prints!

This is the catfish print I did for the print exhange during the MCAD CE class that I took. Our theme was "chimera", this was the first freshwater fish that I've drawn, except it's got human legs. I guess it's not so fishy. Screenprinted on cardstock.

 

This is the Aphotic Zone print I've been working on for a while, it's going to be in a show at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts this fall with a bunch of fantastic artists. Our theme was "Under Pressure".  More details on the show later! This was an intaglio print, on Rives BFK.

Whale Comic_Progress

This is the "dead whale" comic I've been working on in whatever spare time I have. After realizing I hadn't done a comic about anything ocean related, I decided on...a dead whale. Repeating patterns! Will be posting two prints later that I did in the last few months. Mostly been doing freelance stuff, and just got some new findings for Paper Tapir winter stuff.

Ochaya Posters

 

Just realized without the screen cap getting part of the photoshop background in, these images would be awkwardly floating in a sea of white. Anyways, two simple posters and one with Wonder Woman (in lieu of the theme this year), for the tea room. Getting down to the wire, might do another couple ladies.

Ume Abroad Progress

So. Here's how Ume Abroad has gone. Tomorrow will be day 15, and it is being used for stapling and trimming. The above right photo is the same number of pages, but the top stack has been folded by hand, the bottom stack has been folded by hand and then with a bone folder. (Everyone use a bone folder, it'll take twice as long, but there will be less crying over uneven pages later.)

After penciling and scanning, the pages were inked with Photoshop, formatted in InDesign, printed at Kinkos using their terror copier, the covers were printed at home using the terror Epson. The cover paper is light cardstock from Office Max, my pencils were done on copy paper. Yep. Rockin'.

This is going to be available for the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo this upcoming weekend. Go to the CAKE website for more information.

Ume Abroad Mock Up

This is the "mock-up" (of a mockup?) for the preview of Ume Abroad. Which is going to be at CAKE this upcoming weekend. I hadn't started something from scratch without a paper mock on InDesign in several years, so this was a little nerve wracking today. Spent a lot of my time at Boneshaker poking around files. But eventually everything worked out! Tried printing it just on my 8.5"x11" printer, and sort of like the smaller size, going to maybe go with that instead.

Pacific Sea Nettles

I rarely do any type of "photography", seeing as the main reason I take photos is for reference nowadays. That said, I was happy with these phone pictures I took of the Pacific Sea Nettles at the MoA last week. It's probably because they're so contrast-y. These were taken with my iPhone. I took a few with "Hipstamatic" for fun, but while they're cool looking, it's nothing like showing the actual animal.

Hana

Doodlewoodle from last night.
Hadn't done anything in colored pencil in a while, though I'm not sure where this one came from. This is nothing like the prismacolor ones that I'm used to. Dry and pastel-y. It's a Derwent Artists pencil. Uh. Yep.

This drawing was flipped, and it's weird because now I have the feeling that I'm typing wrong and keep trying to type in a way that's more backwards, probably should stop looking at it.

New Book and World Turtle Day

 

Recent updates around the other sites are this new charm book, you can find out more on Paper Tapir. Also here is a sneak peek for tomorrows special Ume update for World Turtle Day. 

I have a whole bunch of things going on until around the beginning of August, hopefully everything will get done and I'll have time to work on my own stuff, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. Trying to finish redrawing the Ume Abroad preview for CAKE (June 15-16), I'm helping with two different art festivals. CONvergence is at the beginning of July and we have to to a bunch of work for that, and I'm TAing for the MCAD pre-college program again during the middle and end of July. 

I'm going to be trying to get a normal website up for Paper Tapir and then un-merging the blog and the actual site, unfortunately that's going to come after all these other things. 

Again, thank you all so much for the additional support on the Facebook fanpage of Paper Tapir!

New Books!

There are a bunch of new books over on Paper Tapir now! These new keychain books come in two sizes, and are small and magical! Also there's an octopus book up too. Been busy busy with CONvergence coming up and a bunch of other events. Whew!

Vivian

This was a drawing for Ben Tye. He's making a mini of his latest comic, "Dewey Delane", and this is his character Vivian. I like doing fanart of friends' characters, it's oddly satisfying. You can pick up a copy of Dewey Delane at SpringCon, May 19th and 20th at the Minnesota Fairgrounds.

Doodle and update

Girl doodle, pencil and colored in photoshop. I love drawing with a .9 sometimes. It's a lot different from what I got used to, which was a .3. I was posting things that were really bright but I decided to tone this one down a little, I found that a bunch of these have been -really- bright. Whoops! I hope I haven't hurt anyone with color.

Going to mostly be working on CONvergence things in the next little while. Trying to stain plates today! I'm not even sure if it's going to work, yay for experimentation! Ume has still been updating on Tuesdays, and Ume Abroad is going, though I'm thinking about redrawing a bunch of it. Hopefully I'll still have a preview up for CAKE!

Will be trying to figure out a way to print Jubliee as well.

Ochaya

Ochaya got a Facebook fan page!

We will be posting updates about the room, what we're serving, etc.
Feel free to give us a "like"!

Thank you so much for the continued support~

Adventures in Sketchup Land

(Designs for the Ochaya Tea Room, CONvergence 2012.)

Basic flat layouts of where the room objects would be going. Wasn't going specifically for the correct size of everything, some things are up in the air, so I figured I'd play it safe and could downsize which would be faster than scaling up.

Added basic shapes in and blocked shapes. The original screen, go table and long table can be seen on the top, I did those after the basic layout was done. Wasn't really planning on putting them in. Sometime later I added said pieces, and got some plants from the online warehouse. Also those lanterns, the red is a little atrocious. But the example is needed.

This is what I have done so far. Added in more textures and items to fill out the room. The smaller screens were redone. We need to get reno information before I can work on the layout anymore though.

Photo Update

I have finally located my card reader for my smaller camera. After...several months. These were on there, along with quite a few other things. Like from the Ke$ha concert. Yep. Also my Chicago trip last year which included about a hundred pictures from the Planetarium.

At some point I must have been putting things that matched with books. I really like those red earrings, I should make another pair. I only have a single earring for myself, which is maybe a little strange. It's the long star earring. The one on the right is the little cartouche-style set that I started a while ago, which I love, but they're really time consuming. I want to find a better hanging mechanism and I'll probably try and sell them with cords.

Reopan process

 

Images of the reopan print. 

"Reopan" comes from the Old English "to reap", it's for a print exchange at the MCAD continuing studies Open Edition printmaking class, in which our theme was "ripe".

The perforated words were done by laserjet printing the text, cutting it out of a larger sheet, taping it to the print and doing the perforation with an etching needle on cardboard (shown here by this lovely Crayola Glow Dome box). The tape and paper were removed and the text was repunched to get the proper depth. 7x7", relief print. 

Yes, I do love that green serifed one. A lot. Maybe I'll make more like that. The really bright green makes me happy. Even though that's not "wheaty" at all really.

Progress on Ume Abroad

Been working on Ume Abroad, this bigger panel is costing me though, because I refuse to utilize my tiny awkward flickery light box, and choose to use this window. It's fine, until it gets dark out.

Going to finish inking it today though, then the panels get "normal" sized again for a while and I don't have to do larger things. A plus of this whole thing is that I'm pretty awful at doing the perspective on these types of buildings, so it's good for me.

Here's a progress update on the inking. It's slow going. I took a break with working on finishing the reopan print.

Mini card

Printed out one of the headers, I might use this as promos for Ume Abroad, I like the size too. Though I would have to switch companies for printing. Haven't thought about what to do with the back. Will be doing that soon. Working on that among other things. Going to try and get back to books and stuff soon.

I have about sixteen pages done right now. Will be trying to make it to twenty this weekend. Before June I want to have a pretty big chunk done in b/w and a lot of it colored. Going to decided on final coloring style soon as well.

Big Fox, Little Fox

This is approximately a quarter of a watercolor I'm putting the base layers on right now. It's a fox. Sort of. Going to end up a mixed media piece because I want to gouache the heck out of part of it. I don't draw animals very often but this was a good time. I guess it's because it didn't actually need to be very "fox" like. Vague post is vague!

I'm trying to catch up on reading a bunch of books that I've gotten over the past couple weeks. I also am working a bunch on Ume Abroad. And those other things I do. Yep.

Going to try and slog through piles of ink to get this intaglio print to work out. I'm not incredibly optimistic about the colors though. That's this week. Should be getting a few more pages of the comic done as well. Trying to work out printing for Jubilee still.

More comic headers

Two for this "part", there's one more to go. The one above is the first one for the entire thing, the bottom one is the second to last section. Drawing four people in these little boxes seems to work pretty well. It's quite a bit easier than drawing in huge open 10x15 pieces of bristol. Also I noticed I didn't draw -any- hands in the last one. Huh.

I also went back and changed the one of Senbei a little and added the spot of red. Oh look in that group one they're all wearing blue. Crud. I'm bad at this.