book sleuth mega-post: the rest!

happy new year! to ring in 2010, here are the rest of the book sleuth spreads, for the view from saturday, by e.l. konigsburg, a wrinkle in time by madeline l'engle, and the wednesday wars by gary d. schmidt.

the super-blitz is partially since the suspense has been sneaky-style alleviated-- i recently updated the real heart-sleeve studio with my recent work, book sleuth included. head over there now to see the updates!

in resolution-town, in an effort to keep things organized and catch-up on life (better late than never, right?), i have officially made the switch to both google chrome and mac osx snow leopard and so far, so good! i am also re-starting the dailies in a new form: each day will be based on a song i hear/listen to that day. hooray! even more exciting, these dailies are mixed media and full color. stay tuned to see the dailies burst back onto the scene in 2010! take care, everybody.

book sleuth: harriet the spy (3 of 6)

hi, everyone! so it has been a while, and man, i am fully aware that i am dragging out the book sleuth's debut in a painfully long way... thanks for being patient, or at least being nice and/or quiet about your discontent. here's number three, harriet the spy by louise fitzhugh!

IMPORTANT: harriet the spy was my very favorite book when i was small.

stay tuned (for real this time! the holiday season and lack of immediate grad school obligations means that i can post at a less annoyingly infrequent rate) for the second half of the book sleuth's recommended reading!

book sleuth: the higher power of lucky (2 of 6)

a super-speedy (and procrastination-friendly) post to share the next spread in my book sleuth series. it's on the higher power of lucky by susan patron. it's a pretty new book, and so scandalous because she uses the word 'scrotum' in the first paragraph. crazytown! click to read slash, see the big version.

in other non-relevant news, i had a lovely pair of thanksgivings this year, one of which involved thanksgiving pizza, and one that involved dutch apple pie made by someone who's actually dutch, and both of which involved an outrageously huge vat of cranberry sauce, which is already gone. i hope you all celebrated accordingly, too.

away we go: the book sleuth (1 of 6)

all right, i'll admit that i'm making zero work right now that is not grad-school-flavored. in an effort to keep things at least a little bit updated around here, here's the first of my book sleuth spreads! fun fact: in a serendipitous trip to baltimore's book thing, i found a free copy of my father's dragon just days after i finished the series. hooray! if you'd like to read my lovely kid-oriented review of the book as well, click to enlarge, friends!

i did the whole spread: digital collage for the color full-page and the black and white spread, the writing, and the layout. i am so not a graphic designer, but i think the layout is pretty okay? maybe? i will even settle for not distractingly bad. stay tuned for the rest of the series, to be unveiled in a painstakingly slow manner. thanks for hanging with me as i try to, you know, get my masters.

more slightly-less-sneaky previews.

so, it has been a little while, tiny collection of faithful blog readers. i'm sorry to be posting so sporadically - as it turns out, grad school is hard! go figure. right now, i am teaching fourth graders art and math together, an unlikely but pretty okay combination, as well as middle-schoolers in a book arts/reflective art-making class, and a portfolio prep after-school program for students who want to apply to attend the baltimore school of the arts. WHOA.

i am, however, glad to introduce the book sleuth, the host character for my series of articles reviewing various the children's/young adult books that i posted super-small slivers of a few weeks ago. each one matches up to the six books from last week (clockwise from top left): harriet the spy, the view from saturday, my father's dragon, the higher power of lucky, a wrinkle in time, and the wednesday wars. his behavior is dictated by some chunk of each story, as though he is taking on the persona of one of the main characters as he reads. then, he (meaning i) share all about the book to get other real-life kids excited about reading! hopefully. more soon! i'm prepping postcards for the show as we speak. and by speak i mean i type and some indeterminate time later, you maybe read.

practically-almost-nearly-virtually a real, grown-up human.

the posting of this illustration comes with a huge sigh of relief since OH YEAH IT'S THE END OF MY THESIS. the last what-if? in the series (for the meantime...?) is "what if... you could bring your stories to life?" because what collection of children's illustrations would be complete without an adorable, tiny nerd in horn-rimmed glasses, really?

after the guilt-ridden sketch post of last week, i powered through and knocked out this one just in time for my final review board on monday, and mica's illustration showcase on thursday. showcase is a delightful event in which the illustration seniors are essentially pimped out to art directors in the hopes that they like what they see and want to pay to see more of it in their publications. this is definitely, probably referring to our illustrations, and not our sexy sexy selves.

too bad it is mega-disgusting outside, i will soon be braving a slimy trip to the print lab to get hard copies of this and all my other what-ifs to prepare for my installation which is WOW REALLY SOON. totally feeling the 'being done right now' thing.

it just takes practice.

i have totally been doing more things than it seems like i have been doing, they just aren't nearly pretty or exhilarating enough to warrant blogging about them. nothing says "WOW AMAZING" quite like html house-cleaning and digital image-tidying... so i apologize for the posts being few and far between, there are all sorts of tiny tasks required so that i can properly commence in like, less than a month. i have managed to stay on track-ish (for now) with my what-ifs, so here is "what if... you could fly?" a classic, i suppose, but a very seriously entertained childhood goal:

did anyone else run down hills constantly, convinced that leaping at just the right time would render you airborne? no? just me? well, all right.

in other news, i finally stocked my etsy shop with a few things. not many to start, but modest collection of silkscreens and digital prints. take a look at it if you please. it's nice, and matches every other tiny web presence i hold. it's also perma-linked to the left now, so you can come and go as you please. i'll be slowly building up a larger variety of items, so stop back frequently!

too busy to come up with a reasonable title.

it's been far too long, i'm so very sorry. here is my latest illustration, "what if... we could live in the clouds?" thoughts?

phew, it's been a busy busy time as of late. i thought my thesis professor whitney sherman was joking and/or crazy when she told us we would accomplish next to no work on our thesis following spring break. turns out? way correct. i have two sketches that are supposed to be in the pipeline that are in fact just chilling out in my brain. sort of. i'm doing my best to stay current over here on the blog, so thanks for being patient.

in other news, i was told that my "what if... flowers bloomed with your every step?" will be the cover of the juxtapositions publication for mica's exhibitions in may-july, aka, the commencement catalog. that is neat.

in which digital coloring corrupts alissandra's soul.

spring break afforded me the luxury of attempting this piece both in gouache, as per normal, and as a fully digital adventure. i prefer the gouache piece (super apparently the second image) both aesthetically and because working entirely digitally made me want to die a little bit. but! here they both are, "what if... you were friends with the monsters under our bed?"
while there are a few magic things that only digital techniques can truly accomplish, my loyalties lie with paint. and brushes. and pushing them around on real paper in real life. i am trying to build up an arsenal of digital skills to incorporate in my manipulation of my final illustrations even when using gouache (like, for example, the colored ink lines and the unifying "nighttime" layer i added after the fact) to maximize the potential digital color has to offer, and to at least be reasonably competent, should something particularly lend itself to being digital. but really, i just don't enjoy it much. bummer, because it is way cost effective, and man it's fun being poor.

also, it features a boy! hooray.

hey! look! for real!

the opening for the mini-mini exhibition i am in was a week-ish ago at the push gallery in phoenix! since i couldn't be there myself, it's nice to have verification that my work was in fact in the show, looking precious. thanks, internet. see more photos of the opening over at spraygraphic's mini-mini art show profile.

the end! more things soon, but i don't want to spoil the surprise. let's just say it starts with a 'w' and ends with a 'hatifyouwerefriendswiththemonstersunderyourbed?' stay tuned.

mini-mini.

i am trying, as i may have mentioned, a full digital finish for my next "what if" piece, which will officially be "what if... you were friends with the monsters under your bed?" that's to come, but for now, some experimentation with fully digitally colored things:

these are two of my dailies from last year, perhaps you remember them, from december, "...and now for something completely different!" and from august, "oh, no." i colored these for spraygraphic's upcoming mini-mini exhibition, which arguably, psychically entered my brain and developed this show specifically for me to submit to. it's uncanny that their show is for 4" square art that will be showing in three arizona galleries (push gallery in phoenix, cartel coffee lab in tempe, and conspire gallery in phoenix) that triangulate my permanent address. if you happen to live near my address (but not me), check out the mini-mini show tomorrow night at push, or later in the month at the other two locations.

anyway, so tiny alissandra digitally colored illustrations. i'm still on the fence about the whole digital thing, both the way it feels to work that way, and the lack of finished art object to show from making it. i like the tactile: books, dolls, and things that also happen to be art, and digital is zero-percent any of those. but my flat aesthetic suits a digital approach, so here we are. testing the waters. thoughts on the whole "oh my god no paint" situation?

oh hey, flying cupcakes.

...that's pretty much what we've got here. officially, this is "what if you could move things with your mind?" but i lovingly refer to it as "telekinetic cupcake party." the "lovingly" part is only true when i'm not thinking about what a pain in the butt those sprinkles were.

this is another gouache painting layered with an ink drawing that has been digitally colored, like the last few. i will be, however, venturing into full digital for the next piece in the series, as yet to be determined. maybe something about dopplegangers, because the idea of a carbon copy you somewhere is sufficiently weird and terrifying.

also, thanks to all of you who came out to my opening on friday night! it was real swell, and a lovely departure from the crazy crazy week i had leading up to it.

dailies week OH NO, or, flowers for everyone.

it's finally happened for real. while i did manage to churn out another two weeks of dailies after the initial I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS panic session, they are for real on hiatus. february appears to the month in which everything ever happens, so i am swamped. they are good things, but there are just so, so many. so many. the dailies will just have to wait. but i love them, so they will be back, i promise.

so that this post isn't entirely void of substance, here's my second 'what if' piece, "what if... flowers bloomed with your every step?"

it's a little desaturated, story of my (and everyone's) blogger-related life. next up is "what if... you could move things with your mind?" and i will give you just one clue: TELEKINETIC CUPCAKES. make of that what you will. fun fact: row houses are the greatest kind of houses.

lastly, my 2008 dailies in their entirety are currently installed in the gateway here at mica. while it was a rough time getting them all ready and installed, it is really exciting to see them all together, fancy style. the opening will be on friday from 5-7pm, and the lovely marika mccoola will be having her opening simultaneous to mine in gateway too, so you can come love on us both!

in which the dailies take an indefinite hiatus.

hello, everyone. it's a bit of a melancholy day here in the studio, since my beloved dailies project, well, how to say this, um, tanked this week. i completed half the week as normal, and then, boom, catastrophe. not in the form of something dramatic, like chernobyl and the hindenberg combined, but in a quiet, sneaky way. before i knew it, my ever-growing list of things to do (like that weird fact that if the population of china marched past you in a single-file line, the line would never end due to the rate of population increase? if that's the case, china and my list have that in common) had grown out of control and my dailies were the sad casualty.

especially since this year's dailies are designed with a "be better" sort of purpose in mind, i wish i had the time to treat them that way. instead, they feel like an afterthought. so... until i get out of the "oh (expletive deleted) i'm (expletive deleted) graduating (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)(EXPLETIVE DELETED)" woods, the dailies will have to wait quietly on my desk to be resumed. tentative plan? my birthday is in may. birthday day will be the day.

well, now that all that unpleasantness is out on the table, here's the first of my thesis pieces in the what if? series, "what if we could talk to animals?"

apparently, if she could talk to animals, she would have forest-storytime. wouldn't you? while i was thinking of these strictly as a series of adorable for kids that would allow me to work with whimsy and narrative, whitney sherman suggested they might accompany a fictitious monthly short-story installment in a kids literary magazine. I THINK THAT'S A GREAT IDEA, CRICKET/LADYBUG/SPIDER ART DIRECTORS.

i'm trying a couple new things with this series, so this one is an ink drawing with a gouache painting layered in photoshop. i'm pretty okay with the process, it's doesn't feel/look too too digital for me, almost. stay tuned to see how things progress! i should have two sketches this week, and since my dailies took a nose-dive, i think i'm going to start posting some of my sketch-phase work (pencils? color studies? something?) so as to not completely neglect the blog here. i'm working on the next one, a "what if flowers sprouted with your every step?" i'm not 100% sold on the language for the title, but you get the gist of it, like the king midas effect, but with flowers and your feet.

practice makes... practice.

with my precious few remaining hours of lazy tv-laden days before i head back to school on thursday, i have been dutifully practicing some inking and basic digital color. these are the product of my efforts: dandy picking flowers in purple socks, book-reading cowgirl-ballerina, and chilly contortionist & friends, with earflaps.

they are nothing fancy, just playing around with colored line. and... i suddenly notice that everyone i draw has bad posture. anyway, i have many things to take care of before i jump on a plane in the wee thursday morning hours, so i'm off to probably ignore them. oh christmas break, you undo all my studious productivity habits.

i am not an elephant.

in all the holiday splendor, i forgot that i never wrapped up my fall thesis. here is the last track, the delightful "in an aeroplane over the sea" by neutral milk hotel. i think this one is my favorite palette. also, the wraparound cover follows, with lots of tiny mixtapes for everyone.

the final book is finished and constructed and all that, but is in baltimore, and i am not. i will properly document it with my shiny new christmas camera as soon as i get home to the city to share with you.

as far as the spring goes, things are still a little up in the air. and by "a little," i really mean I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING NEXT. stay tuned for updates. i hope.

I JUST CAN'T STOP.

continuing on the "upload everything ever super-fast and super-after-the-fact" trend, here are two more pages for my thesis, the weepies' "take it from me" and andrew bird's "tables & chairs." i have a lot of work still to do, but i'm feeling pretty okay about the whole thing. we'll see how the final-final-finished-product turns out. there's only one more page! which is done, but i am going to leave you in suspense.

paint-ink-scan-print-cover-trim-construct-go!

more things more things more things.

i've been doing things i swear! i'm actually much farther along than my blog indicates, i've finished all twelve tracks and fleshed them out as spreads with track and artist information on the left hand side. all i have to do is print them out, paint the cover, and construct the actual book, at what i imagine to be about 7", like vinyl ep size. which, i realize makes little to no sense since it's supposed to be a mixtape (emphasis on the tape) but the book is square to act like an insert booklet so whatever.

anyway, these are tracks eight and nine, the new pornographers playing "the bleeding heart show" and owen playing "a bird in hand." hooray! below that also is the hand-lettering for the track list, although it won't ever appear in the book this way, it will only appear opposite each page on a single-color background, so that your eye can rest at least a little somewhere in this book.

keep an eye out for the rest as i race toward the finish line, aka, christmas.

I CAN'T KNIT.

so as to be not so much a slacker, here's the next track, to the tune of stars' "look up." i should be finishing up the actual playlist-imagery by thanksgiving, and then onto the cover and printing and binding and such wonder.


however, the real purpose of this post is that though i am not a youtube-savvy human, i was alerted of this lovely knit animation via yuko shimizu at lost at e minor, and i kind of love it, her, and them. so watch it! the end.

big fat halfway point.

here are tracks 5 and 6 from my thesis, marking the start of the downhill slide to the finish line, hopefully the good kind of downhill, like "the worst is behind us", not the bad, "it won't get any better than it is now" kind. i'm rounding out the 9th track right now, so you're getting this story time-release style, for savoring? or something.

anyway, the 5th track (below) is pj harvey's "you said something" and the 6th (below below) is "gold in the air of summer" by kings of convenience. tada!