When Tiny is Really Huge

Sometimes, a very tiny thing is actually quite large.  Powerful.  Eye-grabbing.

It's a tough act to pull off, but Lady Bugs and Wild Mushrooms in the forest 

manage it with a classy aplomb that I envy.

My Iphone Case, "Hello Hello".

What's all this tiny talk about?
I'm taking another Lilla Rogers class online - this time it is called Assignment Boot Camp.

All of us who have taken her previous two classes have an edge, because we've already had truck loads of information about the Surface Design Market shoveled into our psyche.

And one of those things is this:  
When you submit your artwork to a company you are simply dying to be with,  
a very good test is to shrink your submission to about the size of a postage stamp. 
Leave the room and then come back and see it grabs you.
If it reads at postage stamp size, you've cleared the first hurdle.

Sounds simple, but with all the 10 million other industry secrets that Lilla has tossed our way, it gets hard to remember.  Especially when you are in creative throes.

For our first assignment, Lilla teased us with a mini-brief.
Draw Cuckoo Clocks.
Lots and lots of them.

For a solid week, cuckoo clocks poured into our online classroom.
Some clocks looked like engineering marvels, with stag heads on top, woodmen and their wives standing on a deck in the middle, and the utterly necessary cuckoo bird screaming from the loft doorway.  It was amazing.

 I started to wonder how on earth something as detailed as a traditional Cuckoo Clock could be translated into a powerful, instant-read icon.
For the Market, remember.  For the broad Masses, you know?

Then Lilla pulled one of her famous tricks.
Take all those very detailed drawings that we had made for a week
and arrange them on an Iphone case.

You know how big/small an Iphone is, right??

She said we didn't REALLY have to put our presentation on an Iphone template, but it would be just fine if we did.  By the time the deadline arrived, I had decided not to - I couldn't choose from the icons I had and didn't want to ditch any of them.  

On Tuesday of last week, Lilla presented to the world the gallery of submissions.  And most of them were on Iphone templates...

We had been drilled to the wall with Lilla's lesson about the importance of a tiny read.
And I won't forget it again.

If you want to have access to over 400 artist's interpretations of Cuckoo Clocks, with quick links to their studios and websites, Lilla Rogers and Beth Kempton have made the class gallery accessible to the public - an amazing gift, both to us and to the public.

Here is the link:  Boot Camp February Gallery

Go take a look - I'm on Page 7!

Meeting the Nutcracker Prince

Early this past Monday morning, our class with Lilla Rogers was given a brief to begin working on.  It was concise, stipulating that we were to study and sketch Winter Holiday ornaments and candy, in order to create a Greeting Card later in the week.  
My little Santa Belles started chingling in the background, 
and within an hour, I had gathered my inspiration board to work from.

Inexplicably, instead of the Reindeer and Snowmen and Candy Canes I had expected, my board was filled with Nutcracker Ornaments and Ribbon Candy.  Neither of which I have EVER had anything to do with at Christmas.  What the heck? 

Grumbling at what I believed to be wasted time, I began sketching, drawing the ferocious teeth that every operational nutcracker automatically has. 

How would he crack those nuts, otherwise?

And then, without volition or conscious reason, I went back and erased those teeth and drew real lips, with a reserved but sweet smile.  The eyes became kind and open, instead of ferocious, and the contour of his face became less of a caricature and more of a man.  I was falling softly in love with this Sweet Prince, and I didn't even know who he was.

Image courtesy of Fiuts.org.

I was remembering that about 15 years ago, Husband and I went with friends to a presentation by the Atlanta Ballet of The Nutcracker.  Halfway through, the men were glassy eyed, and I was struggling to understand the wordless ballet.  It was beautiful, but I had never read the Nutcracker story, wasn't raised with it, so I didn't know what was going on.  I felt bad about that, since this was obviously a beloved cultural tradition.

Enchanted by the ballerinas "on point", and the graceful strength of the men, I missed the whole story line and was sleepily glad when the final curtain fell.

Image courtesy of Fiuts.org.

So, as I drew and amended my Nutcracker, I decided that after I had finished this brief, I would go and find out what the story was behind this beloved symbol of Christmas that had 

taken command of my easel.  But first, it was more important to finish the assignment 
than to understand the story - at least to my way of thinking.

I kept working, unconsciously adding candy sketches, cedar trees, and a snowstorm.  Again and again, I edited out the candy and snow flurries - too busy, too busy - and they kept creeping back in like little mice.  The background kept on being black, when I wanted it to be Christmas Red.  As the deadline loomed, I sat back in my chair, arms crossed, and studied my results.  A drawing I was no longer in control of...somehow, my Nutcracker Prince had softly but firmly steered my artwork to what HE wanted it to be, and I knew it.  
I turned off the lights, and went to bed.

The first thing I did this morning was to search the Internet for 

"What was the story behind The Nutcracker Ballet"?

And there it was.  The girl falling asleep with her Nutcracker Christmas gift wrapped in her arms.  The dream battle with the evil forces, and the girl's decisive throw to kill the evil Mouse King.  An enchanted forest, the candy kingdom, and the snow storm - all introduced by this gentle Prince, who had taken over my drawing.  
This all took place in the deep of the night, of course, so the background had to be black.

I won't question  how that happened, or try to reason through it.  I would rather accept the sparkling enchantment that came alive in my studio for a few days, 

the traces of which linger still.  

Hello, Sweet Nutcracker Prince.  It is lovely to meet you, and more than a little mysterious that you took charge of my drawing, over and over.  You wore me out.

I know you now, and I can't wait to meet you under the Tree, 

or perched on the corner of my desk again.  

This time, I won't fight you so hard, and will get a lot more done with that extra time.

And now, I wish you Good Night - I am off to dream of cedar trees and snowstorms,

with Tchaikovsky's Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairies wafting through the cool night air.

An Aha Moment in Skagway, Alaska

At precisely 10:47 AM on a misty gray morning in Skagway, Alaska, I had an enormous
 Aha! Moment - triggered by this fabric pattern:

I'm not 100 percent sure who the artist is that drew this happy group, but the palette and line work makes me think it is Helen Dardik -I apologize if it isn't, and would love to hear from anyone out there who does know. 

Now, this is a little complex, so bear with me here.

Skagway is nestled in a cove at the end of the Lynn Canal, off Chilkoot Inlet, with towering emerald green mountains draped around it - the gate keepers to the Klondike Gold Fields.   A pretty town, it is frothing with gorgeous blooms that drink in the cool, moist air.

  

We arrived by water, like most visitors do, and were given the day to explore. 

As we strolled the downtown area, I spied a quilt shop sign down a side street.
  

I'm not a quilter, but felt compelled to turn down the street to investigate.  After all, 
it takes art to make quilting fabric, and I was missing that kind of thing.  

Never mind that we were seeing jaw dropping art sliding past our ship every minute of every hour, I was craving the human-rendered connection to those miraculous vistas; patterns, color charts, and Photoshop in use by humans to capture the power of nature.

The magic stuff, you know?

Struggling through the crowds on the boardwalk that resulted from about 7,000 people being poured out of the cruise ships in the harbor, I made my way to the little doorway.

  

Well.

It looked like a good portion of those people were packed into this one tiny shop, the 

 Rushin' Tailor Quilt Shop.

Turning sideways, I eased into the foyer and wriggled my way over to the left wall, where cut pieces were neatly folded into bundles with belly bands, stacked from floor to ceiling.  

Photo by The Rushin Tailor's Quilt Shop in Skagway, Alaska

  Something from Week 1 of  Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells  class tugged at my brain.

As I hung there in a space of my own, zooming up and down the corridors of my mind, chasing that tantalizing clue, a little girl eased up beside me and stroked the fabric bundles in the basket thoughtfully.  She already had a piece held carefully in her hand, and she spoke to her father, who was squeezed in behind her.  "I like this one, too...".  I looked around me and saw the same thing going on all over the shop.  Men, women, and children were carefully studying and comparing the thousands of bundles packed into every available nook and cranny, and their faces held a quiet pleasure I had seen nowhere else on this trip.  

I felt like I had walked into a chapel. 

I picked up the bundle of Llama fabric and suddenly, the Lilla Lesson came into sharp focus, running like Surround Sound in my head.  Every single item in the shop was the result of someone's artwork.   An Art Director had bought or licensed the art to use on fabric.  This fabric.  Suddenly, I wasn't just looking at a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes anymore, 

I was DISSECTING the designs, automatically!

See?  Here is one of the main characters from that fabric - a Placement Graphic:

Notice the eye contact, and the sweet, open face that says, "I like myself, and I like you. "

It is part of this fabric design, but it could also be pulled out and used by itself on a child's back pack, wall decal, pencil case, etc.

See these mountains?  See how they overlap and create a whole new motif to look at?  That little overlap area could readily be pulled out and made into a whole new design for a coordinating fabric, or a stand-alone design.

And this little guy could be lifted right out and centered on a child's T shirt - throw on a pair of purple pants, and you have a cutie-patootie outfit!

See what I mean?  Dissected. So many motifs in that one pattern, in yummy colors, that could be pulled out and used in clothing, children's tableware, bedding, wall art and decals.  That is what Lilla kept pounding into our lessons - give the Art Director who is looking at your work some Bang For their Buck.  Give them a lot in every design. 

I wasn't able to see the promise in these individual icons, until my Aha Moment - during the six week course, submissions by my classmates looked like random collections of artfully drawn and colored shapes, pasted onto the requisite 8 x 10 file.  I couldn't see the "X Factor" in many of the ones she selected to review, until 10:47 AM, Skagway time.  I got it!  

Good.  This isn't going to be easy, so I'm off to practice.  
A lot.

Thank you for visiting with me!