The Biker Maker

This is a project I've been working on all year, and I'm really excited to share it with you!  It's called The Bike Maker and it's a short, very short chapter book about a boy named Miles whose father is the famous Bike Maker of Sweet Grass, Louisiana.  When his father dies, Miles must overcome his grief, make friends, and become the next bike maker.  That's the simple version.  There is a lot of symbolism personal to me, since the story is inspired by my dad, who built these weird, unridable bikes before he died.

This piece will go into my final senior show at Memphis College of Art.  I plan on developing the story much further after graduation.  In the meantime, here's a sneak peek!

(pssst:  this is the cover)

DAD'S TALL TALES

Okay, so it's been a while...and I mean A WHILE!  The past year I've been working on a series called "Dad's Tall Tales," inspired by the exaggerated stories my dad told of his childhood.  I may have mentioned it in previous posts, but I hardly remember any movies I watched last week.  So I'm going to tell you AGAIN!

In my Illustration 3 class (2012), I painted three paintings for "Dad's Tall Tales," which I submitted to the Communication Arts annual.  It didn't get in of course, but never quit submitting!

Anyway, that spurred an entire body of work called "Dad's Tall Tales." Here are the first three.  All are the same size, 9x16", and are painted in acrylic.

These are the pieces I did last semester.  I did a total of seven pieces, but these are only three.  I'll post the others as soon as I can.  

I'M NOT DEAD!

It's been a while (about a year?), but now I'm back and ready to share what I'm up to…which is quite a lot actually.  Let's start with what I'm currently doing!  Can you say…FIGHTER PILOTS IN SPACE RIDING ON BOOKS?  Yep, I can!  It's my design for the Memphis Library Card contest, due today.  I originally wasn't planning on designing a card, since I'm working on my Bachelor's of Fine Arts piece (I'll get to that later).  But I figured this would be a lovely break from doing class assignments, or should  I say "opportunities," since I need to stop thinking like a student.  So here you go!

It started as a pencil sketch, then I scanned it into Photoshop and painted it digitally.  Here are my favorites!