April Work {illustration}

(designed by Ani Arambula)

(designed by Rebecca Metta)

(designed by Greg Schmidt)

(designed by Greg Schmidt)

(designed by Rebecca Metta)

(designed by Rebecca Metta)

 Here are all the illustrations I did in April. My favorite ones are the container gardening one and the apartment building cigarette. The other ones were, what I call, quick and dirty! Thanks for looking.

March Work {illustration}

(designed by Rebecca Metta)

(designed by Gloria Orbegozo)

(designed by Ani Arambula)

Here are the illustrations I worked on in March. It seemed like a slow month, but I was really working ahead on the next month which was twice as busy. I got to experiment with paint this month, too. Watercolor with the Home and Garden illustration and gouache with the Spring Arts Cover. I am loving the unpredictability of watercolor. It always looks different after it dries. More watercolor to come...Happy weekend!

Information Illustrations {illustration}

Here are some Illustration/Graphics that ran last year. I thought that they all fit nicely together as a group because they are not just pretty pictures or conceptual illustrations. These types of informational illustrations take extra time because of the proofing process that goes into them—not just for typos, but for accuracy too.  In the end, the result makes it all worth it.  Enjoy.

February Work {illustration}

Yes, it's already the middle of March, but here is a grouping of illustrations from February. The watercolor work in the Garden Craft page was so much fun, you will see much more of it in the coming month. It is so nice to pick up a paintbrush again! Enjoy.

January Work {illustration}

Here are some of my illustrations that ran in January. It was a pretty slow month, with a lot more planning than doing. But I had some exciting things happen...

 

First, the art for depression, based on this sketch I did, turned into a really nice page. The great Charles Apple even wrote a whole post about it here! He said it was "charmingly clever," which my husband later borrowed to describe me. If my husband pulls that one out again on Valentine's Day he is set for life!

    This illustrated map, that appeared with one of our first features on Balboa Park and the changes they are making for their centennial celebration in 2015, was a bittersweet project. I worked so hard getting the colors just right, then in a rookie mistake, I botched the job! These are the colors how they should have appeared - see the version above on the page to see how it actually printed. (For the Illustrator using crew: I modified colors that were pantone colors but did not rename the colors. When you go to print, the pantone name of the color over-rides any changes you may have made to the formula of the color. I am very lucky, though—it could have been much worse!)     

This was one of my favorite jobs of the month. I got to make pretty art of a whale! I was definitely influenced by David Weidman. I did a post on him a while back as well. I had to do 2 versions of the art to fit the different proportions of our two covers. I still don't know which one I like better.

Hope you enjoyed this months run down of illustrations! Have a fantastic weekend!

Merry Christmas!

This is the holiday card I designed for the Imperial College of London. It features the Queen's Tower which was built to mark Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887. This was such a fun job—I especially enjoyed drawing the lions that guard the steps. May you all have a wonderful holiday season. Enjoy!

PRINT SALE!

Hello last minute shoppers and procrastinators!
If you ever admired one of our prints, here is a chance to get one for 50% off. We are feeling the holiday spirit and decided to reward those of you who took their time shopping this year. This offer is only good until December 21st so take advantage!
Happy Holidays from Byvik Ink!

Holiday giveaway with Bark n Knit

Hello there! We are having a giveaway! Okay, really my sister is handling the entries, but we are providing the prizes. My sister, an avid knitter, dog-lover and mom to almost two runs the very popular blog BarknKnit. To win a set of our Partridge in a Pear Tree cards or a mixed set of our holiday gift tags visit her blog and see the many ways you can enter.

Hope you are all having fun shopping for gifts and decorating for the holidays. Have a great season and thank you, Natalie, for partnering—if partnering means being in charge of—with us on this giveaway!

Fall Leaves {illustration}

I know that Fall is creeping into winter already, but here are some illustrations I did with leaves as inspiration. The first large leaf was for the Arts section, previewing the upcoming fall season. The second illustration was for our food section and bragged about how us San Diegans can continue to grill out well into the fall. Sorry to rub it in, but we'll probably grill out this weekend! Have a good one, grill or no grill!

Kids are Free {illustration}

Our weekend tabloid got a new logo and look this week and I got to illustrate the cover - it was on Kids Free Month. During the month of October, kids get in free to all sorts of places in San Diego (see illustration.) I also took this opportunity to post some other covers that ran over the last couple of months. The cover with the layers of sand is not really an illustration, but I came up with the concept and drove all around San Diego County collecting ziploc bags of sand - so it is still my baby. K.C. Alfred took the photo - thanks, KC! While we are on the subject of weekends, hope you all have a great one!

Designers: Child's Play cover by Tara Stone; The Amazing Race, Explore the Shore and Sounds of Summer by Chris Barber; Setting the Table by Beto Alvarez (Illustrations by me!)

Seeing Red {illustration}

I guess I've been a little obsessed with the color red lately. I try and try to use other colors, but red just seems to work better emotionally and aesthetically in a lot of instances. Here are three recent pages with illustration/photo illustrations of mine. The Arts pages where designed by Gloria Orbegozo and the Chargers Preview page was designed by Anthony Tarantino. Enjoy!

Water Coloring {illustration}

Here is an illustration for the San Diego Lantern Festival that published last month. I got the go ahead to have fun with this one - they don't all have to be conceptual! Yippee! I decided to play around with watercolors. I painted and played around with shapes and colors -yes, it was a blast. Then I scanned all the textures and pasted them into lantern shapes I made in Illustrator. The end result was a beautiful and textural light show. At least that is what I decided. It did get me away from the computer for an afternoon. That is success in my book! I hope you all can enjoy time away from your computers too! Happy day!

Decisions, Decisions 2012

 

As an illustrator, my time is spent more on the features sections of the newspaper, not so much the news sections.  This year I got to create fictional election buttons for the candidates for our coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions. I had more fun than I though I would - I played around with half-tones, shadows and shiny highlights in Photoshop. What do you think? Do you like my buttons? Did I represent both sides fairly?

The conventions are over and it's time for the debates and finally our decisions. I hope you will all get out and vote no matter which button you like best - and no matter what obstacle you have to overcome to do so. Have a great weekend!

Stomach troubles {illustration}

The top illustration of the woman in orange and pink was done by me last month for a story on probiotics - why we need them, what foods have them, supplements, etc. The second illustration of the man in green was done by me on the exact same subject about 6 years ago. This happens a lot with my job. The same subjects come around, sometimes every year, and you have to come up with a great idea over and over. In this case, I used the same concept, but hopefully changed it enough that it feels like a new illustration. I sometimes wonder what the rules should be about recycling art for a similar story. What is your opinion? How much time should go by before a publication should re-use a piece of art? Never? Sometimes? How about, only if it's good enough? Just wondering... now I have a stomach ache.