The Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival!

Check it out, all! I did the flyer for the Visionary Tattoo Art Festival going on in July at Asbury Park, NJ and will also be a guest artist all weekend and will be vending my wares as well as Little Asian Sweatshop's. I hope to see you there!

I completed this flyer in about a week and a half, the deadline was pretty tight with the shop that runs the show getting approval for it to go on later than normal because of damage to the beach from Hurricane Sandy. So this is the 'unfortunate' result of me being bad at time management and artwork negotiations/consultations with friends who are fans whose enthusiasm for my work is contagious. Especially when they're feeling my ideas and give me lots of creative control. Before I've put pen to paper I've promised them (and myself) the moon and stars because you know, I'm THE Paige Pumphrey! I can do MAGIC! AND it involves impressing a subculture from which I at one point in my life felt excluded from? Oh MAN, ALL THE BUTTONS.

We wanted to make the branding of the Festival more light and beachy and family-friendly as opposed to previous years where it had a more 'come out and get some nails in your dick/metallll wooooooo!' vibe. After being shown examples of the beautiful facade of the Convention Hall, with it's Victorian sea monsters and copper plating, I was inspired to make the design an early 20th century/Victorian themed beach poster. Looking at the works of JC Leyendecker, an all-time favorite artist of mine, as well as the art and feel of the Battleship Bay area of Bioshock: Infinite (which my husband has just arrived at in the game) I knew I had quite an undertaking. My clients also really liked the layout of my Saints and Sinners flyer for my artshow a couple years back- of having two characters framed by very detailed typography. We chose a sword-swallowing mermaid and the Asbury Park mascot Tillie (who is similar to the Coney Island funny face) in old-timey swimwear to be the 'hosts' of the flyer.

Rough sketches of the mermaid and Tillie.

Tight pencils.

Inks. (Scanned in Photoshop.)

Flat colors.

Slowly starting to lay out the flyer. Originally I was going to use Victorian clipart to save time, my husband however looking over my shoulder suggested it would look soooo much better if I drew all the filigree and framework out. Begrudgingly I agreed with him.

Printing out what I had at 40% opacity, I drew out all the elements by hand- the banners, the gold railing, the sun-shaped caption for the date. I even added a sea monster as a call back to the building facade.

Scanning the sketches for the elements, I traced and built them out of vector shapes in Illustrator, then ported them over to Photoshop for placement on the actual flyer. You can notice some of the changes elements went through during the process.

Coloring in all the elements individually, adding shading, texture and slowly figuring out my palette. In the end the only clipart I ended up using was the background filigree and the seashells on the the gold railing. 

Hello 2012!

Got a lot of stuff cookin' in 2012!

2011 is done! Holy crap, what a year! I frequently used the word 'tumultuous' to describe my goings-on. So many personal milestones and the stressed out times leading up to them- my wedding, a new job, a new lifestyle as a professional freelancer working from home to boot! The new vocation of freelance letterer for manga imprint Kodansha Comics is starting to hit it's stride, I already have my first published lettering work out- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex book 2: Testation and I'm currently juggling Ghost in the Shell's third book as well as the 24th volume of Air Gear. So so beyond happy to be involved in comics as part of my now dayjob, and to spend all day with my beloved husband Ballsy who works freelance from home as well. And we don't even get on each other's nerves or anything, which is impressive when we sit back-to-back with each other in our home office for hours at a time. Nope, we just blast through season after season of tv shows on Netflix and listen to Bachelor Pad radio all day. We are truly living the dream.

Color sketch/progress shot of my new art book cover- 'Thanks For Your Support!'
Get it? Support? Yuckety yuck. ;D

2012 is laid out before me with more opportunities than ever to share my creations with you and I'm already setting up events well into the year alongside my BFF Fenny's company Little Asian Sweatshop, to deliver a one-two punch of awesome artwork, accesories and hopefully later in the year... *apparel*! Ooooohhh! So far on tap we are going to be vending the March 10th bout for the Charm City Roller girls at DuBurns Arena. I haven't been to a CCRG bout in a couple years so I'm super excited to attend. We also have solidified plans to have a *MASSIVE* corner booth at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina in late June that we will be sharing along with a few friends. We also plan on attending the NYC Psychobilly Luau again with a vengeance, hopefully this year it won't be during an awful heat wave. Then in September I'm hitting Baltimore with a double-whammy of a release party for my second artbook, titled 'Thanks For Your Support!' at The Ottobar and yet another booth this time at Baltimore Comic Con. I'll send out reminders as these events get closer. There will hopefully be plenty more events that I be involved in, we're always looking out for vending opportunities. Here's to an awesome 2012!

Loki sez 'Happy Mew Year!' >^_^<

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!! :D

First off let me just say:
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! XD



SO IT'S OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: As of Friday, September 2nd 2011- I have put my two weeks in at Freeze (aka the Tshirt Mines, aka Art Jail, aka my hellish tshirt design job I've been at for 4 1/2 years that was going nowhere), because I will be officially working for Kodansha manga as a freelance letterer! That's right, all- I can *finally* say it.
I *OFFICIALLY* work in comics! XD

This is a HUGE step in the right direction. It will also give me the opportunity to do more stuff for myself once my schedule regulates- more commissions, more projects. I'm hoping to actually start getting my comic together actually DOING the damn thing down the road. What's the old saying? Freelancers work 16 hours a day for themselves instead of 8 hours a day for someone else? But this is sooo much more satisfying of work. Plus I get to have my name on my work and I've got way more control over my incoming money. More work equals more pay! What a concept!
So EXCITED to no longer work in the fashion industry, even if I was in the lower rungs. The entire industry is rotten from the top and full of the worst people. No trends, no buyers, no style guides, no whims, no 'I don't liiiike purple!', no 'that isn't funny enough', no verbage, no Walmart, no cubicles, no snotty fashion bitches in the elevators, no $12 Midtown lunches....
It's just me and the letters.


'Like a fart in the wind.'

I'm not supposed to disclose exactly what I'm working on yet, but it's pretty high profile. My mom actually knows what it is, if that says anything. As of tonight I've finished 40 pages of a 276 paged book that's due at the end of September. Slowly building up my sound effect library. Only 1 approved sound effect font for this particular comic so I've gotta stretch and squash it a bajillion different ways. Once I'm done my final two weeks at Freeze and I'm free to work my full freelance schedule getting the pages done will be a snap. Plus I get to work alongside my most favorite person in the world, my future husband Ballsy. Speaking of which, these next two months leading up to the wedding are gonna be crazy!! And afterwards? Things are gonna be awesome. ^__^