Thumbnails

Our cat Me-Mow acts as an alarm clock (when he feels like it). Most days he shows up in my bed, because he's looking for a warm place to sleep off his breakfast. At times he will dig at the hem of my comforter, until I let him under the covers. He nests there for hours. It's adorable! When he gets warm, he migrates above the covers and pretty much just takes over the whole bed. I started taking his picture because he's so CUTE when he's not disrupting me! Sometimes I'll comment on his shape saying "you look like a loaf of bread!" or "Are you a jelly bean?!" What I am failing to capture in text is that I use a shrill voice, as though talking to a baby. He ignores me. So now I draw him… and parade his likeness on the Internet! I started #RestingCatShape as a way to break into the #Caturday movement. It's not a daunting project because it's simply one drawing of the cat each week. I took the time to compile a collection of th...

Whoosh! March is gone and April looks like it's going to be a whirlwind adventure. I've got a LOT in the works and a bunch of upcoming events to note: First up is the April Open Studio at Western Avenue Studios and Lofts : THIS Saturday, April 4th, from noon - 5pm. Please stop by and say hi … and buy some art from me and/or the 150+ other artists on site. ;-) I will be in my studio (#112) working on costumes and more picture book portfolio (more on that shortly). Next up, I have a piece in the Four By Four for Education show over at the Brush Gallery . The show has been up a few weeks. The final day/fundraising reception: Saturday, April 11th, from 2 − 5pm. My piece on display is the Woven Heart ( #141 in the slideshow ). Admission is $25 which benefits a UMASS Lowell (art) scholarship. The admission fee also gets you one of the original pieces from the show. Woven Heart © Samantha Grenier 2015 To cap off my month, the  Society of Children's Book Writers and Il...

Tomorrow night is the final Holiday shopping excursion at Western Avenue Studios & Lofts . The Loading Dock Gallery is hosting a Homemade Holiday Shopping Night . Stop by after work if you'd like - Official Gallery/shopping hours are 5pm - 9pm, Thursday, December 18th. I will be stopping by the gallery as well. I hear there will be some food sold to benefit the Miracle Providers . I have a couple things to finish up in the studio, so naturally my door will be open once I've finished shopping/grazing/socializing. My studio hours will be (about) 6:30-9:00 pm. I'm located on the 1st Floor in the C/D Mill. Hope to see you there!

Paper Knot Studio - #112 at Western Avenue Studios. 1st Floor in C/D Mill Tomorrow marks my first  First Saturday Studio Opening. First Saturday is the widely advertised Western Avenue Studio opening to the public . The building is generally open during the week or whenever The Loading Dock Gallery has active hours. The first Saturday of every month is pinned as the day many of the artists will be opening their doors to buyers and general curious. Western Avenue Studios If you want to visit me, please feel free to do-so! Studios will be open from Noon - 5pm Saturday. As you can see above, there are a LOT of studios to browse…. not everyone will be open, but many will be. Paper Knot Studio (a.k.a. me) is located in Studio 112. You should be able to spot me just from my cute stripy awning. But if you want to find me quick, I'm on the first floor of the C/D Mill; entrance is next to the loading dock (seen there on the within that GREEN space. There should be a sign and/...

A bit of color blocking for a 4-page narrative. Book Pacing workshop by Deborah Freedman and Frank Dormer. And *poof* the New England SCBWI Conference is over. Actually it's been over for about two weeks. I'm still working off the inspired energy I picked up from all the workshops. I miss it, but I know it'll always be in my heart… I took copious notes! Other illustrators working-working-working. I still have a small stack of postcards remaining from the portfolio showcase. Those will be mailed out to select Art Directors later this week. I have to admit I still hold my breath a bit when I'm about to send out postcards. It reminds me of the theme of this year's conference: "Be Brave: Make your mark". Though I've become a lot more confident with showing off my work, it's the ceremonial mailings which throw me. It's been a while since I last sent out any promotions and now I'm trying to build it into a seasonal routine. I'...

Portfolio - Spring 2014 We're setting out for the SCBWI New England Conference tomorrow. "We" is me,  Sheli Petersen  and Sheli's mother/author, Patricia Petersen. I'm packed, updated , and eager to meet everyone. I can hardly believe it's already time to head down to Springfield again :->; I am really pumped for this conference and I'm ready to let the inspiration vibes strike me. Above are a few bits from my book assembly from the past week. On the left are some finished snippets from one of my spreads, and the right is the black and white study of my mock mini portfolio. I have to tell you the mock-mini folio helped a LOT. it was great to see the impact of my ills in the small scale and to make sure that my values had enough contrast. Highly recommended. I did a similar study last year for the Infirm Pachyderm poster . This year I combed through my full book in black and white format before taking everything to print. I'm very pr...

Morning collaging - torn papers and glue. I'm still here. Quietly working on my portfolio… neglecting my blog. The past month was filled with doodling and other paper-cutting activities. On top of that I'm slowly, slowly, slowly building out my studio space to make it viewer-friendly. Priority number one is polishing off my portfolio for the New England chapter Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrator's conference . I've only got one more week left on the timeline, but I'm feeling confident with the book organization as it stands. Though I still have oodles of work to complete by next Friday, I'm close to press and assembly, so the deadline doesn't feel scary-close (this time around). Fingers crossed for my postcards. They should be landing some time Friday or Saturday, so let's keep our eyes on the mailbox for them. ~Samantha

Think bright pink exclamation point. 200 pt Nueva: Pink Exclamation Mark - © Samantha Grenier 2014 That is me this week. I am an exclamation mark because 3 great things occurred in my life this week: 1. I toured and have a studio space on reserve for me at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, Massachusetts. This not only puts a rocket launcher into my part time freelance illustration career, but it's getting me out of the house so that I can interact with an inspiring community. I sign my lease later this week and there will most likely be many  studio set-up photos to follow over the next month. 2. Did you know I wrote a macrame book? Did write/illustrate... now sifting through the draft. I got to see my Book Baby for the first time Tuesday. I'm pretty sure followers on Twitter could hear my scream from delight. Here is the official book announcement sent by Fox Chapel Publishing: Hello! Macramé should be landing in crafty stores April/May. 3. Though ...

Make Art That Sells Assignment 5 Final - Party Goods. It's all over now :*{ No more Make Art That Sells class work. I had a BLAST on this last project. I decided to work on bits which would be appropriate for a little girl's party. So I came up with these three Flower Girl characters and laced some of the little icons from their dresses into the ribbon-like patterns on the paper goods: Flower Girl character designs. © Samantha Grenier My favorite part of this assignment sketching out ideas. I became fascinated with folk art and florals. Below are a couple pages from my books: Party Paper Sketches 1 Assorted Icons - © Samantha Grenier Party Paper Sketches 2 Birds and Girls - © Samantha Grenier I was tempted to render my final pieces in paint, (I have Folk Art brand paint sitting on my desk!) but I'm kind of a novice with the "finished" look in paint, so I shy'ed away from it. I can see this in my cut paper technique too. Party-party!...

Map of Amherst, NH - Editorial Illustration Assignment I can hardly believe Lilla's course is nearly over. This session has been challenging but very rewarding. I'm THRILLED I took up a spot in Part B. I was nervous just before the class started up because I struggled with conceptualizing my finals for Part A, and I've got a big side project on my hands which I had to juggle into the mixture of drawing. Above everything else in the course, I really looked forward to this past week's assignment: Editorial. I've been so focused the past couple years on Children's Book illustration, but I have a strong attraction to editorial work which I'm starting to re-investigate while I build up my Picture Book portfolio. This week's assignment was to design a map of our home town. So WELCOME to Amherst, New Hampshire: Close-up of some of the colonial buildings from the historical district. And a Pine branch. Amherst prides itself on it's rich colo...

Assignment #2: Baby Apparel Babies are fun. No doubt about that :-) I had oodles of fun working on my camp-themed Baby Apparel Assignment for the Make Art That Sells eCourse . I struggled with this assignment... just a little bit. The struggle wasn't about coming up with ideas to complete the assignment, but that I couldn't stop drawing. Below are some close-ups of the final artwork, since it's so hard to see in it's tiny-format. Placement fabric design: Animal trailers and trees. Baby Girl's dress mock-up. Tree patterned onesie. "Camp Cutie" onesie. The color pallet was inspired by Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom .  I got a little carried away with the film inspiration and ideas kept flowing in about scouting. I had to take a day or two to re-collect my thoughts on the project, but kept drawing all the while. I eventually landed on my final animal campers, which may be a little abstract for baby apparel, but still cute no...

Holiday Card -- First Assignments Yep! Back in class :-) I'm back to taking Lilla Roger's eCourse Make Art The Sells (or MATS for short). The first assignment had me whittling away at Holiday cards. I LOVED making this card! I know I may have gotten a little too ambitious with this assignment, but I had a vision and I just had to go for it. I don't want to burn out after assignment #1... I've got four more weeks to tackle! This is definitely one of the market niches I've really taken to. Though the assignment was to make 2 cards, my second composition never left the sketchbook because I became so consumed by this one. I did struggle with background quite a bit. Here are some of the samples: Holiday card background samples. Right to left - flat navy, silver lacy, and assorted darks (shown here with lace detail). The navy is a little different for a Christmasy card. All the bits and pieces were originally pooled together against a white background, bu...

illustrator-sam.com  -- website update! Gone Conferencing! The website has been updated with a fresh coat of (digital) paint, and new pieces born since the New England SCBWI Conference . Now I'm setting off for the West Coast for the Biggie Conference in Los Angeles. Hope to see some of you there, and for those not attending, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators will be blogging and Tweeting the whole shebang here (blog) and here (twitter feed or follow #LA13SCBWI). I'm ready for some learning!

I flourished despite about 50 disputes with a container of Mod Podge: "Flourish" decorative collage. I'm going to be perfectly honest here: I nearly (and am still tempted to) tear up a huge wad of tissue/tracing/velum/watercolor papers and just spell out the word "SHIT!" I didn't think it would be appropriate for the class, it seemed resentful. It does sound snarky and negative, but I can see it... "Shit" would be fun. Who wouldn't want a big "S-H-I-T" on their wall? Yes, I did swear at my materials about a dozen times before collaging  won me over. I think it's the designing of the composition I like so much... that and transparency papers. Part of the construction of this piece consisted of a fight with a single paint brush, glue, humidity, bleeding inks, and my inability to get a zipper to zip the way I wanted it to. Also I was stabbed by a staple from the zipper package. My grudge against the zipper has passed and I...

Meet my egotistical snail! So week #3 from Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells eCourse was all about the Picture Book. "Yay!" I thought. I thought.... Almost there, but no lollipop! We were to either illustrate a book cover or interior spread to a Hans Christen Andersen fable. I chose the spread because I really liked the assortment of possibilities, but I feel like I tried to show too much: "Finished" illustration spread for The Snail and the Rose Tree , by Hans Christen Andersen. The bit I enjoyed the most about this assignment was that we needed to somehow integrate hand-lettering - whether it be the title of the book or text within the story.  I can't explain why I've been dragging my feet on about testing out hand lettering, but I really had fun with this, I just wish I tried illustrating type and hand lettering sooner: Text "Bear Nuts" - Those are Hazelnuts. Text "Give Milk". Text "Grow Roses". ...