I’m slowly working up my portfolio to hopefully start to grab myself some freelance work. I’m focusing my illustrations on a few areas, one of them being musicians. A few of you may remember the Tori Amos art I did a while back. This time I went more rock and did a fun illo featuring a rock band I adore, the Norwegian band BigBang.

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I posted it on twitter yesterday and the band themselves have already acknowledged it and linked to it from their facebook page! How cool is that? My inspiration for the illo came from their gig that I saw last month, and I couldn’t wait to get it drawn! I think it’s definitely portfolio worthy

On a side not, GO “LIKE” my ILLOLUV FACEBOOK PAGE to get illo updates as soon as they happen!

This week NASA succenssfully launched Juno a probe headed to Jupiter. The journey will take before it arrives, and we are sure to get an in depth look at Jupiter once it’s there. In Roman mythology, Juno was one of Jupiter’s lovers. Oh, and also, possibly his sister. (wait… what?)

I remember when Cassini launched on it’s way to Saturn. I have a relative who was working on the project at the time, and when he told me it would take 7 years to get there I thought the day would never come. That was 14 years ago. Scary how time flies. I suspect Juno will be arriving at Jupiter before we realize it!

Anyone who knows me knows of my love of the stars and anything related to space. It was always a passion of my dad’s and he passed that on to me. If he were alive today I’m certain he would feel sadness with the end of the shuttle program. I wish I could ask him about how he felt when they started it and when they tested Enterprise and then launched Columbia into space for the first time. With all the stories he told me over the years I, sadly, don’t remember the ones about the shuttles.

I think the first time I consciously paid attention to a shuttle mission was the reparation of the Hubble telescope in 1993. I remember watching the astronauts floating out there in space and I remember having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

In recent years the internet has made it possible to be able to watch what we’re doing up there in space at all times. Watching the shuttle launches has been a thrill for me. Of course, I would have given anything to have gone to a shuttle launch and seen it live. But I never had that chance.

Today was the last shuttle launch starting the 135th and final mission of the shuttle program. I can’t help but be sad about it. I know that the American astronauts will continue to visit the ISS via Russia, and I know that there is a possibility NASA will turn to private companies for a new spacecraft. I can only hope that the future (and by that I mean IN MY LIFE TIME) holds great things for the space program. We owe a lot that we use in our day-to-day lives to it.

Beautiful, flawless launch, Atlantis. Have fun up there and have a safe trip home.

I posted my first set of these about a month ago. Since then I’ve completed two more. To refresh, these are just tiny scenes from my life drawn on on artist cards (3.5? x 2.5? or 6.35 x 8.89 cm).

I started drawing this one in the winter some time but never got to finish it until a couple of weeks ago. It was hard to work on something full of snow when it’s like summer outside.

And to contrast it, here’s a summery one of me walking though the city enjoying a warm, sunny day. I started and finished this one this afternoon while at a friend’s apartment creating art with her and her sweet little girl.

I’ll continue to make these as I have time for them. I really do enjoy doing them!

A friend of mine has gotten into making soaps and will be selling them for the first time very soon. She asked me to come up with the label design for her. She had her own ideas. She named her company “LillaSyster Soap Co.,” and since “lillasyster” is the swedish word for “little sister,” she wanted a sweet little girl in a bathtub with a rubber duck. Thus…

I decided I wanted to make the little girl resemble my friend a bit. It was simple enough but fun to do. I can’t wait to see it on her packaging! She just started a facebook page for her products, and she’s preparing for her first show. Lots of luck, Leslie!

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A couple of weeks ago, while I was watching Sweden get its butt kicked by FInland in hockey, I found myself yelling out “valiant attempt!” at the TV during one of Sweden’s more desperate goal attempts. This sparked a memory I hadn’t thought of in a while.

When I was in my first elementary school (K-2), we had a spring fair every year that involved a cake decorating contest. I remember my first cake. It was a yellow cake with white cake frosting, and my mom let me go to town on it with an icing bag with red and blue icing. It was one big kindergardener scribble.

For my second cake, my dad had this great idea. He wanted us to make a cake with a mountain and a train going around it.

We started with a double layer devils food cake, and covered it in white frosting. We also made a flat, rectangular devils food cake. My dad cut the flat cake into squares and stacked a bunch of them on top of each other with toothpicks holding it upright. Next, he took a knife and carved the mountain out of it, and then attached it to the main cake with toothpicks. Then we melted a bowl of white icing, and poured it over the mountain to create “snow.” After that I drew train tracks around the cake with chocolate icing, and we cut up the remaining squares into train cars. We stuck those onto the cake and, TAHDAH, we had our cake!

We were both so proud! We took it to the fair and set it down on the table with all the other cakes, hoping to win for best cake.

Judging came and went, and we did, in fact, end up taking a small trophy home. NOT for “Best Cake” as we had hoped, but, instead, for “Most Valiant Attempt.”

I was about 6 years old, so I had never seen the word “valiant” before. And on the following Monday I took my little trophy in to class for show-and-tell and I announced to the class that I had won the prize for:

“Most Violent Attempt.”

I can’t remember if it was my teacher or my dad who later corrected me. But I have never been able to forget its meaning since..

In any case, it’s one of my favorite memories of my dad. He was so excited about this cake. I think it’s the only time I ever made a cake with my dad. I wish I had pictures of it. And I wish I could talk to my dad about it. That’s why I decided to draw it instead.