Tammis Keefe

One of my favorite illustrator/designers is Tammis Keefe (also sometimes known as Peg Thomas, a clever way she used to get around non-compete contracts, haha). I think I feel a special affinity to her as a fellow Californian textile designer, but I also just love her style and subjects. I love Vera too, like everybody else, but Tammis’ work is always a little weirder, a little more playful. She has her florals, but mostly she’s known for quirky illustrations of animals, people, circuses, balloons, locomotives & so on. There’s some great info on her here and here.

I had seen Supayana’s Etsy shop on a few different design & fashion blogs lately and fell in love with this cat print shirt she was offering. It felt very Tammis Keefe to me and I waaaanted it. I wasn’t sure the high-neck wide-sleeve version would be flattering on me though, so I messaged her asking if she’d be willing to make a custom size in the fabric for me. As it turned out, YES it was a Tammis Keefe print (looks like a few tribute prints were made by Michael Miller Fabrics but it doesn’t look like a lot of them are still available) and YES she could make me a custom shirt. It arrived today and I loooove it. The fabric is amazing (look at those cats! Aaahhh!) and the shirt itself is so well made and exactly the shape I wanted. I’m no fashion blogger, but I’m so happy with it I had to share how it turned out.

There’s also a bunch of Tammis Keefe hankies and such on Etsy right now (and I’ve found a few of my own at flea markets). Check out that unicorn!

1 / Gramily
2 / Splendor in the Trash
3 / At Home Modern
4 / Murdups
5 / Dr. Carrot
6 / Murdups
7 / Sweet Alice Loves You (another Alice–nice!)

Kitty Picnic at BC Footwear

Hop on over to BC Footwear to see some little vignettes I drew about Spring things we love…picnicking kitties & more! Happy Spring!

It’s a new year!

So the holidays are far behind us now but I still wanted to share this illustration I did for Seychelles & BC Footwear for their holiday card. Art directed by Jessica Gary.

Smoky Eyes

I am super excited to show you this latest illustration project! I was asked to do a portrait of Kristen Stewart for BUST Magazine. The illustration was directed by Lan Truong, and accompanies an article by Wendy McClure (of whom I’ve also been a longtime fan and highly recommend her book “I’m Not The New Me” as well as her hilarious collection of horrible diet recipe cards from the 70′s). I’ve been a huge fan of BUST since I was a teenager and always love how much illustration they feature, and I’m thrilled to now be in such good company. Go pick up your Dec/Jan issue NOW! Support BUST and marvel at my rendering of the K-Stew scowl!

Etsy Textiles

1 / Vintage TOUCH too (this is where it looks like where I come from, but NOT where I live now)
2 / Five Stones Vintage (tigers & zebras!)
3 / Persnickety Vintage
4 / Planet Cooties (this is what it looks like where I live now…sort of)
5 / Five Stones Vintage
6 / MILKTEETHS (wish this amazing dress would fit over my amazing butt)
7 / Jazz Boogie (love how large scale these strawberries are!)

LET’S go see another BEAUTIFUL VIEW!

Life has been a whirlwind lately! For months and months, it feels like. I’m on the job hunt, so that’s always fun (not) and in between I’m freelancing, and while I’ve had some great gigs the instability can be nerve-wracking. I also went back East, bought a car (I KNOW it feels like I’m cheating on my bike), had freelance jobs at all distant ends of the city and since it’s now the “rainy season” in LA traffic has been wretched, and now for the past week and a bit my friend Megan has been in town and I’ve been trying to show her the sights in the teeny slivers of downtime that I’ve got. We’ve been great influences on each other as far as drawing goes (Meg, who is an art installer and main assistant for a famous artist, and a wonderful artist in her own right, dubbed her trip an “artcation”) and while I haven’t been drawing anything for my blog or anything intense and project-based (except work work of course), I have been drawing a ton in my sketchbook. I know that’s all I’ve got on the blog these days but to be honest that’s what’s been going on!

So here’s what we’ve got: a craft night with some ladyfriends and vegetable pizza and mulled cider, a trip to the Getty where we saw a rainbow and a ridiculously-amazingly dressed thirteen-ish year old boy told us that he wore mismatched socks every day, some great food (saw Jonathan Gold at Din Tai Fung, of course), a trip to the Rose Bowl flea market, a poetry reading at the Last Bookstore where two of my friends read, watching movies and drawing and drinking tea, trying to draw all 50 states from memory, driving out to the desert and blasting Rihanna and Kate Bush and Kanye and Best Coast and trying to name my car, seeing a man get out of his truck and stand by the tracks at a long, long, long stop for a train and Meg said “He wants to feel alive” and it was true, watching the sun set over the Salton Sea and clambering around Salvation Mountain and making friends with the kitties and marveling at the whole thing, and getting our art supplies all over the table and mixed up with the forks and onion rings at the diner next to the Pee Wee’s Big Adventure dinosaurs. At least, that’s some of it.

And then tomorrow Nikhil and I drive all the way back out to Palm Springs for a wedding! Man.

Vacation Sketching

This past week has been a little crazy! Nikhil and I went to Pennsylvania (also NYC for a day, and Philly multiple times even though we were thwarted at every turn trying to see the Duchamps at the art museum, and lots of frolicking and drinking Yuengling and chasing a dismayed suburban boy around with a chicken…uhm…and lots of scenic drives and good food), and I’ve been running around going to job interviews, freelancing and trying to buy a car with no luck. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind and thanks to a clothes swap I hosted the night before we left town, my apartment is a total mess. It looks like a Filene’s Basement dressing room, y’all. Not pretty. Anyway, as I barely have time for basic life maintenance right now I haven’t had time to keep up with this blog or with Imaginary Fashion Bloggers and am feeling some major guilt for it so here are some little peeks in my sketchbook from the trip, as well as the totally nuts scorekeeping I improvised for a very, very long darts game at a members-only bar in a basement in the town where The Blob was filmed.

Lastly, this photo was taken in my parents backyard and basically captures Pennsylvania wonderfulness whole. Credit to Jessa.