Mill City Museum

A friend recently got married at the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis. One of her gorgeous bridesmaids (another friend of mine) asked me to draw a picture as a gift to the newlyweds. I'm lucky enough to work across the river from the Museum, so I'm quite familiar with the view, I chose to include the Gold Medal Flour building (probably my favorite part of the skyline from the river) along with the Museum itself.


If you live in the Twin Cities area and haven't seen the city from the Stone Arch Bridge, GO. Preferably at night.

Lost Bars of Dayton's Bluff

This summer I had the privilege of working with Michelle Leon, who wrote this article regarding a lost bar scene in East St. Paul. These graphics were my favorite project so far on Heavy Table--I hope more are soon to come.

sketchbook

a sketchbook page from today.

Heavy Table news to come soon!

Indian Food!

I've had another illustration posted on The Heavy Table! This is one of two (I'm not CRAZY about the other one, but it'll do).

I do have more pieces coming soon. I'm trying really hard to keep making work this summer!

Muddy Pumpkin Logo

I just completed another great project: creating a logo for a friend's organic farm in South Dakota: Muddy Pumpkin Farms.  Creating the logo was also the final project for a graphic design course I just finished this week. The class was a great start to learning about graphic design--something I've been completely clueless about. I hope to find more courses in the near future, so I can learn as much as possible, and hopefully have it inform illustration work.

Check out what Muddy Pumpkin is about at www.muddypumpkin.com.

Another exciting thing

I had another illustration posted on The Heavy Table! I used the opportunity to brush up on my digital coloring skills (which are....prettymuchnonexistant).  I have another project with the Heavy Table coming up in June, and it should be a really good one. Stay posted.

Exciting News!

This month I had a very exciting thing happen; I was commissioned for an illustration for The Heavy Table, a Twin Cities food and restaurant blog. I have had my sights set on editorial illustration for a while, and now that I've had a little taste of it, it feels like something I could do. 

Many thanks to Rachel, whose help gave me the opportunity in the first place.

More leisurely activities

graphite & watercolor

Exciting!

This summer, I sold two paintings to the Mayo Clinic in Sparta, Wisconsin, and I just received a picture of them framed & mounted! I'm so happy with how they look in the photo above. Makes me think I should always opt to frame things, even though it can be pricey, because it makes a world of difference.

Yay!

Two New(er) Paintings

 

A little too tired to elaborate on anything, but a big Thank You to those who came to the show the other week! I had a great time.

ART SHOW Coming up!!

Exciting! My place of employment, Olive Black Martini and Wine Lounge, is letting me have a little expo on Sunday, September 26th from 2p.m. to 5 p.m., along with a martini and wine tasting.

So, if any of you out there are near Richmond, IL, you should stop by!

Sketchbook page

A little page from my sketchbook. It's obviously unfinished, but it's a sketch. What d'ya want?

Two little somethings.

Two gifts that I just finished. NBD, just thought I'd share. (sorry about the bad photo)

New Screen print!

Starting to screen print again has been a series of troubleshooting incidents, as it always has been for me. I love printmaking, but it requires me being much more methodical and organized than I am when painting or drawing. When drawing, I can encounter a problem and push through it, usually with a more interesting end result. With printmaking, encountering a problem usually means I have to start over. But I'm slowly re-learning lessons, and learning some new ones too.

Fortunately, yesterday yielded some good results, which I wanted to share.

Herons

Yep...more waterfowl.

Sketchbook Portraits

I'm lucky to have very beautiful friends. I always have great models (or facebook photos, if need be) to use for working on my portrait skills. Here are a few, and there will surely be more to come.

(p.s. Natalie C., Natalie S., Sarah, Amy, Nikkie, Coop: If you don't want your faces up on here, let me know...)

Another new piece: Falling Fish

All right! This one's a screen print-acrylic-charcoal trio. Hopefully soon I can finish something that's solely screen printing, but I'm still in the troubleshooting phase.

A special thank-you to my friends who gave me advice for, um, editing this piece.

Dandelions

Here's an acrylic-charcoal piece I finished this week...

**Edit: Put up a better photo!

Rollerskating

Another charcoal-watercolor combo. I've been really into photos from the 1930s and 1940s lately, especially of ladies doing leisurely activities (while dressed sharply, too, of course). This was based on a photograph from 1933 of two women rollerskating on the top of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.

More to come very soon,
JB.

Newest Project

I recently finished this little number--well, not little. It's 36" by 22".  It was always going to be a birthday gift for my dear friend, Nikkie, but it also turned out to be proof that I can work on a large scale when I want to, and that this watercolor thing is starting to work out.

I wanted the banner to read something nice, but not corny, and so I settled for slightly corny hidden under the cloak of a foreign language. Since Nikkie speaks German, I did a little research to translate a line by Percy Bysshe Shelley that goes, "When winter comes, can spring be far behind?" I'm not sure if this translation is 100% grammatically correct, but, hell, I tried.

Hopefully I can take a better-quality photo soon, but this will have to do for now.

New experiments with watercolor

I have usually shied away from watercolors.  My reason usually being the high cheesy-potential the medium has. But I realized all media have a potential for cheesiness. And it might be possible for me to use it to bring something exciting to ink and charcoal drawings.  So far I'm fairly happy with the results.

Also added watercolor to a few portraits. Below: My great-grandmother Irene Koeppen (born Chittick), and her son (my grandfather) Harry Tom Koeppen.

I like Irene's portrait the best, since Grandpa's is a liiiiiiittle corny-looking. It does look like him though, so perhaps it's not all my fault.

Food Service

I threw this one together about a year ago, and just remembered that it existed. At the time I was working at a coffee shop, and often contemplated how long I'd stay in the food service industry. A small part of me was okay with becoming one of those seasoned women who worked nights at a salt & pepper diner--you know, the ones who sound like they've smoked 3 packs a day for 40 years and calls everyone "sweet-haht?"  I was kind of okay with being one of those.  And still am, in fact.


pictured: mixed media, "I came to this town to be a dancer."

A new painting

Decided to make a painting combining a few things I'm excited about at the moment: Birds (now that a lot of them are back), Newly-sprouting plants, and icosahedrons. And a little fleur de lis wallpaper doesn't hurt.

Out of Practice

I've been attempting a lot of portraits lately, which have all proven to be a much bigger challenge than they once were. I used to be able to grab 3 crayons, some copier paper, and a willing model and in 10 minutes, I would usually have at least a recognizable likeness (and from there, I could start making it a little more abstract--which is the fun part). But these days, hours can pass and I will have what usually appears to be a rendition of Tolkien's Smeagol, and I will have used more eraser than anything else.

But I suppose I just need to practice to get 'back in shape', so to speak. Pictured here is a [relatively] successful self portrait.

Well, It has happened.

Another waterfowl piece. This time, a blue-footed bubi. They're neat.