C.A.T.M.7 | November Recap

Hey everyone! Sorry for taking an extra long vacation, but I'm back and better then ever! It's been a pretty wild month, and I have so much to share with you. She Creeps opening night, AI29 Launch Party, Sketch Night in NY, and more!
Let's begin with a recap of She Creeps opening night!

Guests of honor on opening night.

And there they are! My Three Famous Witches finally made their debut :)

Illustrators clearly excited for their own opening night :)

Loyal black cat accompanying her witches.

What a spectacular opening night that was! The gallery was filled with lots of new and old faces, candy, cupcakes, and 13 dazzling illustrators who rocked Function 13 that night :) With all the success from She Creeps, I just hope I can bring the heat in February at The Student Gallery for our untitled Body Show! Details later.

As you know, I just recently came back from a trip from New York City for the American Illustration 29 Launch Party!

Inside Angel Orensanz Foundation building where the party was held. Very nice place for an illustrator to get her drink on!

Sam Weber's AI29 cover. Truly one of the best American Illustration covers to date. 

AI Selected winners wall. Can you find Achilles Heel?

Introducing Sam Singh, the American Illustration 29 Selected Winner with her award winning piece Achilles Heel!! 

Now how many times in your life are you gonna be able to pose like this :)

Unreal is the only way I can describe that night! So many of my heros all in one building. I don't wanna drop too many names, but lets just say I got to rub elbows with a few people like Jesse Kuhn, Liz Lomax, Heads of State, got reacquainted with the lovely Anita Kunz, and ended the night having a long chat with Gary Baseman! :D Night well spent! It wasn't until I held that book in my hands and flipped to the page with Achilles Heel when reality hit me. I need to bring the heat for the next submission deadline because New York is an amazing city and I can't wait to go back!

Also during my adventures in The Big Apple, I participated in Sketch Night at Society of Illustrators. Once a week the team from Society of Illustrators host a night of life drawing at their headquarters. In honor of Illustration Week in New York, several illustrators pose alongside professional models while live Jazz music was performed by The Half-Tones featuring illustrators Joe Ciardiello, Barry Blitt, and other award winning illustrators who are also professional musicians.

The very last thing I thought I would be doing in NY is life drawing. Anything can happen in New York City!

The energy and atmosphere was incredible that night. There was a bar for people to get their drink on, chairs, easels, buckets of water, paint, charcoal, you name it! It was like being in school all over again, and you can tell everyone in the room felt like home listening to Jazz and drawing models :) That night I was also reacquainted with Victor Juhauz whom I met at the OCAD Grad Show this past Spring. We talked and did a little show and tell with our sketches. You can find his sketches here. Then Victor was nice enough to introduced me to John Cuneo (another hero of mine WOW!) One seriously unreal week in New York City :D

Now that vacation time is over, it's time to get back to real work! This week I posted a new piece on my website:

"Brothers: not in blood, but in bond".

This is from a page in my sketchbook based on the duo from The Black Keys, whom I've grown to love over the past few weeks. I drew their portraits from memory, so I wasn't trying to get an accurate rendition of their faces, but I was pretty close right :)

And I guess that wraps it up for this week. Intense month, but I would gladly do it again if it means spending another week in New York. Thanks everyone, see you next Monday for Part 8!