A Little Bit of Work, Play and Now Back to the Drawing Board!

Hi All! Hope your June started off great. Can you believe we are almost in the middle of the year?! Where did the time go!?

May was a very busy, eventful month for me. Here's a quick recap: There was the big exciting, engineering expo in Long Beach, CA (for my marketing job) where I got work and enjoy the city (great vacation and entertainment hub with lots of restaurants!) Then there was Mother's day, a couple of graduations to attend and some some birthdays. Plus a fun weekend in Vegas to celebrate my baby sister's 21st birthday ;) Some of the highlights in pics:

Long Beach Convention Center

SAMPE 2013 - Nearly 5,000 people attended this engineering conference

A car made out of composites materials in the exhibit hall

View of the sun rising from my hotel room

The hotel I stayed at for the entire week, Hyatt Regency in Long Beach. Loved it!

A walk through Shoreline Village, lots of shops and restaurants

Loved the watching the sunset from Shoreline Village harbor

Of course, I had to take a haunted nighttime tour of the Queen Mary. Definitely recommend it :)

And here are some pictures from Vegas. This trip was strictly for fun ;)

Stratosphere Hotel/Casino 

View of the Las Vegas strip from the 109th floor of the Stratosphere 

Got on this ride...best decision I've made in a long time!

Vegas night life

The Shops at the Venetian hotel, my new favorite place in Las Vegas. Got to see some great galleries while I was there. Very inspiring!

The only casino where I won some money, the Cosmopolitan

While I was in Vegas, I came across the Wyland Galleries, located in the Venetian, where I got to see some amazing art! My favorite was the work of Michael Godard, who paints these humorous olive/martini oil paintings inspired by the Las Vegas atmosphere. I loved seeing his Masters series. I definitely recommend you see these in person. Original artwork is always a million times better in person!

Screenshot of Godard's website. One of the Masters Series paintings on display at the Wyland Gallery Las Vegas

And now back to work...but fun projects! As you may or may not be aware, I also work as a freelance  graphic designer at Reviation Industries, a screen printing company in Upland, Ca. Over the last year we have put out two great collections of t-shirt design/screen printing products. The first was Maximum Pack 2, a collection of 3000+ stock art/design elements in vector format. Then we released Template Pack 1, a collection of 250 t-shirt designs for other screen printers. Now we are starting on Max Pack 3, and back to the drawing board I go. 

Reviation Industries Products

I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous because I hadn't drawn in so long (longer than I care to admit) but it felt real good to pick up a pencil and pen, touch the physical paper and not spend all that time clicking a mouse! It all came back to me pretty fast though so don't worry. For this project we are accumulating a lot of cool ideas of images to include. Here's a little sneak peak at my progress so far. (In case you're wondering this collection will not be released till early 2014).

Pow! I'm back!

The drawing essentials: smooth bristol, F pencils, white magic earser, variety of Staedtler Pigment Liner pens from 0.1, 0.3,  0.5  widths and of course computer for photo reference.

Close up

I'm trying to set up a regular routine to get more work done, of course coffee helps as well as long walks in the evening for energy. I'm excited to share more progress photos and more drawings, so please harass me if I don't post any pictures. Thanks for sticking around and reading, I hope you enjoyed the pics!

Chao! Until next week.