continental drift

Hello everyone, sorry for my silence lately. I really wanted to have a nice Earth Day themed illo for what I believe is one of the most widely-celebrated secular holidays, but unfortunately other projects have eaten up all of my time! Today was a rainy day here where I am, and all the green growing things seemed to be really encouraged by the downpour. 

So what have I been doing the last week or so? I’ve built a new website! Yes, I’m going to say goodbye to Tumblr and Disqus, and hello to Wordpress. It will be nice to have my blog and website all together in a single site, and eventually I’m going to add a shop and other fancy-schmancy things like that. 

I’d love your feedback on how it works with your computer/browser, what you’d improve, etc! Try leaving a comment or using the email form. Then I can find out if they work :P

Here’s the link: www.jessicalanan.com

just… because.

Today is the beginning of the “12 week challenge” over at the illustration blog zero2illo. It’s described as “an opportunity to make amazing progress towards your goal of becoming a full time professional illustrator” and will involve fun stuff like weekly assignments to help us along. You can even follow our progress on the zero2illo blog! I’m not doing this alone: See all the participants here. And now, since I can’t bear to post something without a picture, here are some swans inspired by H.C. Andersen’s “The Wild Swans”~~ click for a link to a larger version!

This is my 10th Illustration Friday entry! Woohoo! Not consecutive, though. I did miss “perspective.” No matter. Here’s a blimp to the rescue:

I kind of struggled with this theme. I really prefer adjectives to nouns or verbs… I can think of so many more applications!  

This one goes out to all those who hate to clean out the refrigerator. (Like me.)

Here’s a detail:

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I ordered some promo 5x7 post-cards, and just about completely forgot about them until a package arrived in the mail yesterday! The colors are slightly off, but even so they look much better than the home-printed stuff I sent out last time. Next step: business cards?

I was about to write about what a nice cozy rainy spring day this is, but as I type the rain has suddenly turned to snow!* Happy Tuesday everyone~

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(click for the larger version.)

For this word I decided to illustrate something from “The Subterraneans,” by Jack Kerouac. Here is Mardou, on some street in San Francisco 1953. 

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These guys got rather quiet and watched me nervously while I drew them, as though they thought I was possibly planning to eat them. I can’t see why they would suspect me. I’ve never made any attempt on their lives. Amazingly, neither has the cat.

Sorry I’ve been absent for so long! This week I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (an excellent book by the way,) and thinking of all the countless stories where the hero must go out into the unknown and face his demons. I have always liked the story of the Minotaur, and can only imagine the fear that Theseus would have felt wandering through the labyrinth, never knowing when he might round a corner and be faced with the monster. Maybe we all have a sort of minotaur lurking in our subconscious, some sort of fear or demon that we must conquer to be reborn?