Design

Watercolor Arrow Illustrations

It’s not every day that a project comes along that fits with my style so well that the work is all play, but that’s exactly what happened when Kerry contacted me to work on arrow illustrations for her. I started out with page of arrow sketches in pen, then I created a couple watercolor sketches. In the final step, I needed to adjust the color palette. I manipulated the colors in Photoshop based on the color swatches that Kerry provided and BOOM Kerry Burki’s arrows were born.

arrow-pensketch arrows-pensketch2

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arrows-watercolorsketch1 arrows-watercolorsketch2 arrows-watercolorsketch3 arrows-watercolorsketch4

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I thought it was extra sweet that Kerry had a phone case made for herself from the arrow artwork. What a beautiful reminder for her to keep aiming for her dreams.

I truly loved every moment that I worked on these arrows. To have the opportunity to combine my art with design was pure magic. It’s a direction I have wanted to take my design work for a very long time. So grateful to work with a such an amazing person with a beautiful vision and desire to help others slow down to move forward. You can find out more about Kerry at kerryburki.com.

 

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Luscious Purple Wedding Invitations

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I wanted to wait until after a couple has said their “I Do’s” before I share their wedding paper, so without further ado, a beautiful summer wedding with luscious purple invitations. Bernadette and Kyle tied the knot last month – congratulations you two! To see my other wedding invitation designs, click here.

Isalina Sweet Treats Logo Design

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My friend Virginia has a passion for baking. She decided to start a baking blog, Isalina Sweet Treats and asked me to design her logo. Virginia is a talented baker and she shares her favorite desert recipes at Isalina Sweet Treats. She has a ton of wonderful free recipes already posted. Don’t they look delicious? I’ve had her cinnamon rolls and they are soooo good! Isalina-SketchesVirginia was looking for a elegant, sweet, but serious design in a light color scheme. She also liked the idea of a swirl of ganache on a plate. She pick a couple of color palettes at ColourLovers website and I created the 3 computer sketches above. Virginia ultimately decided on the middle design. After a few options on the lettering style shown below, the middle design is the winner and her logo is born!
Isalina-Sketches2

Find Virginia’s recipes for delicious deserts at Isalina’s Sweet Treats on Facebook or go straight to her website IsalinaSweetTreats.com.

Sonoran Beads Logo Design

Sonoran Beads is design client of mine. I help them with signage, postcards and advertisements throughout the year and recently, I worked on the redesign of their company logo. They wanted a similar feel to the original logo but, the text needed to be larger and more easily readable and they wanted to introduce the color green to their color palette.

 

Original Logo

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Redesigned Logo

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They redesigned their website to match the new company image.

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http://shop.sonoranbeads.com/

Flower Illustrations

My dear friend and long time coworker, Sara, is marrying to her love Josh later this year and I am working on their wedding invitations (yay!).  They are planning a beautiful wedding in their garden so, I thought a good place to start would be with, well, their garden! Lucky for me Sara has shared loads of flower pictures from their yard on their blog so, that’s where I went for inspiration. 

Above are Sara’s pictures and below are my first round of digital illustrations.

These flowers were truly a joy to draw! I have a few favorites for sure. It has been so nice to have a reason to illustrate. They have lots of orange trees and rose bushes which should be in bloom for the wedding so, we have decided to focus on those two plants in particular. Stay tuned for round two of sketches. I love weddings and flowers so this project is a win-win as Sara would say!

 Earth laughs in flowers.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Hamatreya”

Here is my last illustration study for Sara & Josh’s wedding invitation, this session I focused on the orange tree, oranges and orange blossoms.   

The young girl stood beside me.
I Saw not what her young eyes could see:
– A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree. 

~ from The Orange Tree by John Shaw Neilson

More illustration studies for Sara & Josh’s wedding invitation, this session I focused on roses.  

Don’t believe the florist when he tells you that the roses are free ~ Ween

Fruit Illustrations

 This weekend I was working on a logo for nutrition business and they wanted a fruit or nut incorporated into the design.  So, I dusted off my wacom tablet and had a blast illustrating an avocado, blueberry, almond, kiwi and a pomegranate.  So tell me, which drawing is your favorite?

Rise Up Logo Design

I did my first pro-bono graphic project recently. I had the honor of creating the logo design for the first major fundraising event being produced with the Phoenix Philanthropists: Rise Up for the Homeless and Hungry. This event is meant to bring awareness and action to the homeless and hunger situation in the Phoenix metro area.

The event will be a 24-25 hour marathon of standing out in the heat of the Arizona summer to bring awareness and show people what it is like to deal with the extreme summer elements here. Proceeds and food donations will benefit St. Mary’s Food Bank and other donations, like clothing, will benefit Children First Academy.

I am so happy to have been able to help out. Working with Thomas, the event organizer, was a real pleasure. He knew just what he wanted to convey and is so passionate about this event and for his community, it was very humbling.

Here are some of my sketches while working on this project:

initial sketchbook ideas

3 logo options for review