I came up with this flower gift certificate design for my mother in law's birthday last week :) 

This illustration is out of season at the moment considering we are supposed to have a low of 2 degrees today and tomorrow!  

I painted these as a gift, and Sgt. Tibbs enjoyed the process even more than I did! 

It's been too long since I shared anything on this little blog.  The bulk of the work I accomplished in 2012 I'm not allowed to share yet, but this project for Mary Rhee's picture book "Elwood Doberman Jr."  is an exception.  

This is such a cute book to work on, and the illustrations are about half way through!  Here are a few of the newer ones.   

Sometimes, when I am too lazy (or busy) to post on my blog, I will still update my newish facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/ElisaChavarri

Just sayin' 

This is a back cover for one of my favorite clients, Humpty Dumpty magazine! 

I LOVE summer.  I wish it would last more than a couple months in Northern MI.  My husband and I are so happy to be back up North surrounded by nature and lakes!  

They're no ocean, but they have their own beautiful charm.  There are a few ship wrecks in our area on Lake Huron as well believe it or not.  It's one of our goals this summer to try and snorkel over some. 

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far!  

The above illustration is out in Turtle Magazine right now :) 

Aren't Independence days just the best?  

This is one of those "can you locate the image based on the clues" activity pages for Jack & Jill Magazine. 

Have a great holiday week! 

Here are my latest illustrations for Mary Rhee's "Elwood Doberman Jr. Book"

And the sketches for them:

To save on time I've been creating all the sketches digitally. It's working out pretty well, my sketches are always on the rough side anyhow as I don't like to include too many details that I'm just going to have to re draw in the final. I use my sketches as a sort of 'road map' and also to communicate the idea for the illustration to the client of course ;) I've got a sketch going for the next one, a two page spread! I think it's going to be a nice one!

Here is the latest illustration for Mary Rhee's "Elwood Doberman Jr."  This one is about half a page.  As always, this project is a joy to work on.  It's really fun collaborating with Mary as to what funny details to add to the illustrations.  Notice anything here?  

Below is the sketch with Mary's text.  The text has now been edited to say "this is a drag" instead of the "whaaaaaaaaaahhh" 

Who doesn't love new underpants?  This is the latest illustration for "Elwood Doberman Jr." by Mary Rhee. 

Wow, May 31st already!  I really can't believe 2012 is almost half way over.  

Above is a recent illustration for Shine Brightly Magazine depicting their character Lizzy for the "Dear Lizzy" portion of the magazine.  I created the Lizzy character design last year.  This year they wanted to see her responding by email as well as snail mail.  Here's last year's Lizzy:

I also was asked to create this quick illustration for the latest installment of the Micah Road Mysteries.  It's called "Case of the Missing Eggs." 

I'm looking forward to what June might bring, hopefully some beautiful weather!  

Thanks for stopping by! 

The book I illustrated, Fly Blanky Fly, is out and about, finally released!  Thanks to the nice folks at HarperCollins who were a joy to work with and rescued this book from never seeing the light of day :) 

I had actually finished the original version of this book before my Fairly Fairy Tales book, so it's been a long time coming.   

Hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!

I've gotten permission from my very sweet client Mary Rhee to continue sharing work for her book "Elwood Doberman Jr."  

This is the second illustration I've completed and it's of Elwood's parents.  We're going at about a 1-2 illustrations a month rate, and so far it's a complete pleasure to work on. 

The town is loosely based on Northville, Michigan, a lovely town indeed, and my former stomping grounds.  

Here's an illustration I completed last week called "Door to door miracles"

It's for a short magazine story, and it's set in Hawaii.  The original illustration actually continues across the top to the second page, but it looks a little funny without the text as you can see: 

Things have been hectic lately, but really good.  My agent Deborah Wolfe Ltd got me my first new client!  I'm pretty excited about that, and looking forward to what the future might bring. 

My current clients are also wonderful and keeping me pretty busy at the moment, which I am always grateful for :) 

Spring is FINALLY in full swing up here in Northern, MI (did I mention we moved?!).  I'm having all kinds of fun trying to snap pictures of all the different birds I'm seeing at the bird feeders.  Blue jays, red breasted grosbeaks, Orioles!  Hummingbirds, cardinals, finches, woodpeckers!  It's pretty great not living in an apartment anymore, and having our own yard.  Lots more work too though!

I'll share some pictures soon.  Until then, thanks for stopping by!

I just got my samples for this illustration in the mail.  It's always nice getting printed samples, though I'm starting to amass quite the collection!  I wonder what other illustrators do with all of them, donate maybe?  

The "Shadows In Tenebray Forest" book is now available!

In addition to the cover illustration I was also asked to create three black and white line art illustrations for three of the chapter pages.  

This is of the protagonists Chloe and Tasha meeting with their clients at their "detective agency" 

This one is from a flash back in the story and it takes place in Europe during WWII

Here we see a fallen Chloe.  The image is meant to look a little menacing/scary, like you don't know what's going on.  

I really enjoyed working on these!  I don't get asked to create line art very often (even though these have some shading as well).  It's always nice to mix things up and try something new. 

Life has been really busy right now.  One new update is that I now have my first agent!!

I am excited to now be represented by Deborah Wolfe LTD, who represents the artists of illustrationOnline.com  

My work is already up on their website!  

They represent a wide variety of great talent, I'm proud to be included in the bunch and looking forward to seeing what the future will bring.  

Last year my sister-in-law and friend Kate, asked me to put together an Easter bunny cake for her.  I'd never done anything like this before, but she had a recipe/template for me to follow, so I gave it a shot.  I thought now might be a good time to share it in case anyone wants to attempt this this weekend!

Making this was a lot of fun, even though I did end up elaborating quite a bit on the original design.  It had paper ears, a square face, and no hind legs, as an artist I apparently couldn't live with that  

This particular cake was made with angel food cake, but I think any cake would work well.  

One box of cake was baked in two 8" to 9" round pans.  The first circle of cake was cut in half and 'glued' together side by side with icing. This half moon shape forms the body of the bunny.

Then a chunk was cut out of the front a little less than half way in, and about a quarter of the way up.  This cut forms the front legs and gives you the pieces from which to make the head.  You might have to cut them down a bit more to get the right shape, and then position them over the front legs of the bunny to form the head.  Use icing to get everything to stick.  

The next bit is where I got a little bit creative.  I used the second round of cake to cut long pieces for bunny ears, and smaller pieces for the hind legs and tail.  

That's about it!  The cake was then all covered in frosting and coconut (except for the ears, which you might want to cover if you have a darker colored cake).  Taffy candy was used to add the pink to the ears, jelly beans for the eyes and nose, and dyed coconut and gummies for the grass. 

My husband got creative and added some raisinet 'rabbit poop' as well.  It ended up being a nice touch 

 Thanks for checking out my jumbled little 'how to'  

This is a cropped portion of a fun rather big project I am currently working on.  I don't usually get commissioned to create a whole books' worth of illustrations for a personal client, but in this case I did, and it is turning out to be a great project to work on.  The story is called "Elwood Doberman Jr." and it is written by Mary Rhee. 

At this stage I have the full book dummy finished and I'll continue with one final sketch at a time, then final color.  This is the first final.  

Here is a peek at the full sketch, the upper right is area for text. 

I'm excited to do more, my client is the sweetest!

In other news, I finally made a business facebook page for myself.  My personal page had become a bit of a mess, as I started it in order to share photos with friends and family, and then it became more of a self-promotion tool, but mixed with my personal photos, and it became awkward to accept friend requests from strangers for that reason.  Now I will have that problem no more :)   Please give it a like if you wish to follow it: www.facebook.com/ElisaChavarri

The Alpena Farmers' Market is looking to expand! 

I was recently asked to adapt the logo I designed for them a few years ago into a fundraising pin.  The pin will be a 2" circle, and includes their new slogan "Lettuce Turnip the Beet"

 (this is the pin design)

They also plan on printing t-shirts with the slogan lettering, and possibly this more rustic take on the logo as well: 

It will be fun to see how everything turns out.  They are looking to launch these at the upcoming garden show at the Alpena APlex April 14th. 

Here is the interior illustration I also created for this month's issue of Jack and Jill (seen in the previous post). 

This is for an activity where you are given clues to identify the objects in the picture. 

As a disclaimer, not all of these critters/plants would be found in the same types of rain-forests. 

In other news, I received the nicest surprise in my email today! A very special award for "Fairly Fairy Tales"

Thank you so much Mrs. Daddio's Second Grade Class!!! 

I was super excited when I got asked to illustrate this March/April cover for Jack & Jill.  

Maybe because I have so much spotted feline inspiration at home...

I know, I post too many pictures of my silly cat on my 'art' blog.  I'm sorry, I'll try to stop.  

Ooops!  I can't help myself.  He's just too cute for my own good.  

I'll keep the next post cat free, well almost, since there will be another #jaguar in it! 

I've had the pleasure of illustrating for the Micah Road Mysteries series in Shine Brightly Magazine.  

The stories are by Sarah Lynne Hilton.  She's also written a book with the characters, "Shadows in Tenebray Forest"  

Here is the cover illustration I designed for it.  It has the open space for the title text at the top. 

This is my character design for Chloe

And here is my character design for Tasha

I hope there will be many more of these fun stories to come!  

Wishing a LOVE-ly Valentines day to all the lovely people 

In this illustration a girl is being pressured into stealing clothing.  It was a fun magazine illustration to work on with a very nice new Art Director for me. 

I refreshed my logo this week.  The changes are subtle, but I personally like it much better now.  Here is the old version.  

My furry monster turned 1 on Feb 2nd.  

Thanks for checking in, have a great weekend!