Nancy @ drawger

On the Roadshow
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 7:44 pm on June 28th

Books: big ones for looking, little ones to give away

ICON5 is almost here..! And I'm about ready for the Roadshow. Have my iPhoto books ready, big and small. The little ones are to give away along with magnets, lapel pins, postcards and a pile of Workbook tearsheets. My drawing table will be wiped clear by the time I'm through..!

inside the books

The iPhoto books were easy to layout and printed really well. Quick turnaround and about as painless a process as can be.

The layouts aren't identical since I put more images into the larger book.

By the way, it's not too late to attend ICON5. They kept the price the same as the original web price so that procrastinators could decide to go last minute.

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Profile Stock
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 4:13 pm on June 6th

Paying my bills (finally) today, I ran across this card that came in the mail from Profile Stock. I kept it because I thought it was pretty neat that with their all type treatment, my stamp ended up being the only image on the card..!

Sneaky Nancy

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Getting Ready for ICON Roadshow
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 12:45 pm on May 20th

drip

umbrella girl

angry walk

brushman

I've decided to do the Roadshow for ICON5 as well as attend the conference. I've never done a portfolio review before but with friends Jean Tuttle who has the experience to guide me, and Zina who is also new at this to learn alongside and lots of others with great work to inspire (Mary Lynn Blasutta just decided to go, too..!), I'm beginning to have some fun with it.

One of the books I'm going to put together will be of "out of my head" sketches. Rough things that I may polish a bit, add color and see if I have a viable illustration style that will allow me to work more quickly. The business has changed, I need to be able to do work that can fit the tighter deadlines. This may be a solution.

Some people spotted the drawings I've stuck in my sketchbook gallery. Here are a few more.

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This One's for Peter
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 11:43 pm on May 6th

Having the iPhone in my pocket has started me looking more at things I normally pass by quickly. And NYC is having a true spring season to add to the fun.

Here is the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt at 72nd street in Riverside Park. It made me think of Peter's use of planes in his drawings. I know the statue won't be new to him, but Peter, this one's for you.

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My Trip to Detroit
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 1:19 pm on April 13th

screen shot from the Painter portion of the workshop

My good friend and fellow drawger, Don K, invited me out to the school where he teaches (College for Creative Studies) for a talk, demo and good eats.

Demos make me all panicky inside, but these went pretty well. It always gives me a charge if I can show something that I think is magical on the computer and I hear "wow"s and "oooh"s from the group rivaled only by the curtain opening on The Price is Right and a combination washer / dryer revealed as the next prize.

I showed a few things in Illustrator, forgot to do my Photoshop portion of the demo and moved on to Painter. Most people know the first two programs pretty well by the time they get to college, so focusing on Painter seemed the right way to go. I should have bought Corel stock before I left.

small portion of the murals taken with my iPhone... how much do I love this new gadget?

There wasn't much time between all the events, but with the DIA right there, Don took me over to see the Diego Rivera murals. Absolutely gorgeous. I really regret not getting to see the Ashcan show, but I was one tired pup as it was.

Don at the DIA

Everyone at the school was incredibly nice and the students were excellent, full of enthusiasm. Getting to visit with Don and meet his kids and spend time with Kate, his wife was the best part of a great trip.

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Play at the ICON5 US Open..!
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 2:22 am on April 8th

.
(supposed to be the unisphere... it's late..!)

Here's a proposition. When ICON5 comes to town (weekend of July 4th), I'd like to get a bunch of illustrators and art directors / designers / art buyers /reps to play some tennis out at Flushing Meadows, the home of the US Open. ICON attendees would have priority among illustrators.

We can team up with each other and play under the lights one balmy evening that weekend. Subway out, car service back. Split the court fees.

What do you think? Spouses and significant others can sub (I hear Doug Fraser's wife is a nice player) and anyone can come along to hang out in the stands and cheer for favorite players.

This will go up on the ICON5 website if enough people are interested, so speak up..!

Update: 4/23
The lack of a good response here didn't deter me, but I finally got to speak with someone at the NTC who knew what she was talking about and they are having a tournament that will go all day and night the entire weekend. So, I have cancelled any plans for tennis during ICON5.

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Open That Bottle
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 12:09 am on March 15th

On the front of the Weekend section. This ran in color.

I had a fun, quick job for the WSJ this week. Ketrina Hoskin was the art director and she was terrific. The article was reporting on the results of this year's "Open That Bottle" night. People who participated wrote in to tell about the wines they had been saving and how they tasted and why they had held onto them.

They had asked for hands opening a bottle using a corkscrew, but when I got mine out to photograph, I liked the celebratory pose it made and added a question mark to show how doubtful many people were that the wine would be any good. The descriptions of the wines that didn't make it were the most fun, "smelled like air let out of a basketball".

White wine memories.

The two drawings on the inside ran in b&w, a real disappointment. Still it was fun to draw.

White wine sketch

I had pictured doing a very graphic treatment but the folks at the WSJ wanted some perspective to the glass and a more painterly technique.

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Self-demotion?
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 3:16 pm on March 10th

Over the weekend, I thought I should do something for self-promotion, maybe a set of blank greeting cards to send to future clients. These were ideas that I came up with long ago but never followed through with, so maybe they've been rattling around in my brain too long. I can't tell if they're too.... too.....

This one looked funny as a sketch, but once the time is taken to draw it out, it looks so serious. But maybe that lends to the tongue-in-cheekiness of it. I have no idea.

My creeping doubts started setting in late last night and now I need to do real work.

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And the Winner Is....
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 5:19 pm on February 4th

The Workbook came in handy for this quicky image. Gold balls �Robert Rodriguez

Alan Witschonke...!

If you haven't kept up with the first Drawger Open Scrabble Tournament, here is the filled in draw and resulting scrabble boards. Be prepared to learn some new words, but remember these were challenge games and some players were prone to bluffing (ahem! <- me... RAG...).

Witschonke def. Wiens (ret)

Here is the board for the finals. Carl decided to toss in his tiles after the gap in the score became too wide due to challenges and the resulting lost turns.

Check out some of those words..!

Congratulations to Alan..!!

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Quelle surprise..!
Posted by Nancy Stahl at 5:09 pm on January 16th

This was a large gouache painting.
.

Ever run across an image of yours in an unexpected place? It's always a mixed reaction of "Hey, look, that's mine..!" and "Should I have gotten paid for that use?". This was in a French magazine, a special issue of Le Figaro that is entirely on Woody Allen. Nice reference photos and I'm always looking to practice my French (which is lousy, but it doesn't stop me). It was a real surprise to find they had used my image on the foreign posters. I'm not sure whether they had purchased the right to do that, but who cares? It was 1989 and I got a chuckle out of seeing it printed.