Let's Share: The Berkley Blog

Accessorize!

Good news for accessories fans!

Berkley Illustration has teamed up with a couple of your favorite indie accessory providers and all kinds of animals are available now for your pocketbook needs.

Tinymeat has released three wallets in the goat, owl, and squirrel flavors (more to come!):

My Favorite Mirror just started carrying keychains and pocket mirrors in a whole slew of your favorite animals: 

Lastly, though not accessory related, Reading Frenzy has animal originals up for sale through the end of the month which includes the new turtle with a fez, Melvin Plum!

Melvin and the rest of the animals are all framed in a pretty spiffy manner, if we do say so ourselves.  Unfortunately we don't have great photos of the framed finals (yet) but here the general idea of what look like:

 

And, yes, Melvin will be finding his way to the Etsy print circuit.  Bear in mind that he is a turtle so it could take him a while to get there.  We'll try to speed him along as best we can.  Perhaps if we buy him a tiny car to go with that hat...

Coming very very soon - Animal Voting for August!

June animal release!

 Howdy,

Today we're pleased to present you with the winner of the June animal vote: The Hedgehog!

(Now available for purchase in 5x7 and 8x10" on the Berkley Illustration Etsy site.)

He is joined by his good buddies, the brown bat and the eye-patched cheetah.

We're busy busy busy preparing for Renegade. I can't believe we fly to New York next week! We haven't even been thinking about the actual New York vacation part yet...if anyone knows of anything tremendous happening in the next couple weeks in the Big Apple, please let us know!  We found out our Renegade booth will be next to our travelling buddy, Bossanova Baby so if any of you Brooklynites are looking for a good time, you should definitely come visit our little corner of the Renegade world.

Ryan is working on some exclusive originals for the show and we're hoping to preview a couple of the upcoming July prints there as well.  There are sooo many awesome vendors participating.  I hope we have time to wander and score some good loot.

Big thanks to my mom for working on our new display system which I think will work out perfectly.  Our previous display system would have been tough to haul across the country and this one should be very travel-worthy.  Of course we'll have photos when everything is said and done.

Have a good week!  Back to work for us...

Animal Vote Off - June

Wow!  Thanks to everyone for voting in our first animal election!  We're down to the final three candidates so please leave a comment with your favorite from these three:

1.  Hedgehog

2.  Dinosaur

3.  Sloth

Voting will close at midnight (West Coast time) on Monday, May 26th. The animal with the most votes will be included in our early June animal releases!  

We received votes for 48 different animals and there were lots of intriguing choices.  Several were already in our "to-do" pile so some might end up in the line-up down the road and we also hope to make the voting a regular thing so please check back if your animal didn't make it in this cut!

Animal Vote - June!

Update: 

Thanks for all your votes!  You rule! We are going to tally up the top three picks and we'll have a vote-off very shortly!  

______________

It's election day here in Oregon so what better day to start our new animal illustration vote?

Today through Friday (May 23rd) we'll be accepting votes for one of the new animals to be released in the Berkley Illustration June line.  To vote, just leave a comment after this post with the animal you've been needing to see in a suit.  On Saturday we'll tally up the top three and have a vote-off!

A few notes (I believe they might also call this the "fine print"): Berkley Illustration reserves the right to make the ultimate final decision.  Ryan will try his best to accomodate the winning vote but sometimes there are things that might be more difficult to fit in depending on sizing and detail.  For instance, I've been trying to get Ryan to draw a crab but he insists that it would not fit proportionally.  Likewise with giraffes.

We'd also like to steer clear of specific dog and cat breeds.  You don't even know how much we love pets, but there are just so many to cover that Ryan doesn't want to start specializing now for the general line of animals.

Happy voting!  (And Oregonians - make sure your real ballots are in!)

Oceanic Animal release

We posted the new oceanic animals to Berkley Illustration's Etsy site yesterday. Please welcome the dolphin, the shark, and the seagull into the fold!

We're pretty curious if the shark will blend in with the rest of the animals. I gasped a little when I first saw him!

Now that we have those listed we're allowing ourselves to go a movie today (Iron Man) and then a Cinco de Mayo party (really, Cuatro de Mayo). Plus it's sunny outside. Hooray!

Weekend Adventures...part two (with originals preview!)

Picking up where I left off...
Sunday was much more of an indoor day than Saturday which worked out well considering that Portland started to do that crazy ol' rain thing it's known for.

We spent much of the day at Crafty Wonderland in our corner bunker.

It was the second anniversary of the event and I can't believe time has gone so fast (cliche, I know). We sold at the very first sale and really that was the first time Ryan started doing the animal portraits. So, happy two year anniversary to you, animals!

Here is our first booth two years ago...

...and here is the first animal portrait Ryan drew. He's come a long way, no?

[*Fun fact* (For Oregonians) - Oregon Art Beat was filming that day for a segment on the Portland Craft Scene which will be airing on OPB in September!]

Somehow we had enough steam to make it out to the Cat Power show later that evening as well. My camera batteries died right when she took the stage but here is a pic of her opening act, Appaloosa.

We were a little confused when we walked in and saw this pretty lady in a sparkly green tube dress was singing alone with an electronic box. We thought perhaps we had stumbled into Open Mic night by mistake. As she went on, however, we really got into her and even bought her CD. She mentioned later in the set that the other member of the band was held up in London (presumably this was the person who usually controls the electronic boxes) so we have to give her serious props for going it alone. She kind of reminds me of Nico from the Velvet Underground mixed in with a little Stereolab.

Cat Power was grand, of course. Very intense. But concert going citizens of Portland - why must you talk so loud during quiet songs? Why?????

Now that the weekend is over, onto the Etsy business at hand! Here is the sneak preview of the originals we'll be listing on Ryan's Etsy site tomorrow evening. Please enjoy!

Shop Update!

New animals are up on Ryan's Etsy site tonight! We also posted Carson The Pink Zombie to give Wendell some company. We have a few other things to post too but those will have to come a bit later in the week if we want to get any sleep. It's funny how the digital touch-up and posting ends up taking almost as much time (or more) than the drawings themselves. Isn't that the way with so many creative things? You end up with a dash of creative time and a heap of practical application.

Now, without further ado, we present a retired folk singer, a flying hotshot, and a scientist:

Writing the Animal Bios can be a tricky part of the process. At the beginning I wrote them quickly without Ryan really knowing what I was doing. He thought they were funny so we kept going with them. Now we mostly write them together but it takes a lot longer because we get into conversations about what these personalities should be (and we change our minds a lot.) I always try to be conscious of the fact that Ryan doesn't necessarily want people to know if the animal heads have human or animal bodies. I wonder if he knows?

~Lucy

P.S. I'm so happy the squirrel has a mate now! Aren't you?