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!

July Animal Release!

Somehow I failed to mentioned in my earlier post that we've released the three new animals for July to Ryan's Etsy shop.  You may have already seen them considering we actually listed them yesterday.  Our sincere apologies if we are the bearers of old news.

Never-the-less, please welcome the Doe, the Rat, and the Kenny Portrait!

In a couple weeks we'll be reinstating the voting process for the August animal release so stay tuned!

(Yeah, that makes two posts in one day!)

Summertime!

Well, we're *almost* starting to breath normally again. Our computer operation is currently taking up a strange area in living room due to the fact that we've only found one phone jack in the house so far and it's not at all convenient (we have DSL.) Despite the inconvenient placement, however, it's so good to be in our new house! 

The last week has taken us to the opening of Ryan's show at Reading Frenzy (thanks to everyone that came out):

Ryan also has a piece in the Grass Hut group show, "The Americans". They had a good ol' Fourth of July opening with four square, lemonade, and a bbq. Our feet love the floors at the Grass Hut but I'm not sure if I'd feel okay paint spattering our new hardwoods.

When we haven't been visiting the art shows, it's been all house stuff all the time. Here is a photo of our new house! This is before my parents came by and did all kinds of yardwork out of the kindness of their hearts. Thanks Mom & Dad!

Most of the house still looks like this but we're getting stuff done little by little.

We still need to repaint the kitchen but we're happy with our new dark brown bedroom and our light grey living room. One of my first missions was to tag the door and claim it as our own!

We got some good fireworks in this year, too. It was a double birthday celebration. Our friend Adrienne is nice enough to share her birthday with our fair country.

This photo kind of reminds me of a Michelle Blade painting (who I adore). 

U.S.A!

Sophisticated Menagerie

This Thursday (tomorrow!) is the opening of my new show - "Sophisticated Menagerie" at Reading Frenzy here in Portland. It features all original drawings from my ongoing "animals in suits" series.

Last night Lucy and I took a break from unpacking and crowded around the one small cleared-out spot in our new house to mat and frame the show. It's quite amazing how much fancier the animals look when behind mat and glass.  I'm really happy with how it all came out.

Come on down to the show if you're in Portland!  We hope to have some updates on the new house and other projects soon.  As soon as we can find our camera, and cords, and, uh, everything else.

-Ryan

Outta here!

Just in case you were wondering, this is how many buttons a person makes when preparing for the Renegade Craft Fair.

Actually, this is how many buttons a person forces their brother to make when he's staying at your house while he's in town from Las Vegas.

We're off to the NYC!  And we just bought a house yesterday!  Whoa!  I guess we'll have a few things to write about in a week or so...

P.S.  I issue you my sincere apologies in advance - there will be no Action Figure Friday this week.

NYC in two days...

Our trip to New York is getting so close!  Our house is in complete shambles after spending the last week prepping, printing, packaging, button-making, drawing, collecting, sign making, and doing whatever else it is we've been doing.  If I dare I'll post some pics of the disarray but in the meantime, I really hope we get to see something like this while we're in NY...

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I know this video has been around for a while, but it just makes me feel good about the world. Maybe Ryan and I will stage our own freeze at Renegade.  And speaking of freezing...I hear there will be vegan soft serve at Renegade!  Yum! 

A letter to lightning bugs

Dear fireflies,

I miss you.  Life is just a smidgen lonelier on the west coast without you here.  I'm sad my husband has only met you a few times.  If you ever feel like traveling across the Rocky Mountains, you'll always have a place to stay with us. 

In the meantime I'm going to keep my eye on this book by Gary Crewdson that features you (now out of print):

And I'm going to hope that Etsy seller etaknamdoow comes back in business so we can pretend to see you:

And I'll also keep searching out Etsy for other artists that represent you in lovely ways:

Johnwgolden did a great job with this one, I think you'll agree.

Please enjoy your summer and, with any luck, we'll see you soon.

Sincerely,

Lucy

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...

Monsieur T. Spring Release

I would like to take a second to share with you my latest tee designs in collaboration with my good pal Monsieur T.

Here we have the Kenny sequel shirt- with the gold tooth. I still haven't thought up the story line of why and how he acquired one... but I do know it was during some intense battle somewhere. Maybe one of his teammates suggested he get a gold tooth after losing one in a fight. Oh, and this one also glows in the dark, like the previous Kenny Tee. It's truly a magnificent sight when the lights dim.

And lastly, our homage to the great contemporary film achievement- "Gremlins". This ultra-neon piece depicts the salacious "Stripe" in all of his roughhousingly nasty glory. This design could not have been made without a final artistic touch of a special someone out there...you know who you are. Check out "Kenny 2", "Troublemaker", and all of the other awesome designs in the 2008 spring release here!

-Ryan

And the winner is...

Hedgehog!!

We had no idea that hedgehogs were so popular but Ryan is really happy to be drawing one of these cute little critters for the June release. Thanks to everyone for voting!  We can't wait to see what animal you'll need to see in a suit next!