Working for the folks at the Apple Support YouTube and Twitter channels provided me with many opportunities to grow as a designer and illustrator. One of my main roles as one of the team’s graphic designers was to concept and create illustrations and designs for Apple device applications that appeared in the team’s educational motion graphic videos. Many of the graphics were created within application tools to achieve the most accuracy.

Longtime friend and playwright Angela Hanks reached out to me to design a cover for her 2018 play “Wilder Gone.” Angela and I have collaborated before, but this time a big time publishing company was in the mix. I was ecstatic to create this cover supporting my friend’s career growth and humbled that she asked me to do it. The published work will be released in Spring 2023 and I’m excited to share it with the world. If you’d like to be delighted, keep an eye out for tickets to one of Angela’s plays.

A design exploration revival of “Morning Sketching” where a new environmental illustration is created each morning using the digital application ProCreate. Design focus includes using a set color palette, combing geometric and organic shapes and experimenting with new media techniques.

Follow along with daily progress at Morning Sketching.
See related series Geometric Gig Posters for comissioned designs.

Working and collaborating with other creative artists is a joy of mine. For this ongoing poster series I experimented using geometric shapes, bright textures, simple lines and timeless typography to create postmodern inspired designs that showcase each musician’s style.

The Geometric Gig Poster series is an extension of an experimental daily digital illustration project that I am currently working on. See more designs at Morning Sketching 2023.

During 2020 many of us were (are) quarantined at home and feeling ready to mingle but with health-minded restrictions we are limited. With more time on my hands and a desire to help lift moods and create connections among people, I decided to design a set of humorous quarantine-themed postcards. The United States Mail service is also struggling a bit so this is a great opportunity to make a difference by sending postcards to those we can’t spend time with right now.

Each postcard was lovingly conceived, designed, and printed in my downtown Los Angeles, CA home studio. I hand-illustrated each drawing with ink and highlighter. I then digitally scanned and used software to create final designs.

“The Adventures of Kona & King” is a book delightfully written by Joanne Cooper. The original illustrations – created by her 11-year-old grandson Zachery Cooper – are accompanied by hand-drawn and digitally altered backgrounds by me. The book design and layout were also created by me.

It is an interactive book written in a rhyming poem format, asking questions to stimulate children’s imaginations and initiate conversations. The two stars of the story are two real-life Labrador Retrievers named Kona and King.

Peter Donovan of the Seattle band, All the Real Girls, approached me to design the cover of his upcoming single “Good to Be Alive.” As I learned more about this project I was elated. As a part of the Bushwick Book Club – Seattle, Peter based his song on the popular children’s “Frog and Toad” book series by Arnold Lobel. “Frog and Toad” was a favorite childhood book of mine and I asked Peter if he wanted the album art cover to be based on Lobel’s illustrations. Since Peter’s lyrics beautifully echoed the book series I decided to use the naturistic subject matter and 1960’s color pallet in my design. I used a flat illustration style, hand-inked drawings, and textured watercolor-painted paper strips which I combined – along with type digitally.

The lovely animation was created by Bradley James Lockhart.
Song by Peter Donovan & Elijah Ocean

Hamilton Boyce – Harmony Vocals
Peter Donovan – Vocals
Zach Jones – Piano, Harmony
Vocals Curren McDowell – Drums, Percussion
Elijah Ocean – Guitars, Bass, Organ, Harmonica, Harmony Vocals

Here we are. It’s the year 2020; the world has a human-based virus and (hopefully) we are all doing our part by staying home as much as possible and flattening that curve! I wanted to find a way to make our home stays a little easier. If you have kiddos or are a kid at heart, this project is for you. Feel free to print and share coloring pages for you, your family and friends to enjoy. Also, feel free to tag me on social media with your completed pages. Just please refrain from selling, stealing or making a profit from these. They are my gift to you and I can’t wait to see how your creativity shows itself.

Love,
Amy

Plants clean the air in your home and give joy to your soul. They give you something to take care of and bring life to a dull space. One of my personal projects is to create illustrations of the plants in my home and frame them with vintage frames discovered at thrift and antique shops. Recently I’ve enjoyed finding ways of weaving these hand drawn and painted plant portraits into the digital world.

Transpose, a Seattle-based start-up, aimed to make everyday data storage more simplistic.

When they came to me looking for illustrations for their new e-book, I was excited. Together we explored concepts for imagery that would best support their overall company message. We settled on the theme “consolidation is key” for the chapter header illustrations. Using a keychain as a metaphor, I created a series of images supporting the idea that digital consumers store their data in too many places and that by using Transpose’s online services, users can pair down to one platform. The fox—Tranpose’s logo/mascot—holds the key.

The Garden Series, a personal project, is inspired by the imaginations of children and how we often lose our sense of wonder as we grow into adulthood. In my home I’ve acquired many plants, and my partner and I have small figurines scattered throughout them. In this series of paintings, my houseplants become jungles and miniature toys become adventurers in strange lands.

Over six days, the annual New York Short Film Festival showcases work from around the world at the historic Cinema Village theater in Greenwich Village.

I worked with New York City short-film director Noel Day Bishop to create the branding for the festival’s 2016 marketing campaign. For the event, we wanted something eye-catching that represented what a New York film festival is about. The design I provided gives a nod to the interesting historic origin of the independent movie theater hosting the festival. Before becoming a theater in the 1960s, the building, built in 1898, was a three-story fire-engine house. By using an illustrated image of a Dalmatian capturing social change on its vintage film camera, we whimsically alluded to the theater’s beginnings and the ever evolving character New York City.

Veelo is an interactive online application designed to help businesses grow. Veelo provides a platform created to guide company sales teams. This includes virtual coaching, sales content management, and better prospect engagement.

The Vestibule, a unique family-owned space, is both a neighborhood gallery featuring local artists and an Airbnb accommodation.

When owners Kascha and John Snavely approached me, they were interested in showing my nature-themed illustrations from my Morning Sketching collection. The gallery’s primary presentation space features a mini window-display that passersby can enjoy even when the space is not open to the public. In addition to showing pieces from my existing series, I wanted to add something special for the space. The gallery is located near a secret beach in Seattle’s Ballard area, and I gathered specimens (driftwood, seaweed, and kelp) to draw as hanging artworks in a window installation. On the lower half of the window I painted line-drawings representing the tides that brought to shore the objects I collected and drew.

I have a small obsession with vintage trucks, which I blame on growing up in Texas. This ongoing personal series started unintentionally as I found myself taking Instagram shots of the vintage trucks and trailers around my Seattle neighborhood. Across the city many displaced people live in these trucks as homes. At the same time, my father, who lives with extreme mental illnesses, was also living on the streets, and I wanted to find a way to help those experiencing homelessness in my community. With my limited monetary resources, I began painting my Vintage Truck Series based on the photographed trucks with the goal of sending a portion of the art sales to a local organization advocating for those experiencing homelessness in Seattle. I approached the owners of the boutique Velouria with the idea of a fundraising event, and they were immediately on board to host.

A portion of all Truck Portrait sales continues to support Facing Homelessness, and if interested, you can purchase an already created illustration or request a truck/car portrait of your own. See more details in my online shop or donate directly.

Naturistic is an online educational film series exploring biology and ecology by scientist Nash Turley, PhD, and musician/composer Hamilton Boyce.

The two friends brought me onto their team to create illustrations. We discussed what areas in the video would benefit from diagrams, small animations, and more focused visuals, and I worked with Hamilton to create line drawings that clarify and support each episode’s topic. To reflect the accessible and light-hearted mood of the series, I gave the hand-drawn illustrations a slightly comical yet realistic style. We then layered the drawings over foliage-rich background photography and video to create a multidimensional feel.

For over 25 years, TCS World Travel has hosted guests on adventures of a lifetime. Their high-end, all-inclusive journeys deliver unparalleled and meaningful experiences in unique destinations around the globe.

Each year, the company collaborates with an illustrator to create a calendar for their clients that celebrates world travel. In 2016 they hired me to create detailed illustrative snapshots of their beautiful featured vacation destinations. I brought scenes from around the world to life using bright colors and a style I adapted for a more realistic depiction of the locations. I created the illustrations using a combination of gouache, watercolor, and my favorite black Sharpie pens, with any edits made digitally.

Velouria is a small Seattle boutique and gallery chock-full of US and Canadian-made goods. Their pieces are made by folks who are dedicated to beauty, quality, and sustainability.

In February and March of 2016 the wonderful ladies of Velouria and I collaborated to create a window display featuring my Morning Sketching illustration collection. The installation consisted of two parts. First, we decided on five black-and-white sketches to feature as blown-up backdrops providing wallpaper for their display mannequins. Then I implemented hand-painted designs across the front window panels to create a multilayered aesthetic. Inside the shop, Morning Sketching drawings were exhibited, and a reception was held during Pioneer Square’s First Thursday Art Walk (in conjunction with local jewelry artist Angela Delarmente’s beautiful jewelry). To create an evolving design, we followed up the February installation with added color elements in March that complemented Velouria’s new spring clothing lines.

San Fermo is an Italian restaurant in Seattle situated in a newly renovated historic house.

The interior design features a mix of both vintage and clean modern aesthetics, and the owner reached out to me with the idea of using hand lettering for their signage. I started with the exterior sandwich board using imagery referencing the aged cutting boards that the owner and his wife had collected over the years. Finding inspiration for the environmental design in the space itself, I took visual cues from the vintage European tableware that the restaurant uses. For any detailed design elements, I created stylized typography that reflects the modern/vintage feel of the restaurant.