What's up? Pikas!

Here's a little something I've been working on over the last few days. These sweeties are Pikas; they are ratty little creatures that have, in this case, wandered out of their usual mountainous region and into the Mississsippi delta. Why? Well, surely you don't begrudge the pika a vacation now and then.

They were actually inspired by a suggestion by a friend's girlfriend, who I met at the West Seattle Art Walk. We were talking about the various odd creatures of the world and she mentioned that she likes pikas. I think they're a nice addition to the lagomorph order, so I thought I'd paint a couple of them. An old atlas I had found made a nice canvas, so I sent these two on a little trip down south.


Look at them cute faces!

Logo designs for ShoreDog

I've been spending some time this week on creating a logo for Shoredog.org; it's our local dog-park group. They're just getting started, but they've already done some amazing stuff, and we now have two off-leash dog parks in the works! I'm excited to be helping them out (and Mina's excited that there will finally be dog parks here in Shoreline).

I've put together a small presentation with my initial ideas for their logo. Since I haven't done any logo work for years, I'd love any feedback that folks might have; there's a 4-page PDF here with the ideas I've presented.

Below are the JPGs of each page, but I know Blogger resizes JPGs and the quality suffers. Still, they'll give a fairly good idea of what's on each page. If you have a moment to take a look and leave me a comment on which you like, or what I could do better, I'd be much obliged!

Still employed

Yes, in case you had heard the news, I am still employed. At least, as of today! Who knows what the future might bring.

Still employed

Yes, I still have a job; the actual layoffs won't happen until mid-February. I feel preeeettttyyy safe then, too. They just added one person to our group...they wouldn't do that if they were going to cut any of us, right? But ultimately, none of us are really safe, and everyone is really tense. It's like Russian job-roulette...wheee!

Busy busy busy

I feel like I'm getting a lot done this year, so far. The show at Mission for the West Seattle Art Walk was great; it was a fantastic venue and a lot of great people came. I sold two pieces there, and brought the others in to work for our studio gallery. Folks have been giving me a lot of positive feedback, which has been very encouraging.

I had new business cards printed last week, and have finally done something with my website. The old site was built back in 2006, if you can believe that! I did it myself with Adobe GoLive, which was fine, but it was never all that professional looking. I decided to shop around for a hosted, template-based site for the next incarnation, and after a lot of research settled on a company called "Other Peoples' Pixels." They provide an integrated portfolio design platform which is really easy to use and update. I like it a lot.

Here's the new site: SonyaReasor.com - if you're interested, please take a look and let me know what you think.

I'm also taking an intermediate design class over at SVC, as part of their wonderful "teach a class, take one free" program. I'm looking forward to working on the assignment - a package design project - and building a design portfolio. If all goes well, I can integrate illustration and design and maybe, just maybe, do something different for a living soon. Prepress is great, and despite its craziness, I do like where I work, but I'm really ready to grow and try some new things. I hope 2009 is the year that happens. Right now, I'm doing all I can to make it happen!

The photo above is my Dragonfly drawing; walnut ink and colored pencil on an antique book page.

Mission party tonight

I'm in really good company here; too good. The other people showing their work are really talented—I am the newbie in the bunch, and with work I'm not feeling 100% confident about. I wish I'd had more time to prepare some better stuff.

All that said, it should be a great venue and will be serving some good food and drinks, so I'll enjoy that and try and relax about the rest of it.

These are a few of my favorite things...!

Lazy, quiet evenings with the family are the best!