There Was a Dream and One Day I Could See It

Ahhh, this drawing. Long story. When I moved in downstairs, Sarah made it her mission to convert me to listening to the Avett Brothers as constantly as she did. This took about one listen to their latest album, "I and Love and You," and I was totally sold. We went to see them in October and I was completely blown away and MAY have almost cried during their first song because it was so overwhelming. Awesome music, great performance, good-looking dudes.

Fast forward to me and Sarah having a typical conversation on instant messenger a short time later. The topic of "The Hottest Thing You Can Think of Right Now" was discussed. This was item #2: The Avett Brothers showing up on your front stoop with a basket of fresh eggs.

Stay tuned, there are more where this came from.

Happy new year!

Documentation of Historical Events

This year I decided I wanted to give mostly handmade gifts for the holiday season. This would allow me to spend more time than usual making things (since it's for someone else, I have to put in the time!), and not go too crazy, budget-wise. Of course, I underestimated the time needed to hand-sew the binding on a quilt for my parents (next time I'll know to plan for my initial estimate plus 3-5 hours), which cut into my time for other projects. With a strict deadline looming, I knew I had to sit down and draw until it was done:



This is a portrait of my grandfather Edward in the Army in 1944, just after receiving a medal at Anzio Beach. He recently sent me a few photos of himself from that era, and I was excited to use them as drawing inspiration. After one disappointing attempt at a realistic drawing, I decided to go with my heart and make it cartoony. My grandfather loved the drawing, but told me that I'd drawn him wearing the wrong boots. It's ok, he didn't make me re-draw them.

I've enjoyed playing around with some watercolor for the shading and am going to try to implement that in a few more projects I'm working on right now. Color can feel so daunting when you're used to working in just black and white, but I like the challenge of stretching a limited palette to its full potential.

Prints now available!

Bazaar Bizarre was great, and I've finally had a chance to list all the good stuff that was left over from the sale. Namely: prints! I made prints of a bunch of my favorite drawings from this blog. You can check them out at thimblewinder.com














Also, today I signed up for Somerville Open Studios! That's not until May, so stay tuned for more info over the next few months. I'm sure I'll have a lot of photos of my process to share.

progress!

I've been ridiculously busy working on stuff to sell at Bazaar Bizarre Boston this Sunday! I don't even want to think about how many hours I've spent hand-sewing little projects in front of the television.

At this point, my inventory of finished projects includes sixty of these little guys you saw in my last post:



Silkscreening + hand-sewing = the proper balance of assembly-line and time-consuming.

If you can't make it to the Bazaar Bizarre, don't worry, anything that's left over will be up in my thimblewinder shop on Monday.

More about BBB later!

and now for something mostly related

hi! it's just under two weeks until the famed bazaar bizarre boston and i'm hard at work making all kinds of tiny delights. traditionally most of the crafts i make for the bazaar bizarre are sewn, but this year my goal was to include MUCH more of my illustration in my creations. for example, these little squares of felt that will become holiday ornaments. i drew the ornament, and then silkscreened them onto the fabric:



i've been doing some illustration for the bazaar, too:

Now featured on the Charmingwall blog!

Hey guys! A quick post to let you know that I am a featured artist at the blog over at Charmingwall, the big gallery behind the Six By Six gallery.

You can read the interview HERE.

Also, in other super exciting news, the Six By Six Gallery is keeping my painting up for another month, so if you're in the city you can stop by to see it through the month of November. Woohoo!!

portrait of the artist with a portrait of the artist

On Saturday, Sarah and I took the Bolt Bus to NYC to see our paintings on display at the 6x6 gallery and run around the city. New York was, as always, a playground of awesome and a delight for the senses. We visited a few of my favorite places and I finally got to go see Mood (terrifyingly full of fabric!).

Early in the afternoon we made it over to the gallery, which is deep in the East Village. Seeing my painting in the gallery was great! I don't show often, so it's always a thrill to see something I made hanging up for all the world to see.



I'm working on tons of stuff right now, so expect more posts very soon!

halloweening

Drawn for the Halloween party at my place of work. Last year I started using the "monster colleagues" theme, and people really liked it, and I really liked depicting office workers as monsters, so here is a new werewolf for this year. I think his confused expression and the eyeball are my favorite parts. The eyeball is a shout-out to the Shel Silverstein poem about the eyeball in the gumball machine. You remember, right? It's right between the red and the green, looking at me as if to say, "you shouldn't have any more gum today."

sneak peek: new zine coming soon!

hi there! well, september is over and i have been keeping so busy. so busy, in fact, that not only did i do things every day, but i also drew pictures of what i did every day. it's true! check out a couple of sneak previews of my upcoming zine, miss sequential #2: sequential september.







the new zine should be out this month, as soon as i finish scanning and editing and copying and stapling. stay tuned!

crush

Something new! A painting for the Six by Six Gallery in NYC. I haven't received confirmation of when it will be on display, but I'll be sure to post about that.


Other exciting stuff lately:

- Getting Miss Sequential #1 into stores! If you have a suggestion of a place that might carry it, let me know. Want your own copy? I still have some! Check out the ordering info HERE.

- Working on a daily comic for the whole month of September... phew! I was so good about doing these, but am a little behind this week. I've been taking notes and I'm sure I'll get back on track. This is shaping up to be a nice little zine in itself, probably available in print sometime in October.

Thirsty Thursday drawings

My work has a monthly social hour called "Thirsty Thursday," for which I get to design the flyers and email ads. For a while I was doing these kind of sleek type-only ads, but then sometime this spring I decided I needed to inflict my silly drawings upon my colleagues:



This one was for August. Timely and topical, as both fresh produce and vampiric vegetables represent.



This one was for July. I was going for a Don Johnson/Hawaiian tourist kind of thing. Monochromatic because I like using up all of one color ink in the printer, and because I seem to have a fondness for cyan lately.

SF zine fest!

That's my table at the SF Zine Fest! That event was basically the one thing (besides the harassment from my friends) that made me REALLY REALLY sit down and make a new zine after such a long hibernation between issues. I finished the zine two nights before the fest, and copied/stapled it the day before the fest. It was basically my exact zine-making method from college, but with less panicked, sleep deprived chatter and fewer chicken fingers. And it happened! I printed it! It exists!

The fact that the zine exists at all kind of freaks me out, to be honest. It's been a long time since I made something for group consumption (brownies and holiday cards excluded). There is barely any writing, because I've discovered that printing words post-journalism-school makes me hugely nervous. Somehow I can send out a zine with scritchy drawings and wonky margins, but I can't conceive of writing much of anything and feeling super about it (yes! blog! i know!). Maybe someday I will come to peace with all those journalism school ghosts. Is it weird that when I write something informally, I see the faces of my old professors looking at me critically? Yes, I'll draw that, too.



So anyway, the fest! It was a lot of fun. In some ways it felt like I'd never stopped making zines at all. It was completely natural to me to roll up, set up my table, stare at people across the room, and deal with the weird people (present company excluded) who inevitably show up at these things and blow my mind. I met some people who read my old zines, who remembered me, which was terribly exciting. I met some people I'd only heard about in passing, but who were, like, BIG DEALS in the zine world. I made faces at the people across the aisle from me. There was some gossip. Just like old times! Thank you, SF Zine Fest, for the unstated "good to have you back."

So now that I've sent out nearly my entire first print run, I've been thinking about what to do next. I want to make a travel issue, with comics about all the adventures I've been on in recent years. Also? Kind of thinking it would be cool to do a daily comic for the month of September, just to keep the habit of drawing. I'm not saying I'm gonna post it every day, but maybe once a week? Should be interesting, right?

New zine!

Hello again! I've been super busy this month, working on an exciting project... a new zine!



Miss Sequential #1 is 20 pages of mostly comics and drawings, with a little bit of writing as well. Topics include things I've been thinking about and things that have happened to me. Everything has been drawn or written by hand! And there's only one page that's a "rerun" from this blog, but it's been reworked rather nicely.

You can get one for $2, which includes postage. I accept Paypal to thimblewinder at gmail dot com. If you don't have Paypal, you should email me at that address and we can work something out.

This is the first zine I've made in something like EIGHT YEARS. Which is completely crazy, in that I used to make zines once a month (or so) when I was in high school. It was tough to get going again, but now that I've printed this issue, I'm really excited to make another one.

Look for another post later this weekend! I just returned from San Francisco, where I attended the SF Zine Fest, and I have lots to say about that.

drawings for other people

Hello! It's been a while. I'm not sure what I've been up to since drawing all those portraits back in February, I think I needed a break after doing all that drawing.

Now that summertime is here and the days are longer, I've decided to try incorporating more drawing into my everyday life. One way I've been doing this is by taking the pressure off, doing mostly quick sketches and doodles. For instance, the portrait of my dad, drawn on an envelope I was mailing him last month:




And the going-away card I made for my friend Gretchen, who is working in France for the summer:




Here's a postcard I made for my friend Thara (pictured on the right):




Here's a postcard I made for my friend Ericka, who remarked that she didn't have to leave her bed in order to run errands around Minneapolis:




(those last two are drawn on these great 8x10" corrugated cardboard flats the production people throw out, and we designers scoop up, at my work)


And one last drawing, for me, rendered with ballpoint pen on the styrofoam take-out containter from Uno's:




I'm moving apartments this week, but I do have more to share, so expect another post very soon!

The Sketchbook Project

This, my friends, got a little out of control in the very best way possible.

About a month or so ago, I joined a project called the Sketchbook Project, a brainstorm of the guys at Art House Coop. Fill a Moleskine sketchbook with artwork based on the theme "Everyone We Know"? Alright, this I can do.

I decided to illustrate 32 of my Facebook friends' status messages in my own cartoon/caricature style. Over the course of several weeks, I collected the most interesting (drawing-wise) status updates and logged them in a notebook. I then set out to illustrate the best of the list.





I'm lucky my friends have such weird adventures.





I like to challenge myself, and I decided that 32 drawings in about a month in a 3x5-inch sketchbook was KIND OF challenging (ha). But I also decided to limit myself to drawing as quickly as possible--this helped me to get my ideas on the paper quickly, and stopped me from getting too critical about composition (which I couldn't afford to do with 32 drawings to do). These are meant to be sketchy and simple, and I think they worked out well.





One of the most fun aspects of this project was getting to draw people I've always wanted to draw, and getting to draw a few friends/acquaintances who do a lot of drawing themselves! (like missy, below, who draws all kinds of awesome comics and illustrations)





To see the whole set, check out my flickr here: Sketchbook by Marissa Falco

To learn more about The Sketchbook Project and the touring exhibit, go here: the Sketchbook Project

Pretty Swim Caps for the City Swimmers

Design for new team swim caps for my swim team, the Boston City Swimmers. We'll be printing them in dark blue ink on orange caps; this is my first design for swim caps. It's not all that different from designing a t-shirt (and those may be next).

We're gonna look so fierce at our next meet!

initial sighting of the guinea-corn

this was an image i had tumbling around in my head for a while, after seeing this scene in a dream over a year ago. finally all sorts of things aligned (the image, starting to paint, hearing about the upcoming cute show) and it's come together as a painting! this is the largest one i've made yet, it's something like 14 x 18 and i'm having a hard time finding a box to mail it to the gallery...

oh yeah! it'll be on display at ellO gallery in portsmouth, new hampshire, as part of their "cute show" (not the death and destruction one, hahaha, that's another painting waiting to happen... revenge of the guinea-corn, perhaps?) during the month of february.

amelia's sinuses

a new painting i made for a show at the washington street arts center in somerville. it was a short show, but a great combination of ideas, styles, and techniques.

amelia is painted in acrylics atop a layer of decoupaged book pages, all on canvas.

more soon!



eta: megan let me know about this cool time lapse video of the exhibit...