Spring Cleaning

It's finally Spring here in Brooklyn and I am knee deep in cleaning and organizing everything from my studio to my brain. I have been bad about updating my blog and here are some things I failed to post!

I have been doing my monthly DIY column over at the lovely blog OMFG. It has been really fun to contribute to such a fresh and fun project. Here are some of the columns I've done as of recent:

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Clamshell Garden

Mini-Terrarium

Paper Bouquet

Eco-Friendly T-shirt Dog Toy

New Work: Pet portrait hot off the presses

Here is my newest pet portrait of the lovely little french girl Mathilde. She is a rescue living the good life in the south of France! She was such a treat to paint! Though I must say, researching Provencal landscapes whilst in my Brooklyn Studio was a little painful. I wish I could have squeezed into the envelope along with the portrait headed to France!

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New Work: It's here! It's here!!

My first published book illustrations arrived in the mail yesterday and I could not be more excited! I have been working on a series for a Dutch publisher and here are some images from the first book.

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Hooray!

New Work: pet portraits

Hello there,

Here are my two most recent portraits. I really love painting all these furry friends - particularly when the commission involves things I have never really thought to draw before (like civil war uniforms). Ever since I was a kid, I loved the challenge of being told what to draw and running with it. So now I get to research WWII medic tents and fancy yachts and Bruce Springsteen album art. It's pretty wild. Here are the two latest pups.

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Xanja the WWII nurse

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Buckley sailing the seas

New Work: pet portraits

Hello folks,

Amongst other projects, I got a bundle of pet portrait commissions for the holidays. I really love doing these as they involve animals in clothing (my favorite - particularly if they are playing music) but they are based on real animals with real personalities! Here are two that I have already finished. I have a few more to get cracking on! I'll post them when they're done!

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Rocky

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Pepperoni & Cheese and Sergeant Slaughter

New and Improved

My new website vanessaboer.com is up and running! Hooray!!

NYCares painting party!

I recently volunteered as a mural artist for NYCares and designed a couple of murals for a local school that needed a pick-me-up. Some fantastic friends, a load of volunteers and I painted two murals in an Eastern Brooklyn middle school. It's pretty amazing what people can do with bad brushes and donated paint in a multitude of institutional colors like 'Safety Purple'. It was such a great experience and I can't wait to do it again soon.

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The hallway at Eastern New York Middle School of Excellence (!)

The school 'zoo', currently inhabited by one Bearded Dragon Lizard.

DIY fun

DIY paper clock {click on image to enlarge}

I just started a monthly DIY column on the supercute blog OMFG. Check it out!

exciting times

I am in the midst of working on illustrating my first book!! Actually, I will be illustrating an entire series of books on children's social and psychological issues, the first of which is on sleeping problems, nightmares, etc. It has been a really fun project thus far and I am so excited to see the first book once it's printed this fall! I can't show any of the images I'm working on until it's published but here is a sketch I won't be using.

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birds of a feather

Last week I made this 3' x 3' surface for a Plum Workshop photoshoot. I wanted to make it entirely of feathers but had some ethical issues with using real feathers. I decided to make them out of paper. 200+ hand cut feathers later, here's what I ended up with.

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I'm pretty happy with the results! Now I can't wait to experiment more with watercoloring the paper beforehand, using different weights and textures, etc. Nerd alert!

I already have one commission to make a wall piece like this one. I love it when an experiment ends better than you had expected!