thank you!

2 mores envelopes to go form my etsy shop
thanks for all your support!!
you can visit my shop here
it's still very small but I'm working on adding new things
Any suggestions on what print I should make available??

moly x 69: sign in page

I just finished my sign in page for moly x 69. This moly exchange is all about Shakespeare, so I had a little bit of fun with M. Shakespeare. You can see my first entry here
Hope you like it!

from my sketchbook

Wednesday was a national holiday here in Quebec. So I had the whole day to draw, yeah!!
So on wednesday morning, I grab my sketchbook and had a little bit of fun. The result was this little indian cat.
Hope you like it!

Crazy week!!

Wow this week has been crazy! To name a few, I caught a cold, bought a house, had crazy work hours and celebrated father days. Ouf! At least it's over
So sorry for my lack of post. But I had no time... I just had time to do this envelope for Mia
Mia bought a print on my etsy shop and I decided to customize her envelope to make it a little bit more special.

Now I 'm back to my normal crazy work week and should be posting new things soon
Hope you had a great week end and nice fathers days!

ps. my etsy shop is karodesign.etsy.com

There's this blog that I really love. It's called Modish Biz tips.
And they have a great business advice for freelance artists, like me.
I have joined the monthly goal meet up to try to motivate me to achieve my business goals

Here are my goals for May
And I 'm sorry to say that I didn't achieve them like i wanted to... snif snif
but I will try again this month and hopefully it will go better

Goals for May
1- build my website ( update: I have decided on my site map, my overal design style and I have hired a web programmer.. so that's going pretty well but not fast enough. It's my number 1 priority for this month)
2- enter in a illustration contest ( this is the worst one, I had found my contest, and I had a great illustration to send... but I totally forgot the submission deadline... oups!)
3- keep up with 3 posts / week on my blog ( this is going great! just have to keep it up)
4- do more illustrations that have a "financial" or promotional purposes ( contests, etsy prints) (i have to keep in mind this one)
5- learn more about the business part of starting your own business (I have been reading a lot of blogs on the subject but I need to see what are the legalities in Canada)
6- put 3 new products on etsy ( product creation is taking more time that expected... better luck next month)


So this month was not the most productive one. Maybe my goals were a little bit unrealistic
I will try to do better next month

So here are my goals for June & July
1- build my website
2- keep up with 3 posts / week on my blog
3- finish 2 other Zodiac signs

that's it, let's keep it simple... so I can achieve all my goals
Here you can view all the other goals from all the members

So let's hope I can achieve my goals and you too !!

Images from the past

A friend of mine recently asked me to post her favorite illustrations. She is going through hard times right now.. so I hope this will cheer you up!
These are 2 illustrations I did a while ago but that I am still really proud of
The first one is based on Paul Auster's book, In The Country of Last Things
and the second one is based on The Little Mermaid by Andersen
Hope you like them and that it will cheer you up too !!

Geninne's art blog teaches you how to make stamps

I found this great blog called Geninne's art blog.
On this blog there are great tutorial on how to make hand craved stamps. I really want to try it, the result are so beautiful. Another trip to the art store. Here are all the tutorials


Here is one of her stamps.

While you are there, check out Geninne's amazing illustration. They are a mix of colorful watercolor, collage and stamps. And are a great inspiration to all artists including myself.

I'm on twitter

I'm finally on twitter ! Seems like a great place to meet new people and share
Go see me at http://twitter.com/karo_design

moly x 69: final !

I finally finished Lady Macbeth
It turned out totally different form what I initially had in my mind but I'm still happy about the end result. Now I'm going to get started on the cover pages.
Well hope you like it and that the rest of the members of moly x 69 do too!

Lady Macbeth à la Mucha

While I was working on my portrait for Lady Macbeth for Moly x 69, I could not decide if I wanted to do a profile or a face portrait. So I decided to do both in a quite different style. While sketching my profile portrait, I was reminded of a piece by Alfons Mucha. Alfons Mucha is the leader of the Art Nouveau movement. And He did very aesthetic pieces of women for various ads campaigns in the 1900's. His style is known for a very thick line and for curved lines like in the hair.
Doing my Lady Macbeth's sketch, I was reminded of the piece "Calendar for the Astrological signs". They were many resemblance with my piece; the profile women, the crown. So I decided to do my portrait Mucha style. Even if it's not really my style, it's was fun to do and I think it came out great! Hope you like it!

TOP 3 FLICKR GROUP FOR IMAGE SOURCES

Finding the right image for my collage can sometimes be hard and tedious. But I have been playing around with this style for a while and I have accumulated a great amount of resources. Internet is an amazing place to find vintage images and I have a couple of sites I prefer when It comes to finding my images.

Time to share!

Flickr can be a great place to find images. Some group specialize in vintage images. And what I love most about flickr groups is the search option. Makes searching the perfect image really easy!

Here are my TOP 3 favorite flickr groups:

#1- Collage images:
This is by far my favorite. It has over 23 000 images. The tags are great and you easily find what you need. This flick group is always the first place I go.

#2- Vintage illustration:
When Collage images doesn't have what I want, I go here. Great group, a lot of images ( over 2000) A little bit of everything. Really old images, 50's images, lots of color images

#3- mid-century illustrated:
And finally, sometimes I go here. Great place to find more recent images with a 50's twist. It has over 12000 images and lots of them in color. Great to find funny images and 50's ads.

Well that's it for my favorite flickr groups. Flickr is a great ressource and recomend you take a look. There are a lots of other sites to go, blogs, deviant collections, digital librairies.... but that will be for a next post.

And how about you, what are your favorite image ressources sites?