Functioning Artoholic

So I quit making art about a year ago. I always tell people that it was for this reason or that reason but in reality it was because I was tired of making a mess in my house and then having to clean it up. I had already scaled down the size of things I was working on, going from door-sized charcoal drawings down to little foot-square collages that I could make while I was watching Project Runway. I liked the encouragement Tim Gunn offered me! I made it work. And then a gluestick got stuck to the sofa and that was, as they say, that.

But I was cleaning up my computer desktop yesterday and ran across something that surprised me...for the past year or maybe more, I've been doing these little illustrations for Readerville.com at the behest of my friend Karen who owns it. Most of them are computer-generated, though there are a lot of hand drawn things that get scanned and then manipulated in the box. It was weird opening them all up and looking at them together because with maybe two exceptions - the Ethel Merman one and the teacup - they look like work I would have done anyway!I'm pleased at how many of them reflect my personal aesthetic even though they were created to illustrate someone else's idea. Maybe I'm an illustrator!

So I didn't give up making art after all, I guess. It was surprising how many of them there were. Anyway, here's some of that, along with a couple that got rejected by mean Karen.

(Oh and everthing's ©DG Strong and I am just bored enough to sue you and burn your house down if you steal from me, bitches.)