Historical Illustration Project

Belated happy birthday to Professor John Howe.  He is a professor of Medieval History at Texas Tech with a tenure of more than 30 years.  I produced some images for his new book Before the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium.

I really enjoyed this project which included mapmaking, recreation of a Papal seal and a line drawing of a motte and bailey castle.  It was interesting research not only for the subject matter but also because I had to conform to the strict guidelines of the publisher.  Nothing is more satisfying to a nerd in her late 30s than learning something new and following the rules!  

Wearable Technology or What my job entails

If you haven't heard of Troubadour Research and Consulting they deal in market research, big data, and strategy consulting.  Mostly they are comprised of smart people who kill at Geeks Who Drink. Example of a winning team name: "That's How You Get Ants-wers".  We have worked together quite a bit.  They translate data into visual storytelling and need an occasional assist from an illustrator with a background in sequential art (that's me).  

As a result I get to work on fun projects like this one where they calculate how various people feel about wearing technology, like a smartwatch or google glasses, and I make drawings that match the data.  They put the two together and created a cool app for their clients. Fun right?!

 My favorite part is the sketching stage.  They ask for a particular kind of person, let's say a "Cool guy living in a big city" and I get to ask, "Are we talking Austin cool?  Waris Ahluwalia jetset cool?  Or more Paul Bettany in a skinny scarf?" 

They check the numbers and we narrow it down until we get something like this:

I have an ulterior motive for posting this.  I was recently at a party and noticed that when folks ask the classic party question, "How's work?"  I reflexively blathered on about about data and visual storytelling until their eyes went dead.  Now, I'm just gonna send this link. 

Happy Bird-day Robin

These are planning sketches for a comic about the birth of my second daughter one year ago today. Happy Birthday little bird.  I made these while you were napping/nursing.