Brown Paper Bag Just another WordPress site

I fea­tured the work of Sofia Arnold last year, and she’s the type of artist whose work I think about from time to time; it really sticks with me.

Sofia’s work — the style, col­ors and themes — res­onate with me. Her newest paint­ings fea­ture mys­te­ri­ous beings, light emerg­ing from dark­ness, and color choices that pit the muddy with con­ven­tion­ally beau­ti­ful col­ors. All around, she makes inter­est­ing com­par­isons within her paint­ings, both the­mat­i­cally and through her cho­sen medium.

I recently reflected on illus­tra­tors and image mak­ers whose work has influ­enced me over the past 8 years, and cat­a­loged them on this web­site. I would say Sofia’s work fits right in.

All images via her web­site.

Share on Tumblr

It wasn’t until this sketch by Martha Anne showed up on the Illus­trated Ladies Tum­blr that I saw her work. I am won­der­ing why I hadn’t seen it before! I’m a huge fan of Mary Blair (see: my arms), so her style and col­ors, of course, appeal to me.

After perus­ing both fin­ish illus­tra­tions and sketches, I really like Martha’s draw­ings. They empha­size shape and line more, and because they are mono­chro­matic, there isn’t for them to get lost in.

All images via her Tum­blr, but be sure to check out her web­site, too!

Share on Tumblr

Did you know I have 10+ house­plants in my 1 bed­room apart­ment? Is that crazy? I have plans to buy more this sum­mer, too! So, I’m on the look­out for more inter­est­ing planters and vases. I came across Ate­lier Stella’s Tum­blr via Pin­ter­est (I have a major love affair with this site), and fell in love with her hand­made ceramics.

The vases and planters are given faces and have their own per­son­al­ity– a quiet smile, sassy hands on hips, and sleepy faces adorn Stella’s work.

You can buy her work from her Etsy shop. Sadly, as I write this, every­thing is sold out until the mid­dle of March. You can sign up for the Ate­lier Stella mail­ing list to get the word when she’s about list new stock.

All images via her Tum­blr.

Share on Tumblr

I’m not sure how I came across Simon Cheadle’s work, but I first pinned it because I liked the design of his lay­out. When I finally looked at his web­site, I dis­cov­ered he has cre­ated some pretty cool projects. Simon describes him­self as a designer, illus­tra­tor, and print­maker whose work is not dic­tated by per­sonal style. He writes, “…my work starts with an idea in accor­dance to the brief, with the medium and process that I use reflect­ing this concept.”

I per­son­ally love this approach, and so it’s no sur­prise that I really enjoy Simon’s projects, sev­eral of which are inter­ac­tive projects.

The fol­low­ing are some his projects, writ­ten by him on his web­site. (All images via his web­site, too!)

Make Mis­takes:An ongo­ing and inter­ac­tive project that explores the impor­tance of mak­ing mis­takes in the cre­ative process. Draw­ing tools that gen­er­ate mis­takes were designed and used to rein­ter­pret objects and ideas that are con­sid­ered per­fect. By then print­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing the, these notions of per­fec­tion are pushed back into the realm of cre­ativ­ity and the imper­fec­tions of the object are celebrated.

Men­tal Block: ‘Usu­ally when I am stuck I either keep at it — think­ing of other pos­si­bilites from other per­spec­tives, flip­ping my ideas on their head, ques­tion­ing and scru­ti­n­is­ing the brief, chal­leng­ing the restric­tions of what is required, apply­ing the prop­er­ties of some­thing suc­cess­ful from another field to my prob­lem, ask­ing for advice from one of my friends, look­ing at another prob­lem I am try­ing to solve and see­ing if it applies well to my brief…or go for a beer.’

Note­book Cover: A ver­sa­tile note­book cover that pro­motes per­son­al­i­sa­tion and every­day use based on the fact that a plain note­book can be used by every­one for any­thing. If, how­ever, the user decides not to adapt it, then it can be left as a dec­o­ra­tive pattern.

Also check out “How to be Great.”

Share on Tumblr

Robert Otto Epstein recently sent me works out of his new series. He uses draw­ing mate­ri­als, graphite and col­ored pen­cil,  and adheres his draw­ing and designs to a small grid that’s rem­i­nis­cent of tex­tiles — a loom, and for me, per­son­ally, of latch hook­ing pat­terns that I loved when I was younger (in the late 80’s, early 90’s).

If you like Robert’s work, you can pur­chase prints through Lit­tle Paper Planes.

All images via the artist. Check out his web­site!

Share on Tumblr

I fea­tured the work of Jared Andrew Schorr many years ago, when I first started this blog. I’ve been fol­low­ing him on Twit­ter and keep­ing up with his work ever since. Jared works with cut paper, using a lot of flat col­ors and a lit­tle bit of tex­ture.  The empha­sis is on shape design and shadow.  Because he lay­ers his papers, won­der­ful drop shad­ows appear behind the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of his work giv­ing it a slight sculp­tural effect.

Jared’s work is very smi­ley, and recently he’s taken on clients in the edu­ca­tional sphere. He’s also illus­trated a lot of car­toon char­ac­ters, includ­ing Adven­ture Time, one of my favorites!

All images via his blog.

Share on Tumblr

I’ve fea­tured the work of Julianna Brion on Brown Paper Bag before, and men­tioned her last week because she’s apart of my newest exhi­bi­tion for my online illus­tra­tion gallery, eyra. Julianna is included in the exhi­bi­tion Don’t Call Me Hon­ney, a show about the city of Bal­ti­more.

Julianna is local to me, a trans­plant to Bal­ti­more by way of Con­necti­cut. It’s inter­est­ing to see her take on the city, in a series that she’s titled Bal­ti­more Hodge­podge 1–4. A mish­mash it is! She cap­tures the banal­ity of row homes, high­light­ing them with bright accents. Roof decks were new to me when I first moved to Bal­ti­more, so I enjoy that she makes ref­er­ence to that. 

You can own the orig­i­nals of this work and prints as well! Take a peek in the eyra shop.

Share on Tumblr

Rachel Levit is a recent grad­u­ate of Par­sons School of Design. She uses gouache to cre­ate her illus­tra­tions, my favorites being her soli­tary por­traits shown here. I love the sense of lone­li­ness she’s cap­tured, as well as her color palette.  All images via her blog and her web­site.

Rachel also does some sculp­tural work. Her Botany series was fea­tured in the lat­est Amer­i­can Illus­tra­tion.

Share on Tumblr

I’ve always enjoyed tex­tiles, espe­cially pat­terned ones. I like the story that pat­terns can tell, and how even a sim­ple one can give some­thing an instant his­tor­i­cal con­text. The Design Cen­ter at Philadel­phia Uni­ver­sity is home to 200,000+ objects related to tex­tiles and fash­ion. They’ve cre­ated a Tum­blr that is an incred­i­ble resource for sam­ples of pat­terns, some dat­ing back from the 1800’s! Here are some of my favorites, but really, there is some­thing for every­one. Check it out.

All images via their Tum­blr.

Share on Tumblr

Peter Nencini is an artist and illus­tra­tor liv­ing and work­ing in Lon­don. In his bio, it’s writ­ten that his “work is rooted in a vocab­u­lary of use, muf­fled into abstrac­tion – this, applied to wall works, fur­ni­ture, books, boxes, typog­ra­phy and ceramic.”

Peter has an upcom­ing solo show at Begin­nings, a newish gallery in the Green­point neigh­bor­hood of Brook­lyn, NY. His show, titled Sec­ond­ment starts Feb­ru­ary 21. The works shown above and below are included in his exhi­bi­tion. which, from Begin­nings is, “…graphic work imparts an easy under­stand­ing and syn­the­sis of the bright moments in visual his­tory, from Bauhaus posters to ancient Asian fab­ric patterns.”

All images via his blog. Begin­nings is located at 110 Mese­role Ave, Brook­lyn, NY 11222!

Share on Tumblr