New Cat Scott Logo

I created a new logo for my website and blog. Created in my "sketchbook" style on Bristol paper with my trusty Hi-Tec C pen and some acrylic + gac 100 drybrushing.

Cat Scott - Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator

Factor V

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor.

"Factor V Leiden is a common inherited genetic disorder that can increase your chance of developing abnormal blood clots (thrombophilia), usually in your veins." - The Mayo Clinic

I have a girlfriend who had two miscarriages and some serious trouble getting pregnant because she had this hereditary gene called Factor V. My youngest cousin ended up in the hospital and almost died only to discover she had the same thing. Neither girl knew they had the factor V Leiden protein before these experiences.

Unfortunately, the test to discover this rare protein is incredibly expensive and not common enough (so it seems) to be mentioned by any doctor until after you have had multiple failed pregnancies or are in the hospital recovering from thrombophilia. "Oh, you've had 2 miscarriages and have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for 3 years? Oh we didn't mention that you have this "factor 5" thing which could have killed you those 10 years you were on the pill? Whoopsie!"

I know this is a bit more morbid than my usual blog entry, but it seems like Factor V should get more attention than it does. I started thinking that there should be a foundation that raises money to help women pay for the test either when they start taking hormones or before they start trying to have a baby. This resulted in a "dream creation" (like this year's Dream Holiday Christmas card): I dreamed that my girlfriends and I started a fundraising foundation for Factor V, and within the dream I came up with the logo like what you see above.

I don't think a foundation is in the cards for us right now, but creating the artwork and writing about it can at least raise awareness on a small level. A little bit of awareness is better than zero awareness.

And now a bit about the artwork: The lettering is all done with black Hi-Tec C on a watercolor paper which was wiped quickly with a water-loaded brush, and then the red "mark" (symbol of a blood clot, my subconscious is very in-your-face) was made by dropping an undiluted drop of red watercolor onto the still wet page.

Again, I'm not a doctor, please read more about factor V Leiden at the Mayo Clinic.

Spices + Herbs Collage

I started this spices lettering project a long time ago so I'm happy to have finally done something with it! Stay tuned for prints for sale.

I'm also excited to have spent the afternoon at the Buy Local First Fair here in Louisville where I met some very talented local artists. I feel inspired to reinstate Tuesday Coolsday but will focus on local artists (there are so so many!)

Now it's time to go watch 5.5 hours of LOST. How will it all end??

Cheers,

Cat Scott

Cat Scott - Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator

Dream Holiday

I had an illustration in mind for my holiday card this year. I had even collected reference materials and started on the preliminary sketches.

Then, I woke up last Sunday morning from a weird dream: I found myself in a storage room for an apparel company with someone who was showing me all of their old marketing materials. This one piece I stumbled upon, which I think was a jeans hang tag, really struck me. I turned it over and studied it and thought to my Dream Self, "I could totally do this!" I woke up shortly thereafter, grabbed a post-it and jotted down what I could remember.

In the dream, it was double sided, so I sketched what I could remember about both sides. But since I don't really need a jeans hang tag, and I was in need of a Christmas card design, I changed some things around. I gotta say I'm pretty proud of my Dream Self. I wish I could always work out a solution to an image while sleeping - that would be Ultimate Multi Tasking!

Delicious Apple

This is a doodle - I think. Does it count as a doodle if I set out to doodle it intentionally? It started as a drawing of an apple while on a mind numbing conference call at work, then words and shapes were added, and then I cross hatched while sitting in front of the boob tube. It's a departure from my usual drawn-from-life stuff, probably inspired by all the great psychadelic illustrations that I'm seeing around the web. I'll probably paint this eventually, but right now I have 7,489,698 projects going on. It will have to wait.

Speaking of projects, back to work!

...Does it count as work if I enjoy it?

Dysfunction Junction

I created this illustration recently for Louisville Magazine, and it's finally out on newsstands! The art director requested I use my "sketchbook style" which she discovered via my newly redesigned website, www.catscott.com. I'm really glad she suggested it - I thought the grittiness and messiness of the line work really worked well with the story, which was about Louisville's Spaghetti Junction and what a mess it has become. They're currently thinking about upping the concrete to 24 lanes - how completely ludicrous is that? By 2080 Louisville will become a tangled mess of freeways. I tend to side with the grassroots movement 8664 which seeks to replace the highways with tree lined boulevards and parks. We'll see what happens!

Here's the spread in the magazine with the art director's typesetting over my illo. It was kind of hard to leave space when you don't really know what's going to happen there. Now that I see the final, I think I should have done a wash over the "reserved space" but I didn't know how that would interfere with her typography.



Detail of the drawing. I used a Hi-Tec C blue pen and then did washes over the drawing with Acrylic mixed with Gac 100.



I just got another assignment from the folks at LouMag, for which I am always thankful.

Thanks for reading, and have a happy and safe 4th of July!

Oh the Weather Outside...

I have slacked on the blogging because My Biggest Fan had a birthday this week. My free time was spent showering him with love, attention, and PRESENTS. One gift was a t-shirt that I designed with a movie quote from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

If you haven't seen the flick, you are probably thinking, "Wow, she butchered that Christmas song," and/or "Why is she illustrating Christmas songs in June?" To give you some context, the character who utters these ridiculous words is played by the hilarious (and easy-on-the-eyes) Paul Rudd. He's a free spirited surf instructor who may have burnt out a brain cell or ten. The weather outside, well, it's just weather!

Now go see the movie. Go! Now! Put it in your queue! Get it from a RedBox! Go to Blockbuster! Wait, do they still have Blockbuster?

The shirt is available from Zazzle. Anyone know of another site I could submit the design to?

Also, what do we think of my new little link buttons on the side? I'm undecided. I like the idea but might try something else. Would love some feedback!

Be on the lookout for the new beer painting to be posted this week!

aloha

Happy Father's Day

St. James Court Art Show Poster

Every fall, there is a huge, beautiful art festival in Old Louisville called the Saint James Court Art Show. Every spring, there is a competition for the poster for the event, and every year, I think, "I should enter." But I never do - not living in Louisville, I tend to forget about things like that. Earlier this week, while finishing an illustration for Louisville Magazine (coming soon to a newstand near you!), the poster contest popped in my head and I hopped over to google to check it out.

The due date was 3 days away. I took it as a sign.

I have been diligently plugging away at it ever since I sent off the final illo to LouMag. I ran into some technical difficulties though: How could I scan or photograph original artwork for a 24"x30" poster (I always work bigger than the final printed piece)? And if I were so lucky as to win, how would I get such a large piece to Louisville?

So I decided to tackle this project in Illustrator. I've been digging Jessica Hische's work lately, so my piece was very heavily influence by her, as well as various Victorian/Art Nouveau artwork I found online.

Doing the handwritten text was the best part. First I sketched it out with pencil:

Then I filled it in with ink:

Then I scanned it and used the AutoTrace feature in Illustrator to make it a vector shape. I hate doing that part because it never looks quite right to me. It lost a lot of character when it was forced into vectors.

Overall, I really like the way the poster turned out. I included the famous statue that is in the heart of Saint James Court and some of the beautiful Victorian homes that line the court, and embellished the design with the ever popular Fleur-de-lis.

This piece was a challenge for me stylistically, and it is a risky entry.. most of the past winners have been pretty paintings of the statue with some super kerned out text. Let's hope the gang at St. James Court likes my approach!

Spicy!

I'm back from my vacation and will have goodies to share from my journey soon. In the meantime, here is a little something I have been working on. The goal is to have pretty little labels for my spice jars. After I individually wrote each spice name and scanned it, I saw a lot of possibility for art pieces, so keep your eyes peeled for some colorful spice collages!

Happy Mother's Day

Now that I'm on this "Make your own cards" kick, that's exactly what I wanted to do for my mother's day card this year. I intended on challenging myself by using paint for my type, but I didn't want the hassle of constructing a big composition, mixing paint colors, yada yada yada.

I grabbed some cheap black paint, a cheap thin paint brush, and my generic sketch book from Michael's and started painting. The end result was pretty close to what I wanted, but I scanned it and used my mad Photoshop skills to clean it up and make it even BETTER. I made each piece ("happy", "Mother's", the tulip, etc) into its own grayscale TIF file and place it in InDesign. By selecting the placed image and applying a swatch to it, I was able to colorize it digitally.

Then I printed, folded, wrote a sappy note, and sent it off to my mama with her mother's day gift: drawings of me and my bro.







Happy Mother's Day!

thankyouverymuch

When I sold my very first piece on Etsy (my little painting of downtown LA), I wanted to include a Thank You card with my shipment. I only got as far as opening a new tab in Safari when I said to myself, "Self, you are an artist. Can't you make a thank you card?" I have made holiday cards in the past, so I responded, "Self, you bet your ass I can."

I sat down that night with my watercolor pad and gouache set and dove in. Obviously I wanted to do hand lettering, because that's how I roll. I painted, got lost in the work, grabbed a photo and added a sketch, stepped back and... it was crap. CRAP! Jason, My Biggest Fan (M.B.F.), told me it was lovely (such an obedient, well-trained man) but I wanted to do something better. Fortunately, I salvaged the sketch part so it wasn't a total loss. (Notice how I deliberately cropped out the CRAP part of the painting. No, you will never see it. Maybe M.B.F. will use that part as a bookmark or something).

I set back at it. The gouache flowed through me like the fade-aways flow through Kobe. Usually I do hand lettering with whatever pen is conveniently near my hand, so the addition of bristles, water, and pigment gave me a slew of new issues.  Nevertheless it was fun, and I was happy with the outcome.  Next came the easy party: scan, layout, print. Then I thought to myself, "Self, maybe others out there would want to use this design, too. It's just so darn pretty!" So up it went to my new Etsy site, so you too can enjoy the simple, yet whimsical, design. And such a steal, too!

See the listing for the cards here.

Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon!

I Carried a Watermelon

These here little ditty was used for a fake ticket for a Dirty Dancing show here in LA. The recipient, a die hard fan (what 20-30 something girl isn't a fan?), will surely recognize the quote. I think the wobbly hand-written text captures the awkwardness that Baby felt after she uttered those words. And also I love doing type by hand whenever I get the chance.

Lake Leisure

Finally, the bounty of my Surface Design project.

Goal: Create a cohesive line of products using completely original art elements.

Inspiration: Silver Bay on Lake George, always my muse. I pictured a line of products that could be for sale at the Silver Bay Gift Shop. Products that could appeal to any part of a generation. Silver Bay is conventional, preppy, rustic, and funky all at once. Lots of tradition, lots of family. It's a place people keep in their hearts for their whole life. These things (combined with my lack of fashion know-how) geared my line of products into a strange hybrid; think country club meets outdoor enthusiast.

Title: This was the last thing I did, but it seems appropriate to list it first here.



Icons: First we created a series of graphic elements that could stand alone or be combined with other Icons to create compositions. I had no idea where I was going with my project at this point. I only knew I wanted to incorporate hand-written type, because that's so hot right now. I got out the watercolors and started painting.







Badges: Badges are mini compositions which could be used on a hat or chest print of a t-shirt (or mug, etc). My favorites involve the Sunfish; I love how their bright colors pop against the deep blue greens of the mountains (in real life and in my badges!




Patterns: The Patterns portion of the class was challenging for me. We used our icons, badges, and borders (mine were too lame to show here) to make repeating or organic patterns. I think this would have been easier had I started with more abstract shapes, but the realism of my icons begged for a composition. Who wants a sheet set with a billion repeating sailboats all over it? Therefore, my most successful ones involved a simple brush stroke stripe.


I was able to use my watercolor birch leaves with a found image of a birch tree trunk. That turned out pretty cool.



Product Line: Finally, we created a product line. This involved finding/creating silhouettes on which to place your masterpieces. I found products and hand drew them to give it that "Silver Bay Look," then took the scans into Photoshop and applied my patterns/icons/badges. Here are a few of my favorites.









Outcome: I had a fantastic teacher, got a glimpse inside an industry I knew nothing about, picked up some Photoshop tricks, met some nice classmates, got some great sketchbook time in, and challenged my brain to not think composition first. Good times.

Thanks for your patience. If you made it all the way down to the bottom, you get a special treat - a joke!

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

Students

More intently listening students and other random classtime doodles.

Doodling

Just when I didn't think I could love NPR any more, they go and write a story that validates my doodling behavior.

Black is the new Green

A little something I put together for my office encouraging printing in black and white when possible. I'm really into handwritten type lately.

Leisure Ladies

A little doodle for a friend. Possibly for a t-shirt, but mostly just for fun.

A big shout out to Lines And Colors for featuring me and saying nice things about my beer series. And it's always flattering when beer connoisseurs notice me too!

Note to self: Finish the half finished beer canvases around the house.

Holiday Card

As with every Holiday season, I was pressed for time when it came to my Holiday card, but as an artist I simply cannot bring myself to send a store bought card. Fortunately, I have been trying to create more "finished" art using techniques typically reserved for my sketchbook, so I took the opportunity to do this card a bit differently. I started with the drawing of the poinsettia from my previous post, scanned in some handwritten text from my sketchbook, and then used the background of my Newcastle painting as the backdrop. Photoshop and InDesign were indispensable tools to create the finished design, but all of the elements were created by hand. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. A belated Happy Holidays to you all!

gma tote

After a lot of time traveling for the Holidays (including a lengthy cruise in the Caribbean with my boyfriend's family), I am back and ready to post some stuff! I'll try to space it out though... I like to keep you in suspense.

For Christmas, I decided to create a unique tote bag for my grandmother. I call her "g-ma" - I don't really know why, probably just because the family likes to abbreviate and be cutesy like that. I used Zazzle to create this tote and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.