waiting for spring

You may have seen my holiday season picks, and now here's what's hot for Spring (...in my life). Best viewed large, since the actual image is 20 x 20".

Black Cat iPhone cases for 4/4S & 5 now in my shop. Cheaper than Society6 and directly from me :)

favorite sketchbook

The night before I was planning on going to New York Central and trying to buy one of these elusive sketchbooks, I had all sorts of wonderful dreams about paper and drawing and George Bates' sketchbook class and the open model drawing session at Parsons etc etc. It was really nerdy.

And then I had the best trip there, because not only did they have the sketchbook, I had this fantastic conversation with one of the notoriously pretentious employees about it. We were like "isn't this sketchbook the best, it's such a good size, it always sells out so fast, and the cover is so nice, and it even lays flat when you open it in case you want to use the full spread, and that coventry vellum is super nice too, such a good pick." It was really nerdy.

After a week of emails and recoloring patterns and writing licensing contracts, I was so happy to paint a bunch of leaves and flowers for a few hours last night.
I started drawing in sketchbooks religiously toward the end of high school when I was 16 or 17 and knew I wanted to go to art school. My drawings may not have been that good, but I can look at a page and remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. At Pannikin with Ryan and his brother on New Year's Eve. I was drinking tea, his brother was reading a newspaper. It was lightly raining. It's a more accurate account of my life than anything I could write.

My two more recent ones are less vivid, maybe because I don't have as many feelings as I did when I was 17 or 20, or maybe because almost all of the drawings were done while giggling with Chelsey in Jordin's class. It's really nice to flip through though and see what I was thinking about then (mostly girls and flowers, of course).

*tumblr*

I made a tumblr yesterday because I want to be able to post lots of drawings in quick succession, and this blog's format feels a little formal for that. Diwa & I started a joint tumblr ~5 years ago just so we could share images with each other, and after a few years I got tired of posting and really tired of mindlessly scrolling through the dashboard. And I just realized that tumblr is not just for teens posting uncredited fashion pix, if I just follow my illustration friends it's sort of like instagram for our work. Cool.

So, you can follow me at leahreena.tumblr.com. I'm still going to post all the really important things here of course.

Tropics

Now, who wants to license these for some board shorts and beach towels?

Girls

I've added 5 original framed paintings to my shop. They are all from my Internet Girls series and some of my favorite pretty girl paintings. Vintage frames included, hand picked from the depths of San Diego thrift heaven.

daisies

A new daisy pattern, a couple ways. I liked the repeating one so much I did a one-color version while painting plates with Rachael and Julia last week.

Shop Update

A few of the new items that are in my shop now, again all shot by the talented Kate Edwards.

Mom's house

A couple test photos Dylan took at my Mom's house that I like for some reason. We're (finally) going home tomorrow, yay.

Holiday Picks

New Products + Kate Edwards

Here's the first wave of some new photos and new products, all thanks to the amazing Kate Edwards. You might recognize her work, and our gorgeous friend & model Gabby, from Young Frankk jewelry -- Kate shot the latest lookbook, and Gabby's modeled for it all. I only have these handful of things up now because I'm about to close my shop while I'm in California for 3 weeks, but much more will be up in early January, including lots of new dresses.