Mdith Design & Illustration

Exciting news! I’m getting married in less than a year, and my fiancé and I are saving up for the big day. A couple years ago, I did a series of comics-style portrait commissions to help pay for my move into the city and to a new school. Now I’m taking commissions again to help the transition into the next stage of my life! Here are some samples of what I’ve done in the past. Pets, kids, individual portraits and couples are all welcome.

I work from your favorite photograph or a composite of several shots, and send sketches throughout the process. You’ll receive a frame-ready 8″ x 10″, 8.5″ x 11″ or 11″ x 14″ print, as well as digital copies to use on your website, Facebook, Twitter…whatever!

Pricing:*
Single portrait – $50
Double portrait – $70
Group portrait (3 or more) – contact me!

Larger sizes are available as well, for an additional printing fee. 10% off if you only want digital copies!

Email me at commissions@mdith.com to get started!

* Please note that this is NOT my rate for professional design or illustration work, or the use of any of the artwork you find on my site. This is a special, one-time-only commission price for private individuals.

Thank you, last semester of school. This site was neglected for far too long and the required portfolio workshop for graduating seniors gave me an excuse to get to work. I created this site two years ago as I finished my tenure at community college, and now it’s had a makeover as I finish my tenure at university. My web design and coding skills have improved greatly in the intervening years (mostly in the last 10 months), so I was excited to learn to make my own fully-formed WordPress theme.

I’d like to add more stuff soon, once it’s finished being graded. I will probably add a section devoted entirely to illustration, though much of my print design samples incorporate my illustrations. I’d also like to use this blog more…maybe for design topics, maybe to keep sharing work in progress when appropriate. We’ll see!

In the meantime, feel free to take a look at my samples and drop me a line to let me know what you think! Thanks for visiting!

This is a poster I am working on for the Academic Resource Center at the University of Baltimore. To appeal to potential tutors, I focused on the positive experience of tutoring and helping one’s fellow students succeed by sharing one’s knowledge and skills. The blue and green represent the colors in UB’s logo. It was fun creating this clean and simple illustration, which is a bit different from my usual style. I may use this approach for future ARC publicity.

I’m actually going to start tutoring soon myself, helping students who are learning how to use the Adobe Creative Suite.

This is another flyer for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Baltimore. As you might guess, it’s for the Halloween session. The original photo, provided by model Nicolette Le Fay, is by Baltimore photographer Defekto. Nicolette’s wild expression and costume were a great jumping-off point for this piece. I’m looking forward to this one – Nicolette was a great model at the first Dr. Sketchy’s session I went to, so I’m sure this one will be even better. If you like drawing and are looking for a more, um, decadent life drawing experience, I highly recommend Dr. Sketchy’s.

This is an illustration that I did for the October 2008 edition of the UB Post. The illustration accompanies a pair of point/counterpoint-style opinion pieces about the presidential candidates’ views on energy sources. In case you’ve been living under a rock, that’s Senators Obama and Biden hanging onto a wind turbine on the left, and Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin riding an oil derrick on the right. Pretty simple, really. I didn’t want to show much partiality because it’s meant to illustrate both sides of the argument, so everyone looks pretty silly. 

This is yet another piece drawn and colored in Illustrator…I’m getting the hang of it.

This is my first illustration for The UB Post, University of Baltimore’s student newspaper. Click the image for the full piece – it will run the entire length of a page and it’s pretty tall. It will accompany a piece about malfunctioning elevators on campus. The man in the middle is UB’s President, Robert Bogolmony – the production manager asked me to include him, since he too was stuck in an elevator last year!

Just last week, I joined the staff as a page designer and I will be contributing illustrations as well, plus whatever else I can take on. It’s funny to start working on the paper before I’ve even started classes, but I’m happy! I sort of missed working on the newspaper over the summer, so I’m looking forward to working on the UB Post!

The process was interesting to me – I started pencils in Sketchbook Pro as usual. However, instead of my usual method of inking in Sketchbook Pro as well, I did most of the inking in Illustrator with the Brush tool. Then I used Live Paint to add the basic colors. (I was inspired to try this after reading about Rene Engström’s process. She’s the creator of one of my favorite webcomics, Anders Loves Maria) Then I added texture, highlights and shadow in Photoshop, using some of the brushes created by my former instructor, David Zobel. It was fun! And important, since I’m still trying to figure out the best way to work completely digitally and maintain my style at the same time.

p.s. That guy with the laptop? May or may not be based on a certain comics-creating web-developing guy I know, who is not actually a UB student, but is pretty awesome all the same.

This is a flyer I created for the Baltimore branch of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. I went to my first session in August and it was a lot of fun – I even won a Moleskine notebook! (I must post the winning drawing soon.) An explanation from Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore’s website :

Dr. Sketchy’s is a chain of cabaret life-drawing sessions that circles the globe from Hollywood to New Zealand. Started by Molly Crabapple in 2005, Dr. Sketchy’s is based on Molly’s harebrained dream of a “decadent” art class with fair pay and respect for the models and boozy fun for all.

So if you like drawing, drinking and sexy ladies in fun outfits, check it out! See the flyer for details (No skeeves, please!)

This piece was penciled in Sketchbook Pro, inked in Illustrator, and colored in Photoshop…an interesting hybrid. It’s a bit of a departure from my “normal” process – I’m experimenting with different methods of working digitally. I have to give a shout-out to my former instructor at CCBC, David Zobel. He created the Photoshop brushes that I used to give this piece an appropriately old-timey, worn texture.

The people at NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland really liked my design for the Choice Avengers postcard, so they asked me to adapt it for a tee shirt. The information about the event was not necessary, so some tweaking was needed to make it more suitable for a shirt. I can’t wait to see how it comes out!

This illustration and design was created for a postcard promoting NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland Fund‘s upcoming variety show. (One of my friends is an intern for NPCMD and referred them to me.) The event is superhero-themed and the client asked me to design the card accordingly.

Due to print budget constraints, I was asked to work with only two spot colors. I chose gold and red because they are part of Maryland’s flag and recall the bright primary colors of old superhero comics. The limited amount of color proved to be an interesting challenge, but I must have succeeded because at first the client didn’t believe that it was only two colors! Definitely a fun project.

(cross-posted to Myspace, Facebook, ad infinitum)

I’ve been busy working on portrait commissions – thank you so much to those who have sent me requests! The extra money is really going to help me out a lot. Times have been pretty tight, so every bit helps, and I’m happy that I can make some cool stuff for people in exchange!

I just completed these three and I’m working on some more…

Don & Fotini

Justin & Rachel

Kristin & Nate

So keep those requests coming! Tell your friends and family!  See my last post or email meredith at mdith dot com for more info.