Mdith Design & Illustration

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 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!

(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.

I will create a portrait of you or your loved ones like the ones you see below. These portraits are hand-drawn from reference photographs and colored digitally. I can give you the files to print yourself, or for an extra fee I can get them printed for you (recommended.)

Choose from the styles below.

Poster-style: Fun and edgy, mimics the look of silkscreened posters.

Painting: Softer look, painted digitally.

I can also create more stylized portraits for a negotiable fee. This example is in the style of the original illustrations in Alice in Wonderland.

These make great gifts! If you are interested, please contact me at meredith at mdith dot com.

To see more examples of my work, visit my deviantART page.

Thanks! Hope to hear from you!

*Standard print sizes include 8″ x 11″, 11″ x 17″. Larger prints or custom sizes may cost more. I use Kinkos for printing.

As I work on this new portfolio site, you can check out my student site if you’d like to see samples of my work. There are samples of my print & web design and illustrations.

Hi there! Welcome to my new portfolio site. There’s not much here at the moment, but it’s soon to become populated with samples of my graphic design and illustration work. I’ve been working hard to figure out Wordpress so that I can easily maintain my online portfolio…so far, so good!

I’d like to express all of my thanks to the incomparable John Bintz (coswellproductions.com), who inspired me to start using WordPress in the first place and has given me plenty of guidance along the way.

Final note: I created this theme based on Wordpress’s default Kubrick theme, and I’ll continue to tweak it and make it more my own as my skills develop.

Thanks for stopping by!

- Meredith