Hey, Thanks!

A big slice of gratitude for the folks over at Drawn! and a pleasant Hello! to anyone new coming over to check my stuff out! This is the second time John Martz has written me up, and it's awful nice of him to do it. :) (it was also nice of Sam to submit my site to Drawn...)

Lucky for me, I just updated ciesemier.com (although I've found that sometimes it's necessary to clear the cache in Firefox before the new changes appear) and I'm gettin' serious here about freelancing, so now's the time. :)

I'll be putting up a sweet new piece on Sunday or Monday (it'll be in the February issue of GO!) but I can also now share this B&W piece I did for BITCH magazine-- it was about the role of Jane Eyre character archetypes in literature.
(I don't know about you all, but I do enjoy me some period romances on occasion. It's a break from the asian action movies I usually enjoy watching. Anyone else excited for Chocolate? Eh? Eh?)



I'm not too practiced in B&W (or graphite pencil!), so I think this could maybe have been better. I'm trying to play around with some new media though, so any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks again, guys!

I'm heading home today to get a jump on my little holiday break in Chicago, but before I go I wanted to share an illustration I did for Baltimore Magazine. It's about a real-life school for Santa Wannabes, taught by a guy who is the spitting image of Father Christmas himself!



I also wanted to say I'm feeling a little better about the whole illustration thing. Thanks for all your support with that. I just need to keep working at it and not giving up. (that's sort of the solution for everything, I think...)
Also, for any of you derby fans, right now I'm in a Rollergirl-themed gallery show at the Rogue Buddha Gallery in Minneapolis, MN! (Running until December 30th, in case any of you want to swing by! If you're out there, maybe pick me up some Lutefisk too) :) The Northstar Rollergirls of Minnesota also asked me to do their May Championship bout poster, so that should be pretty sweet! I wasn't able to attend the opening, but here's one of the photos from it with a smiling dude and one of my pieces:



Anyway, I hope you all have an excellent and delicious time with your own family and friends! I know mine will be filled with my family and their great food and and heated political/religious exchanges. :) It's what the holidays are all about.

That Time of the Year

Hello again friends,
First, some news. The Bad:

My file that I was working on for the Popgun Comic Anthology 3 totally crashed and burned. I have nothing to show for the 3 weeks I've been working on it. I was even making a bit of a breakthrough in my own work and style, but there is nothing now. Believe me, I'm angry at myself for not making a backup copy.

Consequently, I won't be able to make it into the publication alongside my awesome friends and many other great artists. The first Popgun won a Harvey this year, and I have no doubts the 3rd will do even better.

I've pretty much lost the desire to draw. I had lost it when I came back from England, feeling like my work had gotten stale and bad in comparison to so many other people, and then used Popgun as an excuse to try and force myself to make something interesting and fun for myself again. Now that it's all been erased, I'm back where I started, feeling like I've wasted so much and not really knowing what to do next.


On a better note:

The wonderfully huggable (and, of course, supremely artistically talented) Nancy Muller was just on Drawn!, see here. Finally. :)
A little while back, my ever-amazing boyfriend Sam Bosma was also on Drawn! here. They spelled his name a little wrong, but they sure can recognize great artists.

Also, since it's been a while, here's another full page and spot in the December issue of AirTran's inflight magazine, GO!:





It's for an article on business philanthropy called "To Give is To Receive". To see what the layout looks like in the magazine, go here and type in "88" or "89" for the "Go to" page number.

Finally, I'd like to say thank you to those of you who post and tell me you like my work. Thank you. It's definitely an encouragement.

IS YOUR SISTERHOOD STRAIGHT-UP?

That is the question asked by a quiz page in the Oct/Nov issue of Girls Life Magazine. Consider wisely.
Are you:
A. REAL & RIGHTEOUS
B. EASIN' ON THE HONESTY
or
C. TUNIN' OUT THE TRUTH??

For a visual accompaniment to these varying degrees of honesty, consider the following:



My illustration! In stores now. :)

Two more notes:

1. Tonight is the final Baltimonster closing party! 9 pm tonight! Free admission! A bunch of bands! Costume party! Cool art! Next door to Windup Space, 14 North Ave., Baltimore, MD 21201! Be there!

2. I will be gone for 2 weeks, starting this saturday! I'm going home for a few days, and then skipping off to london next Wednesday for a vacation with my aunt, uncle, and cousins! My first time out of the country. :) (except Canada, which doesn't really count...) Jolly good!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

...my illustrations! In a magazine! In AirTran planes! A couple of my illustrations were in the September issue of Air Tran GO! magazine. They were for an article on the changing trends towards more casual clothes in business dress. (Appropriately titled "Changing of the Garb")

My art director Shane Lutjens designed the layout really nicely, and I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the pdf from him. I'll also have another illustration and spot in the December issue. Woo!

Here's the opening layout:



And here's the individual illustration and spot:






A final note:
I've noticed that ALL the illustrations I've posted up on my blog recently use at least one (usually more) of the colors of my blog. I guess I just see the world in shades of blue-green and orange-red. :)

Baltimonster invasion!

So today was the opening of "Pain of Being Dead 2: Baltimonster!" gallery show at the Echo, right next to The Windup at 14 North Ave., Baltimore. I'm in the show, as well as a ton of other people (including a host of talented locals from my link sidebar like Sam Bosma, Andrea Kalfas, Jimmy Giegerich, Daniel Krall, and Brian Ralph) and there's about 150 pieces total! Monstrous!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the opening today, but the show goes on until the big closing costume party on October 24th which I am planning on attending. To see more about it, visit the Baltimonster myspace and come check it out sometime! What's not to love about Baltimore and monsters?

Sam and I were originally going to make a diptych together called "Lumberjack and Lumberjane in the Forest of 1000 Monsters" (an idea which I still think will be awesome...) but we had to save that for another day when we have more time to work with. Instead, I had to think of something else. Monsters have never been my particular specialty, but boy can I bust out ladies! Voila!



It's called "Catch of the Day" and I'm selling 50 high quality archival prints of it for $40 each. If anyone is interested, shoot me an email!

I've also been working on some magazine stuff, which I'll be posting next, and I'm in the process of figuring out my comic for the upcoming Popgun anthology. I'm thinking it might be a background story for the Gardener from my Millionaire series. We'll see!

Back again!

Okay, okay, I lost track of things again...but look! Here's a little doodle I made especially for you, blog-land!
I've been in the travel state of mind lately after buying plane tickets home for thanksgiving and thinking about my trip to London with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in late October. Outside the US, I've only been to Canada, so this is a big deal for me! Hooray!

Anyway, here's a lil' something:



More very soon, I promise!