Happy Halloween y’all!

I NEVER understood people crying after famous people. Nor crying. Not good at it.

But today, my eyes are swelled from crying after Steve Jobs.
It never dawned on me how huge of an inspiration and how much faith I had in this man with one shirt.

Story time!

A long time ago, I was a college dropout with a dream of following her passion in art.
It was 2006 and I had no idea how I was to follow my bliss and feed myself on the way.

Lucky girl that I am, I’ve been since crazy in love with a geek who shared his Apple enthusiasm with me. He was dreaming about these gorgeous MacBooks and showed me the iOS design, their prettiest little icons and talked about the man with an insane passion and a 1$ paycheck in a company whose logo I loved.

All I had known about it up until then was that Forrest Gump invested in it.
In a matter of a week, I developed a full-on fixation with Apple.

I put away my oil paints and started drawing icons instead. My geek and I dreamed of making it online.

In January 2007, the iPhone was announced and we watched the Keynote video with our jaws dropped. With my heart still racing, I ditched all the icons I made and started a new series. We opened an icon shop.
Few months later, my first freelance gig came.
And then second, and third. Every job listing was asking for “Apple style”.
Slick. Polished. With reflection.

I did not go to design school, I just checked how they did it. And then added a bit of me.

Someone gave me an Apple sticker. I put it on my third-hand Compaq laptop and played pretend.

For my 22nd birthday, Dom gave me a little box. Expecting a perfume, I squeaked like a child when underneath the wrap a pink iPod Shuffle smiled at me.
I’ve never seen anything Apple in person before. I made it a shirt and kept it with me at all times.

In 2008, I was still taking a photo of every encounter with an Apple product.

In 2009, I made a timeline of hours I had to work to buy a second-hand MacBook Pro and stick it across our office wall.
I scratched the days with gusto and went across border to get my first laptop.

Today is three and a half years since I’ve been working on this MacBook Pro, and I still have no doubts – like every other Mac user, that it was made specifically for me.

I’ve been salivating at each new product Steve announced and made fun of the names I kept mixing up.

Those shiny boxes of wonder, initially only a dream and now part of my life 24/7, made it possible for an easily distracted, non-techie dreamer from small town Croatia become an independent designer and illustrator and live out her dream.

So Steve being a household name in my little family is nothing weird. He made our dreams more deliciously possible, and that’s why I am OK with crying after him.

And while today there’s a heaviness on my chest, tomorrow it will be inspiration. Possibility.

Because I am hungry. I am foolish.

Thank you, Steve!

How can anyone do artistic justice to their love?

His eyes are livelier, his skin smoother and lips softer.

Yet he totally loves it, and tells me to ditch the perfectionist.

My sweet sweet darlings!

I am so happy, it’s depressing.

It is so depressing, it had to become a self-portrait in acrylic.

Hello my darlings! Incredible times!

My baby, my playground, my studio dream come true, Illo.me is one month alive!

In the last few weeks, I’ve been waking up to reach my hand under the pillow, turn the Airplane mode off on my iPhone, wait for a second, and then put a huge grin on my pillow-wrinkled face because a new inquiry is there more often then not!

I’ve had 5 character orders since launch, I’m waiting for non-hungovered Sundays to paint, and unrelated design gigs are popping out all of a sudden at high speeds.

Not bad, not bad at all.

I cannot be more grateful for my honey building this thing for me, and for the bunch of friends who helped me test it and spread the word! Thank you all, who joined the cheerleading squad!

I love you, boys and girls!

~ your djuro

Apparently my blog is trying to convince you that I have been doing next to nothing since April 22nd. That is of course, only partially true and I must testify otherwise.

Drawing class.

I have completed one year, started again in September, and decided I want to continue on my own this year.

In the last few classes there, I’ve humbly redid Klimt’s gorgeous Danaë, in pastel.

Click to enlarge

I’ve fallen in love with Klimt a long time ago, first as a child when his depictions of old age frightened me with reality and then later more and more so as I discovered his delicate nude figures, melancholic faces and fabrics, fabrics, fabrics!

Next one I redid was Archibald Motley’s “Saturday Night“.

Click to enlarge

You can practically hear the jazz and smell the booze from his paintings, it’s making me lightheaded!

The last one I did in pastel was an exercise to redo a black & white photograph into colors of my choice. My sweet teacher expected me to go all color crazy as with Motley, but my perfectionist stepped in, locked up the crazy and served pure realism.

Click to enlarge

I forgot the full name of the author of the original photo. All I can remember is that he is an American 20 Century photographer and that his initials are H.H. – maybe someone has an idea who he is.
The only thing I went crazy with in this picture are the purple-ish and torquise-ish hair plus seriously missing SPF creme on the pair.

Drawing plans.

I still genuinely enjoy painting on the safe side, so I figured out: to hell with them styles! I’ll play with both my perfectionist self and the wackadoodle self while I paint.
I’ve brought my painting aisle back from home to my new home, and set up an impromptu studio in the tiny light-filled booth we have in this flat. It. Is. Perfect! Right behind my web work office. Those are my two creative hideouts. AND this blogging chair and blanket, of course!

I feel VERY excited about this winter. Cold weather and staying in, bring it on!

Total happiness to be here!

At a hill, by the sea, overlooking the bay. Still blows my mind!

It is our first anniversary at this magic place where I cannot help it but feel absolutely positive and let my sarcasm melt. A bit I mean… not ALL of it… but a great part, and it’s liberating. Opens up space for creation.

And yes, we went on a creative rampage.

So – I have a new project lined up!

It’s just around the corner, which rushed me here to tell what my beau and I’ve been building for the past 6 months.

In between work and life (think play, food, movies and hanging out), we’ve built a website for my very own illustration studio! (insert hysterical applause)

Some months ago, people started regularly ordering custom characters I’ve been offering with our WP theme . The idea has grown in the most organic way and that makes me totally excited and proud about it.

So – Monday, December 13th I will be launching a new service of mine, getting all marketer and career chick on you. Or trying to do so.

I’ll surely post about it here, but you can hang out at the Twitter bar or Facebook lounge and join the rounds!

See you there!

And…

…I’m happy to be back

Three of my works from the drawing course, made this month.

Except this chair, that’s from February. I just like how the little head is emerging from the chair. Positively disturbing. In charcoal and white chalk.

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Alright let’s kill this sucka.

“What sucka?” I hear you ask. Well FOP, of course. And the P-word. I cannot write it or say it our loud or my P-scars will itch. And I don’t like itching. I do love scratching, though.

But, more than itching and scratching, I like scribbling and doodling. And tickling. So let me show you what I’ve also been up to during these silent weeks.

Okay, months. 3 months and 24 days, but who’s counting?

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My uber-enthusiastic friend and fellow blogger, Danijel Šivinjski has started an art blog Die Without Art a couple of months back and has been posting and spreading inspiration like crazy.

He asked me to make an illustration for the header and I gladly said yes because I loved the blog title ever since he first told me about it.

You can read an interview about the illustration and download nice wallpapers I made here on Die Without Art.

click to see it big in new tab

Everything presented here, only not as brilliant.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.