robinemork

[robinemork]

The Selected Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Win some, lose some, I guess.

I am a big fan of the Folio Society, so this year I entered the House of Illustration/ Folio Society Book Illustration Competition, for which entrants create three interior illustrations and a cover design for the chosen book- this year’s book was The Selected Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The winner gets to complete the commission…

[robinemork]

Selected for Society of Illustrators 60!

So excited! My cover for the 2018 Scribner paperback edition of Jesmyn Ward’s beautiful novel Where the Line Bleeds has been accepted by the Society of Illustrators for their Book & Editorial show (Jan 31 – Feb 24, 2018) and the Illustrators 60 Annual.  Thank you to the judges, and to AD Jaya Miceli at Scribner.

The opening reception for the exhibit is Feb 2 at the Society of Illustrators in…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: The Night Witches

The Lioness Project: The Night Witches

Instead of a lioness, this time, we have a pride. The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment was an all-female squadron of fighter pilots who harried the Nazi forces so much that the German soldiers called them “Nachthexen,” or “Night Witches.” The regiment took it as a compliment, and adopted the name.

“We flew in sequence, one after another, and during the night we never let them rest. And the…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Queen Lili'uokalani of Hawaii

The Lioness Project: Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii

This lioness was a gifted musician and composer. She was also the last and only Queen of Hawaii, and relinquished her throne to save her people.

“Never cease to act because you fear you may fail.” —Queen Lili’uokalani

Lili’uokalani was born Lydia Kamaka’eha on September 2, 1838, to a high chief in a large grass hut in Honolulu, Oahu. As a close relative of King Kamehameha, she was fostered out…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Shirley Chisholm

The Lioness Project: Shirley Chisholm

This Lioness was the first black woman in Congress, and the first black woman to run for president.  She fought tirelessly to help women and people of color find a voice in American politics.

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” —Shirley Chisholm

      Shirley Chisolm (née St.Hill) was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1924, to Caribbean immigrant parents. Struggling…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Caroline Herschel

Eek! I’ve missed a few weeks! Hopefully this week’s Lioness is worth the wait. Hers is a true Cinderella story: forced by her mother to forego education in favor of housework, she went on to become first an acclaimed performer, and then the first professional female astronomer in history.

“I undertook with pleasure what others might have thought a hardship.” —Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga

This week’s Lioness was imprisoned for her Japanese ancestry after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She devoted her life to exposing the racist rationale for the “internment” camps, helping to provide victims with justice and redress.

“It is my fervent hope that persons who review the historical documents that we gathered will help to develop more respect for the individuality and dignity of others,…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Wilma Rudolph

The Lioness Project: Wilma Rudolph

They called her the Tornado. La Gazella Nera. La Perle Noire. The Fastest Woman on Earth. But this world-record setting Olympic Hall-of-Famer started out as a little black girl with polio in the segregated South.

“The doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.” —Wilma Rudolph

  Wilma Rudolph was born in 1940 near Clarksville, TN, the twentieth of tw…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Amelia Earhart

The Lioness Project: Amelia Earhart

Chances are, you know her. She’s a modern icon and an enduring mystery. But it is not her still-unsolved 1937 disappearance that places her among our lionesses; it’s her spirit, determination, and daring.

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.” —Amelia Earhart

Young Amelia Earhart had high…

[robinemork]

The Lioness Project: Rigoberta Menchú

The Lioness Project: Rigoberta Menchú

I’ve decided to start a weekly drawing project here—something fun, something challenging that requires a bit of research, something inspiring and even maybe positive at a time when the only news seems to be bad news. With all of the terrible legislation coming out of the new administration here in the US, it’s easy to feel helpless.

I wanted to surround myself with lionesses. I began a list of…

[robinemork]

It’s been nearly a year since I graduated with my MFA from SVA, and I’m spinning the Wheel of Fortune yet again. Since August, I’ve been working as a full-time freelance book cover designer at Simon & Schuster, and have during this time also been fortunate to continue doing freelance illustration work on the side.

 Glory Over Everything, 2016

I’ve learned so much at Simon & Schuster, and I’m so grateful to have gotten to work alongside amazing art directors and designers here, but the time has come for me to renew my focus on illustration specifically. Starting in May, I will be freelancing full-time from my shiny new studio sublet in Brooklyn!

Because of the long time-frames involved in publishing, I haven’t been able to share most of the work I’ve been doing, because I have to wait until the cover is publicly released—usually shortly before publication.  So, as part of my fond farewell to being a full-time designer, I thought I would share a few that are now safe to release.

(Note: as an in-house designer, I was required to come up with photographic and typographic solutions, as well as illustrated ones, and since this is my illustration blog, I am specifically showing only the illustrated covers.)

The first book cover I was assigned to illustrate, in September 2016, was the paperback cover for Kathleen Grissom’s Glory Over Everything  (Touchstone, AD Cherlynne Li). The parrot, chains and lettering are hand-drawn in ink, and digitally colored, and the woodcuts are from the 1834 Picture of Slavery by George Bourne, courtesy f the New York Public Library (public domain). Though they ended up going in a different direction with the cover and this image was killed, it was a great experience.

Lucky, 2016

I also had the opportunity to work on a new cover for a new paperback edition of Alice Sebold’s 1999 memoir, Lucky (Scribner, AD Jaya Miceli).  Among the designs we put forward was an illustrated image that almost made it, but was, alas, also killed.  This one was fully illustrated in ink and digitally colored.

Most of the covers I made during this year were not illustration, though I am happy to say that my most recent one is, and has been approved (knock wood)!  It’s far too soon for me to be able to share, but I will 100% be sure to share the heck out of it once it’s been released.

Thank you to everyone at S&S! I’ve learned so much from all of you; I hope we can work together again.

  *The slideshow below contains some of the covers that I designed while at Simon & Schuster, but did not illustrate.

      #gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

“The Time Has Come,” the Walrus Said It's been nearly a year since I graduated with my MFA from SVA, and I'm spinning the Wheel of Fortune yet again. 

[robinemork]

2016 Wrap-Up

This year has been such a journey, it seems impossible that it could have contained as much as it has.  Twelve months ago I was still working on my thesis at SVA, and it had only just settled into its true shape.  Since then, the work I made for that project has won a place in 3×3 Magazine #13 and, most recently, the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles (SILA) Illustration West #55, which has…

[robinemork]

3x3 Student Show #13 Honorable Mentions!

3×3 Student Show #13 Honorable Mentions!

What a marvelous surprise! Three pieces from my thesis project, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, have received honorable mentions in the 3×3 Student Show #13!  Thank you, Charles Hively, Show Chair James Yang and all of the judges for including me, and Marcos Chin for being the single most amazing thesis advisor on the planet.

Congratulations also to an absolute bevy of…