Portrait Illustrations for Ursinus Magazine

I recently completed four portraits for the Fall 2015 Ursinus Magazine, the alumni magazine for Ursinus College. The article titled, "Building Our Bench", by Bill Doherty, is about UC grads and their stories about how Ursinus led to successful and influential careers in sports and athletics. Special thanks to Bill Berg at Ursinus for the art direction!

Scott Sallach ('94) is the Assistant Coach and Tight Ends Coach to the Mississippi State Bulldogs Football team.

Dan Mullen ('94) is the Head Coach for the Mississippi State Bulldogs Football team.

Regina Buggy ('81) is a former field hockey player who was a member of the US Women's National Team that won the bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics. In the article, she is noted as 'one of the nations elite high school field hockey coaches'. 

Adele Boyd ('53) is Associate Professor of Exercis and Sport Science and Associate Director of Athletics at Ursinus College.

The neglected sketchbook

Wolves hunting. Study in fear.

Sketching is such an important process in creating an illustration and I admit, I neglect to do it enough. When deadlines are rushed and my calendar is filled up with due dates- it's too easy (and many times a necessity) to do quick thumbnails and move on. One of my goals going into the new year is to make more time for myself to sketch more and develop ideas more thoroughly before having to jump into a finished work. I actually really like the whole sketching process and I miss doing it more!

OK, maybe that will not be possible for some projects - especially those that have next-day turnarounds -  but hopefully I'll be sketching more for some of my more personal work and promotional material.  I have a TON of ideas and sometimes not enough time to develop them more. I just posted some new and months-old sketches up in the online sketchbook - that you might not even know exists. Some things are sketched digitally, others with good old fashioned pencil and paper. Check it out, it's a nice collection. I hope to be able to get back to some of these ideas soon. Until next time...

Michele Melcher Illustration and Primer Featured on the Boxcar Press Blog.

Check it out! Boxcar Press has featured Primer and I on their blog this week! Brian sent them a copy of our finished illustrated prints and they loved them so much that they asked to do a blog post about them. Thanks Boxcar Press! - Michele

Portrait of Mary Gaitskill for Chicago Tribune

Here is my latest author portrait for Chicago Tribune Printers Row Journal. It is of Mary Gaitskill and the article is about her latest novel titled, "The Mare". Enjoy!

Portrait of author Mary Gaitskill

Cover layout

Happy Halloween!

Every year for the past 15 years, Brian (for those of you unfamiliar - Primer) and I collaborate on an artistic Halloween greeting. It began as a fun thing to do for family and friends and over the years it has grown into a highly anticipated event that includes our clients and associates in the creative world. Last year was the first year we missed doing it because of our work schedules and it was a total bummer.

But this year we are back! With what we think, and what we hope that you think, is one of our coolest Halloween greetings to date! We decided it would be a great idea to fire up the old 1872 Geo P. Gordon platen press that lives at Primer and do some hand letter pressed vintage Halloween theme illustrated cards.

Brian has used the press for several fun printed pieces in the past with much success but this was my first time learning it. And it was the first time that either of us tried printing more than one color. It was A LOT of work: time consuming, super messy and you have to be really careful lining everything up, keeping everything clean while making sure the press is oiled, and not getting fingers or (or hair) stuck in the moving press! Because of the nature of this old press everything is done by hand and it was really hard to get each plate to line up correctly. Everything shifts around constantly, and for inexperienced pressmen as myself, it's a lot of stopping and starting over. In the end, some things lined up and some things didn't BUT the off register color and the sometimes not-quite-opaque black adds to the whole vintage feel of Halloween past.

Below, you can see some photos of the process and the finished prints. Some of the black ink on the owl and the cat prints had to be double hit which made them dry really slow. We used pretty much every available space at Primer to dry them over night. Enjoy!

Skull, Hissing Cat and Owl.

2nd pass green!

inking the press

Laying the prints out to dry!

Stuffing envelopes