Sunday Guestpost & Giveaway With Liz Starin

We've got a really great guestpost and giveaway to brighten up your sunday evening or monday morning, depending where you are ;) The very talented and incredibly sweet, Liz Starin is here to share a little bit of her story and artwork. Also, because she's amazing, she is giving away THREE winners, prints of their very own! Yay! :) 

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Hello! I'm Liz Starin, and I'm an illustrator. Here's some of my work. I also blog about children's illustration at Pen & Oink

At the top of the page is a project that's consumed me recently, my Kickstarter poster project. (Scroll to the bottom to see how you can win a poster!) Those are two of the three designs. At the right is Tilly. Tilly really likes my posters.

(Okay, I'll fess up: I put peanut butter on the glass.)

I like drawing animals because I think they're really funny, so that was one of the starting points for this project. I knew I wanted to do a Kickstarter campaign because I have designer friends who have been quite successful with it, and I like inventing my own projects anyway. So I was sitting around with my sketchbook, trying to think of ideas. The Olympics were coming, which is probably why I found myself doodling some [human] gymnasts in little eighties-style shorts and sweatbands. That somehow led to this doodle:

Because, you know, a turtle sprinting, haha. (I don't remember why the giraffe.) I started thinking more about that. Which animals would be funniest which sports? Maybe a rabbit doing the long jump? No, because a rabbit would probably be good at the long jump. It would be funnier if the animals did sports they were totally unsuited for. I decided that the turtle jogger was a little too obvious, but I ended up with an elephant doing gymnastics and cats playing basketball. And although that giraffe almost became a pole vaulter, I ended up making it a swimmer, just like the sketch. (Sometimes things come out right on the first try.) Check 'em out.

The posters are silkscreened, so I designed them in a modern style with big areas of bright color, which I think works really well for silkscreen. I was also somewhat inspired by the minimalist work of Dick Bruna, creator of the Miffy books. Here's one I did a few years ago (I also like to draw musicians):

But normally I make drawings in ink or pencil, and color them in with watercolor, colored pencil, and crayon. These piggies on parade were for my blog header. We get pretty pig-themed around there. And I drew this guy to celebrate when I reached my Kickstarter funding goal!

Now, the giveaway: 

I'm giving away three posters, one of each design!

To win:
Visit my shop and leave a comment here saying which poster you like best. All of your entries will go in the drawing for the poster you choose.

For more chances:
-Add your name to my mailing list and enter "ohdeardrea" in the "How did you find me?" field. Leave a second, additional comment, telling us you did so.
-Follow me on twitter and say hi with the hashtag #heylizstarin (and friends, be gentle--I'm such a Twitter n00b!) And come back here, leaving an additional comment letting us know you did so!
-Retweet this post with the hashtag #heylizstarin and come back here and leave another comment letting us know you did!

Yay! And thanks for letting me share my work on your site, Drea!-Liz

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**Giveaway ends next sunday at 9pm EST. Giveaway winner(s) will be contacted shortly after. Goodluck everyone! And thank you Liz!