Merry Christmas!

    I hope you all are having a great holiday week.  Myles says Happy Holidays to everyone so I thought it was fitting to post him here as I wish you all Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas! I hope to see you all in the new year :) 

Ces's Acorns

     I have met some of the most wonderful people since I started my blog.  I have so many gracious and supportive friends.  I just wanted to say thank you to each of you.  I feel so blessed to have met each and every one of you.  Ces is one of those dear friends whom I treasure and she has been generous enough to send me some of her beautiful work, so I wanted to reciprocate.  I painted this for her, because she loves acorns and draws them often.  Other friends have sent me work too and honestly I have been remiss.  I have not sent them work in return.  That is because I really don't think of anyone wanting a gift of my illustrations.  I was going to send Ces something that I had already done, but couldn't think of an image that I thought that she would want.
     So my dear friends, if you have sent me work in the past or even if you haven't, and you would like an illustration from me, please email me and I would be honored to send something to you.  I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. You all are the best!

IF_Round

So, just some fun and playfulness. I was taking a little break on my projects and playing around in painter 12 and photoshop.  I rarely find time to post for Illustration Friday lately, so its nice when I can find time to do one.  Thanks for stopping by and for all your wonderful comments :)  Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving. 

IF_Silent

Sorry my blog has been so "silent" lately.  I haven't posted anything for IF in eons.  And I am just getting it in at the very last minute.  I mean to post more often, I just don't seem to get to it though. For those of you who don't know, my grandson is blind.  He rides his big wheel around the house.  I am grateful that it is not completely silent or else I'd have been run over multiple times already.  The wheels make just enough sound on the tile for me to know he is coming so that I can get out of the way. But it's so great that he can ride it and rarely run into anything other than me.  He has the entire living area mapped out in his head and rides around quickly, leaning his body when he turns. It's really cute, unless he runs over my foot, which has happened on occasion.  This is another illustration from the ebook/app that I am working on.  Sorry to keep this short, but I am working, working, working.  So more about the project later... Thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate it! You all are the best :)

final version

Here's another peak at what I am working on.  It's turning out to be a really fun project.  Sorry that I have been so quiet. I am just working away after being sick for a couple of weeks. My grandson started pre-school full-time this year and he has set out to catch everything he can and then give it to me.  It's a gift I'd prefer not to get, but apparently my immune system really doesn't care what I want. ;)
Thank you for all of your kind comments. I really appreciate it. You all are really wonderful :)

What's on my desk...

So, I'm dusting the cobwebs off my poor lonely blog and posting a peek at what I'm currently working on.  I hope everyone is well. Sorry I've been so neglectful of my blog.  Just busy, busy, busy.  So, let me know what you think of my little guy.  He's a character for a book I'm currently working on.  Just some sketches for now, but I'll put some more polished images up soon.

My son asked me to illustrate a whale with wings and a crown.  I decided that I liked him and wanted to reuse him, so I recycled him.  Thanks to a few good friends, (you all are so wonderful) I am pretty happy with him now. It was a fun piece to work on.  I did this one in photoshop start to finish.  I usually use painter then photoshop. It worked well for this one, but I don't think that I will give up on painter completely.  I'm just a little frustrated with it at the moment. Thanks for stopping by, I enjoy your comments and visits. 

Safari WIP

It's been a little while since I have posted anything, so I thought I'd post a work in progress, although it is, slow progress.  I'm busy with other projects right now, but I've been working on this one here and there, whenever I get a few minutes, since way back when IF's prompt was Safari.  I'm not even sure when that was, but it's been awhile.  Anyway, I'll post updates as I get a little more done. Hope you all are having a lovely weekend.  Me, I'm sipping on fresh roasted Costa Rican coffee and considering spending a little more time on this piece instead of doing other work ;) Did you know that fresh roasted coffee has a plethora of good smells, like popcorn, then pancakes, and other yummy goodness that I can't quite describe? Smelling it roast is almost as nice as drinking it.

Thanks for stopping by, you all are so wonderful!!!

IF_Launch

Gosford the gosling was determined to live out his dream of flying even if his wings weren't ready to carry him. ;)  It's late and I'm off to get some rest. Have a great remainder of the week.  Thanks for visiting :)

IF_Swept

Swept away on a wave :) I saw a 3D frog in an inner-tube on a summer flier and just had to put something like him on a wave.  You know one of those that looks like a bendable rubber toy. It was strangely cute. This one is supposed to be a turtle (Ha, my son says he looks like Voldemort from Harry Potter. So, maybe not so cute after all. ) I should have added one surfing too.  Just some fun with the newest version of painter. Wow, it crashes a lot! Hopefully they will get that fixed. When it is working right, it is a good bit faster, when it's not, it's a booger :(    Anyway, I'm thinking I may end up keeping the older versions to use too.

IF_Shadows

I had hoped to get finished with another piece that I was actually doing for IF this week, but alas, the week is nearly over and I am not done with it. I upgraded to painter 12 and there is a learning curve I've got to get over with the newest tools.  Everything is taking me three times as long as it usually does. So, I am posting this instead.  It was a challenge for a critique group that I am part of. Funny, they went pretty quickly. The other piece, I have actually been working on, on and off, since IF's Safari. :o,   maybe I'll be able to get it up soon. Thanks for stopping by and as always, thank you for all of your kind comments.

Hang tags

I don't have much time, but I thought I'd post something since it's been awhile.  These are ideas for hang tags for the children's tie dye my daughter and I have been working on. Summer is almost here, I can't wait to have a little free time :)  Thanks for visiting! I miss visiting everyone and will be checking in with you over the next few days.

Princess and the Pea

So, I am tentatively finished with this one, finally.  It's didn't turn out exactly the way I had envisioned it but other than the fact that I keep finding little things to fix, I am pretty happy with it, I think.  Sorry, I have been away from blog-land so much.  Summer is near and I should have a lot more time to be creative in the coming months. School has really bogged us down this year and we are still dying and selling t-shirts.  We even opened up an Etsy store.  There is a link on the side bar, so be sure to check it out. We are still donating a percentage of the sales to charity and 10% of the sale price of the womens shirts has already been donated to Japan.  Thanks for stopping by and for all your kind and gracious comments. I appreciate it!

Fred the Praying Mantis

Just a short post of a quickly done painting of a praying mantis I did for my best friends daughter. Happy Easter! 

PS.  I am having so much trouble posting images from CS5 online or sending them in emails. I keep getting server rejections and having to shrink and shrink it again.  It's like it is saving them so much larger than it says it is, but then the last time I did a thumbnail for IF it ended up pixel-ated before it would let me post it.  I am not sure what the problem is and it is so aggravating.  Anyone else having this problem?

Tie Dyeing for Charity

 

 

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog.  This is a little of what I have been up to for the past few weeks.  My daughter and I did a  tie dye project for charity. 10% went to Japan through the company we purchased the blanks from, and 10%  will go to the Center for the Visually Impaired and  for LCA research. It was so much fun that we ordered more shirts. We spent half our time figuring out how to do it so I am sure this batch will go much more quickly.  So now I've got two boxes of shirts waiting to be tied and dyed. I also found a product to remove the dye from my hands because somehow, even with gloves I kept getting dye on my skin. I do the same thing when I do a lot of ink work, perpetually stained fingers ;)

IF_Layers WIP

curtains? what do you think?

No time to finish this weeks post either, and it's very last minute, again.  Actually, I just realized it's already Friday.  Oh well, better late than never.  

Yay for Presidents Day!

because it gave us a long weekend and that allowed me to finish this up.   So yay! Freedom to create.  Maybe I'll even get to finish something new... and no headache!

IF_Sweater

Here is my last minute entry for IF for last week.  There will be a new one in a few hours, but I really wanted to get something up.  I started several different ideas for this, but just never really liked any of them.  I guess I was just in a mood because I've had one continuous headache all week long.  Can you believe that my husband has never had a headache in his entire life?  How does that happen?  Anyway, it put me in an I hate everything I do mood.  I didn't even like any of my sketches and trashed them all. So, I threw this together today.  I don't know if I will finish it or not.  What do you think?  Is it worth finishing?  Thanks for stopping by. 

Surrender

Well, I finally got this one finished.  I think... it's one of those illustrations that seemed to take me forever and I just finally decided to stop messing with it.  I will quite possibly change my mind when I look at it tomorrow. lol    I'm having deja vu, I must say that a lot. 

I'm already working on an illustration for IF's prompt Sweater and I'm determined to do something quick and simple, so I can get it posted this week.  That being said,  I'm not so great at simple; Sometimes I can do quick.  I say this to myself often and then the illustration takes on a life of it's own and becomes, well, complicated.  I envy those artists who can make a few lines or a loose sketchy image and simple color into a creative and solid piece of art. There is something to be said for simplicity and for me anyway, it's harder than it looks to make something very simple, yet very special. 

Fighting the Slack Monster and the Little Red Hen again...

  

2/1/11

2/2/11

2/3/11

2/6/11

 I have been so slack about posting lately.  I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting more often. So, to start it off I am posting not one, but two WIP's. I'm trying to get myself back into the painting or at least sketching every day mode. I did so well for over a year.  And then it happened, I let the slack monster sneak up on me and pull me away bit by bit. Whispering in my ear little negative things like, "your tired, you've done enough today" or" you've already been on the computer all day, do you really want to spend more time straining your eyes?, you know you are tired" He's very beguiling, this slack monster.  So, now I'm fighting back, bit by bit. I started working on another little red hen illustration a couple of weeks ago and I hope to get a chance to paint it soon, but I haven't really decided on the the finished sketch yet. Yes, I know, the slack monster is still whispering in my ear.  Actually, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with the background and the whispering is distracting me. So, I decided to try to get in an Illustration Friday first.  I haven't done one in a while; this is for the prompt Surrender. I hope to get it painted in the next couple of days.  I will, I will, I will... 

...that's the plan anyway!

Finished version of Hansel and Gretel

So, I finally finished Hansel and Gretel. It was a lot of fun to paint. I've promised myself that I will draw more, paint more and post more this year.  I  have started to slip and let life get in the way for the last 5 or 6 months so I am re-prioritizing. More art, less stress, and no more working on school work excessively. Cyan and I are both burned out and the year isn't even half way over for us. I started Will Terry's mini-Illustration class and I've got to say it has inspired me to work harder. I've been letting the everyday get in the way and it's time to re-dedicate myself. So, check out Will's videos, they are great and they are reasonably priced.  There's a lot you may already know, but I love the way he thinks and there is something to take away from each one, and there are things that I know that I forget about while I'm painting, so it's a great reminder of how important those aspects are. Plus, if we all use them, maybe we'll get lucky and he'll do more :).  I love it when people share their knowledge and expertise. So, I'm off to a good start, I see that I am already wearing down the pen tip on my newest Wacom and I've only had it since the end of November. Of course this could mean that I'm bearing down too hard, I have to remind myself to loosen up from time to time. My favorite pen tip is the one with the spring, and of course it only comes with one of those. I guess I'll be ordering more ;).  Thanks for stopping by and to all of you good people who take the time to comment, thank you and I truly appreciate it. Oh, and feel free to critique, I don't mind, it's how we learn to see our work through others eyes.