Green Steam Punk Girl

This is a drawing that I did for my darling sister, her birthday is coming up soon so I wanted to do some drawings for her. I plan on doing maybe one other or two. This is inspired by things that she likes, steam punk, bugs, batman, ruffles, feathers, flowers and on.. just a mish mosh of it all. Started out as a simple doodle and I decided to refine it and clean it up a bit. 

this is a little bit back to some of my older work, feels good to revisit this specific style.

Sunday Sketch

Had a busy weekend, but tried my best to get some drawing in. So just one sketch for the Vintage Inspired Collection.

Inspired Set 4

3 More done. I am getting into a groove with these. Gotta do some while I have free time during the weekend, usually I end up lounging around being useless during the week. Hope to start some more commission work once I really get settled into the school year routine.

Originally I had four done, but one really irked me for some reason so I chucked it. It happens, lets me know I am not perfect yet ;)

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The first one really gives me the chills after I finished her.. its the eyes...

Inspired Set 3

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Still working on the "Vintage Inspired" Series. Hope to put up some listings later of small poster prints. Thinking of having a bunch of 11x14 prints made up, since the more I work on this series the more I can not part with the originals just yet.

I have a hope to get a large collection together, all in the same pencil style and then have a showing of just this collection... Might happen some day. Other than my tattoo portraits this is the most of One style that I have been able to stick to. Usually I get bored and then want to move onto different styles or images, but I want to stick this one out and create a huge portfolio or book with just these images.

Vintage Continued 4 More to Series

4 More to the Series I have been working on. I think I am perfecting the style I really want to do with these. Each drawing becomes a little more perfect. I almost do not want to part with this set.. I want to keep them to myself and never share. But, I have learned over the past couple years that at some point I need to part with pieces, even if I fall in love. Each time I sell a piece of work it is like I am selling a little bit of me. It really weirds me out that I am all over the place. Such as tattoo commissions I do for people, My art is on some ones body, for FOREVER. A little dramatic I know. Okay so I will stop blubbering and post these soon on Etsy. Keep an eye out for more..

Vintage Pencil Drawings

More in the series of 'Vintage Inspired' This time pencil drawings, done on card stock, Originals will be up for sale on etsy soon (Link in sidebar). Of course if you don't snag the original I will have prints available as well. I am having so much fun with this series of drawings, they are so freeing for me to draw because I am going for 'SIMPLE' and usually all my artwork is so detailed and time consuming that by the end of it, I hate working on it. These are just too fun and I am starting to really fall in love with the era Thanks Mom.

Vintage Inspired Painting Part 2

Second Painting finished. 

more to come soon...

Vintage Inspired Canvas Painting

This is the first of the 'vintage inspired' done on canvas. Antique white and black. The size is 9x12

Boudoir Vintage Inspired Cards

Finished the Third Set of Cards today, Boudoir Inspired.

Available for purchase HERE

Vintage Cards in Process

Vintage cards in process. So this is three more designs that I have been working on, they do not have color or pressed flowers yet. .. that is pretty all I have to say right now :)

Flower Greeting Cards 2

Today I finished the next two in the set of pressed flower cards. Daffodil and Daisy. I also started creating more cards. As soon as I get plastic sleeves to put them In and mailing envelopes I will see about starting an etsy account.

Pressed Flower Greeting Cards

So I was trawling the Internet looking at things, and found pressed flowers that I wanted to use for my wedding. I got so enthralled with what I saw and the awesome price I found them at, that I bought up several types that I loved. Not even knowing what I needed for, just the fact that I had to have them. So I got the idea to make my own cards with the pressed flowers.

So these are the first two designs. Orange Cosmo and Pink Larkspur.

The next two to come are Daisy and Daffodil. I am super excited about them and can't wait to order some more flowers if these work out. My plan is that I can make enough of these to sell them locally or finally open my Etsy shop back up. Dunno. Just another venture into the crafty world. It seems I do not have time for art and yet I add more ambition to my plate. I think my eyes are bigger than my time clock... er stomach.

Forget Me Not

It feels so weird to be drawing after such a long time, basically all summer. Two and a half more weeks until my life goes back to 'normal'. So right now I am just trying to get back in the groove of doing artsy stuff. a sketch that I will hopefully be able to flesh out in the next couple weeks when I have some free moments.. funny joke... but we will see, I am going to try to make time. I enjoy it and I feel like all summer I have not really enjoyed myself. Too much work, too busy of a schedule, not enough time! Summer as a kid seemed to drag on for forever (in a good way). Long days where we did not stop playing even after the sun goes down. Now when the sun goes down I am already crawling into bed exhausted!! Even though the fall and winter bring shorter daylight hours, I always seem to be more productive with it!

M.I.A where have I been?

I feel like I have not even been on the blogosphere for an eternity, done art for forever, and even my inbox is stacking up with unchecked mail.

So summer is usually pretty crazy for me, my hours bump from 16 a week to nearly 35-40. Now other people can work that, and still find time for a life but for me I can not function after that many hours of kids. On my time off I just sit on the couch and accomplish nothing, or I am spending time with those who get ignored during my hectic schedule. To add on top of that.. .

During my recent vacation at the beginning of summer, I got engaged. So thus this phenomenon occurred. Every spare second I had between eating and sleeping, I was toiling over wedding plans, colors, themes, every tiny detail. Of course the wedding is not for a year but I still find myself browsing pictures non stop. Its all my mind can think about.

The summer is coming to an end, and my long hours will disappear and I will have my set daily life back. At that time I will be able to resume spreading my time among my many loves. Reading, Art, Internet.. all things lost at this moment but soon.. soon I will have plentiful time to do it all.

1920's Inspired

So I am finally back.. from where you might ask? Sailing the Caribbean with my love. But now I am back to reality and working 30 hours a week plus trying to fit in commission work and personal time. So I was having some trouble getting back into the groove and needed to doodle. So I worked on these little drawings for my mum at RubysMusings

Time Flies

Okay so I feel like I am constantly trying to catch up. Time keeps slipping away from me! So I recently put a lot of time and effort into making this lovely little thing:
(this is just a preview..not all the pages are shown)

Flaming Ichijiku by Rebecca L Feldman | Make Your Own Book

All my recent portrait works combined into a lovely hard bound book. Even if no one but myself gets it, it was worth it! I loved everything about putting it together. Layouts and text, to little things you don't really notice. I would love to do it again if I had enough material, or a really good idea to work with. It was very difficult to make decisions, once its printed, thats it!

The hardest part for me was to not put ALL my work in it. I had to keep it streamlined and clean. I am very proud of that work.

I have two new pieces I snuck in there, never before seen until now..

I have some other projects in the works. so hopefully when time allows itself, I will be back with more updates.

'Doll' Portrait Painting Finished

Wow, okay so I really started to hate myself towards the end of this one. Really pulled it through to get this done. Sometimes I am way more ambitious than id like to be. Its not that it's any different than the others, but her simplicity drove me crazy and all the little details matter so much more.

I am currently trying to put together a book of my work. Well some of my pieces, I'd really like for it to have a nice flow and cohesiveness.. and a lot of my work spans such a wide spectrum. So I am trying to pump out pieces that all go well with each other. Phew. Normally I would do a big piece like this maybe every 3 months and teeter with it for that long. On to the next one starting tomorrow! No rest for the weary.

I don't know why I make myself feel like its due tomorrow or something. It really could take me a year to put a book together and not matter, I am just the type where once I have an Idea.. I MUST DO IT NOW.

Okay so now that I've ranted, I need to go catch up on some much needed sleep.

No More CafePress ...

Okay so today I deleted my cafepress account. I did have all kind of things with my images splattered all over them. I never spent the time to really control the shop for the past year, not to mention the lack of its over all success. I thank all of those who did purchase things, it makes me so happy to think of people owning items with my art on it.

I have been doing a lot of commission work on my own, not to mention dealing with personal work and life. Self promoting has taken a back seat, and I no longer feel the need to force my work down peoples throats.

That being said, I will prolly create a free shop and put some items up on there. So it will not be as nice, but if people wish to they can still have my work. If people would like certain pieces on certain items feel free to contact me.

It is time to move on in a new chapter in my art career.

Walking the Dog

This is what it feels like to me when I walk my dog. He literally pulls me down the street sometimes, and then other times he is really good and walks right next to me. But he is SO strong for being a little guy. Just a quick doodle.

Lace and Feathers Portrait Painting

Reference

This was a really quick painting, for me. Usually I will spend hours and hours... and hours.. okay you get the point.. So this was about 4-5 hours. I really wanted to make it feel like a traditional painting, soft strokes and really loose painting style. So I did not push for detail and I really like the way it turned out.

Once again I have no idea for titles or painting names... Oh well.

I totally put off other things I wanted to get done today, but this was well worth it!

J.A.W.S an arm wrestling super squad!

So I am not even sure how this all got started. A couple of people at work started arm wrestling each other, of course I got dragged into it as well (I never pass up a challenge) Soon we all had Wrestling alias' from a name generator online. I was Buff Frost (which I didn't like at first but learned to embrace) We have Psycho Cobra, Ringo Tiger, Queen Nitro, Silver Titan and a couple more. Of course a squad of wrestlers need their own garb so we had lovely shirts made for us with our alias name. We take what we do really seriously.

I had some time while at work to doodle up some of the 'characters' we had become. These were drawn on the back of scrap paper , about an hour for all three.

Champagne Picnic: Retro Pinup Painting

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Original Pinup

Time: 3 hours from concept to finished

'Doll' Progress Almost finished!

Click picture view larger

More Progress on my latest piece. I am really starting to hate myself for choosing such a difficult piece. She is so simplistic, which makes it harder to hide flaws and laziness. She has to be perfect else you can totally see everything!

Did the details in the hair, added some texture to the skin and started on shading the body since last update. The final stretch! Hopefully the next update will be the final one!

Art for Mothers Day

Did these two drawings based off of pictures, for my mom for mothers day.

A Mothers Day Cookbook

So we always do something special for Mother's Day with the kids. We sat down with our students who are ranged from 4-6 yrs old and asked them..

"Why do you love your mom"

Some answers were sweet, some way out there and of course always enjoyable to read, my input is the illustrations. We did this a month ago so I would have time to work on it. Of course the procrastinator that I am, put it off till yesterday. Yeah that's right we have to give the mom's the cookbooks this Friday, not to mention wrap them and put them together ...okay not in that order but it all has to be done this week. So I sat down after I got home from work and did not move from my computer for a good 4 hours except to replenish my iced tea.

You can click on the picture to see the full size for better viewing.

I really like to see the child's perspective, what they really notice and care about. I always love looking back on things I did when I was younger and seeing if I felt the same way and how I think now.

A very productive afternoon

Okay so I have been squeezing in personal work, and ignoring the things I get paid to do... yeah I don't have good priorities when it comes to that. So I am going to post some of the stuff I got done today. I can post these at the moment because they still belong to me (unapproved designs will update with client copyright later)...

The first one is for a client I have worked with a lot. I did a few T shirt designs for and now a cross promotion with a client of his. MINI of Loveland. I love MINIs they are so adorable!!!



The second is for another client that I am doing continuous work for. She is doing a brand based on shoe concepts which I love! I don't ever wear heels but I love to paint them and drool on them at stores. I hope her brand flourishes, she is such a sweet lady and really original with her ideas!



So a rough sketch with colors just to get the ball rolling. we usually go back and forth a couple times with changes before we do a final image.


Hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into what I do on my "work time" and not "me time".

Lily

I am really terrible with names. I just go for an obvious one word name. I wish I could have more deep meaning names which are like 6-7 words long but no... Fail.

So I guess this is on the heels of this piece I did
I am on a woman in water mode I suppose. I just thought of this one day and HAD to work on it even when I am in the middle of a bunch of other projects.

really loosely painted, where most of my stuff is tight and realistic. I was going for a traditional look (thats my excuse at least :P )

Thank you so much to pinkpaint-stock for this
lovely stock photo which gave me the perfect jumping off point!

Here are my progress shots, you can see how the painting evolved.

Mini Me

Just doodling while waiting for a video to upload.

'Doll' Painting Progress

I don't know why I want to call this "Doll", but the girl in the picture is just so sweet and porcelain, she looks like a perfect doll to me. Dunno title might change. So this is the progress I have done so far.. about 3-4 hours of work at this point, still need to go in and add textures and details on skin to add more depth. not to mention the rest of her needs to be painted in. She is coming together so quickly!

Reference picture from DXlogic.deviantart

Watch Me Paint :Eyes

So I always see these videos of people working on their art and I always wondered how did they do it? Well being the genius that I am, I decided to finally use google to just look it up. Duh. So I downloaded a free 'screen recorder thingamabob' (yes that is a technical term) and within minutes I was recording me painting!

So now my work is not shrouded in mystery, and all the nay sayers out there about my paintings can see.. Yes I really do paint them, I spend hours sometimes on a single area. So here is two videos thats I've done so far on my recent work. 70 minutes of work zoomed down into just a few minutes. Enjoy!

Untitled Portrait Line Art

My next project that I am trying to squeeze in between other personal projects and two commission pieces. Argh, I love to over extend myself. So this is just the line art, I hope to get the base color done tomorrow, but there are only so many hours in the day.

Reference. Such a gorgeous photo, I can't wait to paint!

Revolver

Based off a Smith and Wesson Model 586.  The size is about 4'x3'
The color is 'Boing' from the disney collection.

Revolver Progress

New piece, painting over old canvas. First stage, just putting base color down.

Peacock progress II

So slowly making more progress on this painting. Really filling in all the details and refining the design. Originally I was going to go for an artistic take on the bird, but working on it I decided to go more realistic.

Acrylic Peacock Painting Progress

So for some reason, my mom is the only one who can get traditional media pieces out of me. She originally just had the blue stripe painting on her wall, of course all my canvas' have been painted over a good 12 times. She is changing her decor, and has been begging me for a peacock for the longest time. So here it is, mom, what you've been waiting for... well and still will be. Its in progress...

So first just a rough outline in sharpie.
(view from sitting.. yes it's either standing up or sitting on the floor, I just can't seem to paint in a chair?? ) Just getting the base coat done. This is the cover up layer and lays out where my basic colors are going to be.

Almost there, Just need to cover up the background.

Now comes the worst part, the drying and the waiting. The whole reason I can't stand to do much traditional work. Digital is such a breeze, you mess up just undo it. You don't drip over where you just painted, and no dry time!! Thankfully acrylics dry rather fast, so my impatience doesn't drive me crazy.