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

Click image to view larger

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.