Illustration Friday

With all the sculpting I've been doing, I have noticed that I miss doodling in m sketchbook and making colorful illustrations with Photoshop and now Illustrator. Illustration Friday is a super website that encourages just such behaviour. Each week there is a different theme and illustrators of all sorts are invited to submit their interpretations. I've visited IF before but never thought about submitting anything myself; that is until now! Hopefully I'll keep at it week to week. Be sure to visit the site and check out all the great work. There are also great links to other contests you can enter, like Happiness: The Tribute21 Plate Challenge. The wheels in my head are already turning, thinking of fun plate designs that represent happiness!

This week's topic: unfold My digital illustration is pretty straight forward and plain, but I like the color palette and geometrically sharp lines which are very different from my usual style.

Be Inspired

I don't know why I've never shared this before, but color is the best kind of inspiration there is! For me anyway...I've been doing a lot of color studying lately, because its my most favorite thing and I'm always cooking up good ideas when I have no way to record them. Then when I need to remember, it's gone and I waste my time trying to replicate something nearly impossible to recall. I happened upon ColourLovers a while ago and got trapped for hours looking at pretty colors palettes. It's an amazing place for anyone and everyone to create, share and explore with color in it's most simpliest forms. You don't have to be an artist to have fun here! You make your palettes consisting of up to five colors right on the site, publish them and play around with translating them into different patterns. If one of your colors is new, you get to name it too! (This is like my dream job!) Plus for all intensive purposes, you can download the palettes for all sorts of applications: wedding theme colors, interior decorating, fashion and graphic design. The list is endless. Then I kind of forgot about the site. I've been having so many brainstorming ideas lately and I while working on a color palette study of my own yesterday when I remembered the site again! So, I got to work creating a bunch of fun color palettes to share with the world! I have to admit I was up way toooooo late doing it too. At least now I will have a place to store all those eye candy goodies for later, and also find some other inspiration as well. Here's my first one. Be sure to stop by and check out all my other lovely palettes, find me under the username ChromaPop. I'm already starting to rethink the Etsy shop! After all, it's sole purpose is to bring color into your life, so why not do just that! Besides, the graphic design is not going so well....If you come up with any nifty palettes, send them my way! I'll try to post new color inspiration weekly for those of you who just like to look!

Surfing at 3am...

Never thought surfing the web would lead to anything productive and good for my karma, but I was wrong! Not only did I stumble across a great blog dedicated to being nice (how refreshing!) but I found an even better website called Make A Child Smile. There are so many kids out there with life threatening diseases and conditions and this website is focused on adding a little cheer and delight to there life...making them smile! You can donate money to the organization or a particular child. But personally I am super excited to make a little personalized slug for one of the MACS kids and mail it off to them! I encourage all of you to take some time to do the same, after all, wouldn't you like it if someone made you smile just because! Just go to the website and under the kids column on the left, click on all current kids or just click here. From here you can see all the kids, read about their illness and find out what kind of interests they have. Just click on the little face/page icons on the left of their name for more info. It includes their mailing address so you can send you gift right away and get to making them smile ASAP!

Welcome to MarthaLand!

And so the adventure begins! If all goes well this blog will be action-packed with stuff all about me and how I survive in this crazy world as a struggling artist without a lot of cash in my pocket. I don't claim to be an "expert" but I've been doing it for 10 years now, so that means I must know a little something about it; because, well, I'm still here! My #1 passion is art. It always has been from the time I was able to hold a ball of play dough without eatting it and fight the temptation to stick all 96 crayola crayons up my nose. If fact, thanks to my lovely mother, there may even be a feature of some of my earliest "masterpieces" (according to her). While I've always considered my art very personal and expressive, it was just a hobby. After many years of giving handmade presents for every holiday, I've managed to come up with some clever ideas that people actually enjoy getting! My friends and family have been telling me for some time now to get my act together and start making some money with this little talent....but let me tell you, it's a lot harder than you'd think. In fact, it's almost like a real job, wow, who would have guessed! Anyway, I've started an online shop to sell my wares, in particular my polymer clay sculptures. In high school I had quite a lucrative (for a 15 year old) little business going selling small animal scluptures to my friends, teachers and my parents friends. I even remember somebody stealing this little ornament I made off our Christmas tree in creative writing class one year. I was mad, but now I think I'll take it as a compliment! I stopped making sculptures when I went off to college but after I graduation started up again. A lot has changed since polymer clay first became popular back in the 90's! I don't claim to be an expert or anywhere close but I love to work with clay and create colorful and fun scultpure. Check out my shop at Etsy.com. It's called MarthaLand and you can find it at www.marthaland.etsy.com.