Two New Illustrations

Here's two new drawings I did today. The bear took quite awhile even though I had a sketch to work from. The sad mountain only took about an hour surprisingly, right off the top of my head as I went along. I submitted it to Illustration Friday this week, topic is Idle.

Look what I inspired!

Yeah, I'm all about inspiration this week! I just got some great feedback on Etsy from a customer and check out what my little slugs inspired her to make...a pink and yellow slug puppet! I want one. Thanks Theresa! Be sure to go and check out her Etsy shop.

New Illustration Inspiration

I've been working on some new illustrations recently. I have always been discouraged by my lack of ability to draw people, even in a funky cartoon way. The other night I grabbed my sketchbook and just started doing some quick loopy drawings without really thinking about it and low and beyond, I think I finally found my style! I scanned all the sketches and digitally colored them, which takes quite awhile, but to me is worth it. Not sure what will become of them, perhaps I'll will do some custom portraits? Who knows! Here's the most recent one I finished today. I tried to use an old color palette from colourlovers called chicken soup and revamped it by switching out a green for a nice earthy brown. I ended up using black and white as well, but I guess that's not really cheating. I found the background photo from my friends M&B's Vermont wedding album. And lastly added to the collage effect with a coffee stained paper I found laying around the studio. You can see some other illustrations here, will no color palette restrictions and plain backgrounds.

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've been a fan of Meredith Dittmar for a long time, in fact her artwork inspired me to get back into working with clay again. She has unbelieveable precision but what's more inspiring are the concepts behind her magical works. Check them out here. Her flickr page has more pictures as well of her newer pieces for an upcoming show in Istanbul. Once again she has inspired me to try out some new forms with clay! Here's a little peek at a digital sketch I did for a new project I'm working on. Who knows if it will ever transform into clay...it's fun to imagine all the wonderful landscapes I can build! It's almost perfect just by itself as a postcard just the way it is.

More Color Inspiration

I've been really addicted to colourlovers.com lately. Here's my current favorite color palette and some inspired digital doodling using it.
Color by COLOURlovers BTW, has anyone seen the previews on SPIKE for the new movie called Zombie Strippers? Seriously? That's just gross and wrong on sooooo many levels and yet, sadly there probably is a market for it!

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!

New Project

Here's a little side project I've been working on. I want to start making dioramas with hopes of trying to get a gallery show. This is probably just a pipe dream and I will never follow through, but it's fun to experiment and try new things. One of my top five favorite artists of all time Meredith Dittmar was the inspiration behind this project. If you have never seen her work, you MUST check it out at her website. She also has an Etsy shop, but there are no clay figures for sale right now. You can always check out her sold items. This creation I call Feather Girl. She's a crude attempt, but over all I'm happy with the way she came out. I've never made something this big out of clay before. It was a real challenge. A lot of the smaller detailed pieces broke and she is quite deformed. I had fun putting together the feather skirt. Maybe I'll try incorporating other materials on my second attempt.

Spring is Here!

It's hard to tell in Florida when spring arrives. It's already starting to feel like summer. But for the rest of you out there who are enjoyed the winter thaw, here a little collection of spring inspired handmade goodness - courtesy of Etsy of course.

1. Yellow :: Erin Tyner

2. Holly Bird Plantable Card :: RoundRobinPress

3. Cautious :: yaelfran

4. Fiddlehead Fern :: theeye

5. Pink Tulip Buds :: serena29

6. Pink Flowers :: urbandesign 7. Pretty Hand Painted Bag :: alangcry 8. Rainy Day :: monkeypowered 9. Dreaming of Spring :: artdi 10. Moss Terrarium No. 48 :: madebymavis 11. Rosette Fascinator Headband :: giantdwarf 12. Seedling Flower Bud :: leafy 13. Robin Eggs Felted Birds Nest :: makeyourpresentsfelted 14. My Busy Bee Pop Up Card :: tracychong

Play With Your Food!

It's kind of nice not having a job because I get to make a hot fresh breakfast and eat it somewhere other than the car! Today I made pancakes, yum! I haven't made them in a long time. When I was a kid, my mom made pancakes all the time for breakfast. The best were blueberry, with fresh blueberries from our yard! I miss having a garden and orchard. Sometimes when they were plain, she'd make breakfast extra fun by drawing little pictures and putting my initials on them! I didn't think of it until the last one and my hunger got priority over creativity, but I thought I'd give it ago. Mom, you truly are an artist! I didn't fair so well, but maybe I'll keep practicing. Never done this before? It's easy, here what you do: 1. Pour your batter very slowly in the shape of whatever you like, I seem to remember one extra special breakfast with butterfly pancakes. Remember to keep your batter doodle small enough to fit within the shape of a regular pancake. You have to work fast too. 2. Let it cook until the top of the batter is all nice and bubbly. This is important so your picture will show up! 3. Pour a regular pancake over your doodle, starting in the middle. It helps to move quickly while doing this too. 4. Wait for the appropriate bubbling again, and flip! Tada! 5. Marvel at your pancake artwork while it cooks on the other side! Here's a helpful tip too: whatever you draw will be reversed when you flip your pancake, so if you are making an initial or letter, be sure to draw it backwards!

Be Inspired

I'm constantly looking around me for inspiration of some kind. Usually in the form of color, which I find just about anywhere. The other day I was taking lint out of the trap in the dryer and discovered the most beautifully delicate stone blue. It was much harder to replicate with clay, but I made a few slugs a slightly greyer shade! Sometimes I seem to be inspired by certain objects that repeatedly come up for no particular reason. I suppose I should take this as a subconscious hint that I've got something up there in my head that needs to get out. Lately it has been bananas! That hilarious new Denny's commercial with "nannerpuss" started it all. I can't stop buying them...I say buy because most of the time they go bad before I can eat them. I make banana slugs all day long. And I've been itching to play one of my favorite games, Bananagrams! It's always fun to see what other people are inspired by, and apparently like me, someone was thinking about bananas when they made this word game! I never thought of fruit being inspirational as far as recreation is concerned but it sure is fun to play with your food so it only seems natural! And the game really has absolutely nothing to do with bananas, except for its name and the cute pouch it comes in. If you are a fan of Scrabble but don't like the competitive nature of the game then check out Bananagrams. There is a defined winner according to the offical rules, but rules were made to be broken right? When we play it's for fun, and nobody wins or loses. It's a good way to effortlessly come up with words of inspiration too! Some of the words I spelled out today: noodle, extra, frog, juicy, throat, gem, whiz and koi. Here's the commercial...I just couldn't resist!