Some of My College Art

I thought I'd post some paintings from my photo-realism phase :-) The bottom two were done with gouache.

Meet Newell

This is my first softy design :-) He started out in a sketchbook, and ended up quite a bit different than I had planned.  His first look was kind of contemporary, but as I put his materials next to each other, I realized he was going towards a classic direction.  He definitely has a bit of my illustration style in him which was what I was hoping for.  Alright I promise my next post will have some actual illustrations (seeing as this is an illustration blog)--I guess I just needed a creative break from drawing.

Birthday Present

This was a tough one to make for me because it's advanced for my level....and I kept having to look up sewing machine info on youtube to figure some things out, but boy was he worth it!  I got the pattern from a site called Funky Friends Factory--tons of adorable animals patterns there.  Not the typical craft patterns either, these designs are very special IMHO.  Anyways, this is for my Mom's Birthday.  I did a portrait of the lil' platy on a tag I made too.  Phew!  Now I'm going to sleep for about 16 hours (yeah I kind of forgot to go to bed last night, at least, not until 6am.)

Doggie Made From Socks

I'm especially proud of one of the arms--which was sewn with a sewing machine!  The rest was hand-stitched, although I think from now on I'm a sewing machine convert: much faster and with perfectly even stitches to boot.  It took me several hours of youtube videos to figure out how to thread and use the thing--much more complicated than it first appears. 

Don't worry Risky (my Jack Russell Terrier), this pup is not going to replace my favorite studio assistant!

My First Softy!

Well, the first one that worked out anyway (design was from a book called "Sock and Glove").  As you can see I'm a beginner at sewing, but I'm slowly getting better.  I eventually would like to design and sew my own animal characters to have around my desk and give to my nieces too!

And here is the start of a doggie - he still needs his ear sewn and I'll be adding a little spot around his eye with embroidery thread!

Advanced Copy!

I got my advanced copy today of "How Much Does God Love You" and I couldn't be happier with the printing, design, font, everything!  Ideals Publishing did a great job on this.  Release date is set for September!

Pen and Ink Question

Hi all, I was wondering if you could help me out with a dilemma.  I've been attempting to dilute my inks to get a a softer look to my outlines.  However, when I do this, it changes the consistency of the ink so that it doesn't flow through my dip pen very well.  Does anyone know of any inks that come right of the bottle this way?  A soft gray, or brown yet are not 'watery'?  Any help would be much appreciated!

Comment Issues

Hi Everyone, just wanted to let you know that I keep getting an error when I choose to publish moderated comments :0( Argh!  First and foremost I don't want you to think I'm skipping over or ignoring them -- I'll google the issue and see if I can come up with something.

Also when I place my title image (which I sized in photoshop to match the width of the blog) using the widget feature it shrinks it down automatically.  Grrr.  Lol.  Anyways, wish I knew more about code but it all looks Greek to me.

For now I'm turning off comment moderation until I can get this sorted out.

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*******AHA!  For anyone else having this issue, I found a quick fix.  Don't know if this will work for everyone but, I went back and published the post again.  The comments magically appeared, hooray!  

And as always thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to post a word or two :-)

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Another update--I got the comments to appear on the post itself, but on the main homepage, the comment number is still 0.  Things that make you go hmmm.....

Illustration Friday: Giant

My Dad looked so tall to me when I was little (he's over 6ft).  And of course I also believed that my parents knew all the secrets of the universe-- and that one day when I grew up I'd know them too.