Posts Tagged ‘watercolor wednesdays’
Friday, August 20th, 2010
I’ve been experimenting with my digital style to make it more painterly and yet retain the flat color that I like so much. This first piece of new art is an example of that experiment and works for the CBIG blog prompt this month (outside) and the Illustration Friday prompt for this week (atmosphere). Instead of raining cats and dogs, it’s raining on the cats and dogs!
Dogs and Cats and Umbrellas
The other new piece of art I have is a drawing of a lantern fish that I did for Ripple. It sold before I could post it here, but I still wanted to share the drawing because it works for the WaWe oceans prompt. Plus, it cracks me up. Hope it gives you a laugh too!
Fishy With A Built In Flashlight
The third piece of new art you may have noticed already. I have a new avatar because my hair is all chopped off. 
It will grow back (eventually) right? What happened was that I got a really bad haircut, which I tried to grow out for two months. Then I went to MN and asked a friend of mine that’s a hairstylist if she could fix it. She said no, so she chopped it all off and I’m starting over. The new avatar will be around until I have more hair again (I’m guessing 6 months, or maybe 9 … or 12). Eep!
Updates and new plans: A while back I announced that I was taking a break from Twitter, Facebook and the BlueBoards. The break was supposed to be for four months. Shortly after my update for the first month I had to answer a message on Facebook (for a commitment I’d previously agreed to). Since I was going on to Facebook, I also decided to visit Twitter and the BlueBoards. It was really hard to tear myself away again. For me, a month wasn’t long enough. After two months, I was cruising along, getting work done and blogging. Now it’s three months later and for me, three months is enough. I miss my friends and the industry news and the fun of hanging out online. So, I’m going to start (slowly) getting back into things. I might still take a few days off here and there, or a week, or maybe even a month if I have a deadline. That seems like the smart thing to do when I need to work and/or clear my head. However, as important as it was for me to step back and catch my breath, it’s even more important for me to jump back in. It’s more fun, not to mention more inspiring and productive to be surrounded by all the wonderful and creative children’s book people online!
p.s. Now that I’m home again, I’ll be posting notes from the LA conference and a new website design soon! 
Tags: art, cats, cbig, charity, dogs, drawing, if, illustration friday, my art, ripple project, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art, children's books, fun stuff | 16 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
I’ve been painting tiny pictures lately (see the elephant here and the bunnies here), in order to fit painting for fun into my schedule. My third tiny painting was a girl blowing a bubble with her bubblegum. I broke out my watercolors and colored pencils and painted a picture so horrible that I had to rip it up. Seriously. All it takes to ruin a small watercolor painting is a couple of misplaced brush strokes. However, I still liked the sketch, so I made the bubblegum girl into a digital illustration. The image is 2″ x 2″ like the paintings.
Bubblegum Girl
I like how she turned out, but I still wanted to paint something. A picture of a cow blowing a bubblegum bubble seemed like a fun take on the original, and worked out well, because it fits several art prompts all at once (see list below the picture). I used watercolor and colored pencil to make the image. I’m happy with the way both pictures turned out, but I have to say, the more I look at them, the weirder they look. Of course, if you looked at a photograph showing a side view of someone blowing a bubblegum bubble, that would probably look weird after a while, too.
Bubblegum Cow
The CBIG prompt this month is fantasy – a cow blowing bubblegum bubbles is definitely fantasy! Bubblegum Girl also works for fantasy. She wants to blow the biggest bubble ever and win the national bubblegum bubble blowing contest (which they actually have – I saw it on TV a couple of years ago).
The Watercolor Wednesdays prompt for last week was to create a greeting card image for a child – the bubblegum sort of looks like a speech balloon, where the cow could say, “Happy Birthday!” Bubblegum Girl also works for this week’s prompt, to illustrate a favorite toy or game … not that gum qualifies as a toy, but trying to blow the biggest bubble could be a game, so I think that counts (or at least it works for me – I went to art school; I can justify anything).
The Illustration Friday prompt this week is brave – that cow is really brave to be blowing bubblegum bubbles. What if it pops and goes all over her face? Bubblegum Girl also works for brave. She knows what will happen if the bubble as big as her head pops!
Are tiny paintings the next big thing? Maybe not, but I’m having fun with them
Tags: art, bubblegum, cbig, cows, digital, fun, girl, illustration friday, kids, my art, process, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art, fun stuff | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Update: I’m working on a new digital paint style, trying different things to see what looks best. The top image is new, slightly altered from the first one (which is below it). Basically I’ve made it a bit more painterly and gotten rid of the black line. The third image is them together, side by side. Which one do you like better? (I’ve done this style before and showed it on my blog here.)
Sometimes when I watch the Olympics, I wonder about things, like do elephants have their own Olympic games? And if they do, would they have the same events as our Olympics? Here’s the first event that I imagined from their winter games – Elephant Figure Skating:
Olympic Elephant Skater (take 2)
Figure Skating at the Elephant Olympics
2 Elephant Skaters Side By Side
What do you think about when you watch the Olympics?
I’m thinking of drawing the Elephant Olympians in the curling event next. It cracks me up every time I imagine it. Plus, I need to work more on this new style; I haven’t mastered it yet.
p.s. Don’t worry, I’m not getting rid of my more graphic style, just trying something new.
Tags: art, art styles, digital, drawing, elephants, my art, Olympics, painting, Tv, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art, children's books, fun stuff | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
The Watercolor Wednesdays prompt for this week was to create a child or animal character. When I sat down to paint, this is who showed up.
Happy Puppy!
Does he look familiar? I think he looks a lot like the puppy I did for the Frankenstein prompt and the Halloween character prompt and maybe a little like this puppy too. They are all supposed to be the same kind of dog, so maybe they’re different puppies from the same litter.
The prompt for last week was Wild Thing. Originally I was going to do an image of the characters from the book/movie, but then I decided to do something slightly different in the style of Maurice Sendak. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to complete this painting, and honestly I could have spent another week or so on it to make it look the way I wanted it to look. Since I have other projects that I need to get done, I cut a few corners to finish the painting. There are parts I really like and parts I wish I could have spent the time to do right. I think I’ll be using some of the techniques and the palette in future paintings to see what happens. So, here’s my wild (chicken) thing painting.
Wild Chicken Thing and Max
Tags: art, chickens, dogs, my art, painting, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 12 Comments »
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
The prompt this week for Watercolor Wednesdays is your favorite Halloween character. I decided to do a favorite character that I like to draw. I love drawing simple ghosts like these from last week, but for this prompt I decided to do a mummy, which is also fun. This is a more traditional mummy than the ones I usually do, so I played with texture in the background and added the little dog.
Oh No!
Tags: art, Halloween, mummy, my art, painting, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
The Watercolor Wednesdays prompt this week was a Halloween class party. I painted this one with cut up sponges (except the vampire). I painted the vampire with brushes to set him apart from the rest of the class. I thought the texture would be fun, and it is, except that the painting was too small (8.5 x 11) or the sponges were too big to make it look the way I wanted it to. Still, it’s something I might play around with again in the future, or use brushes to try to re-create the texture.
Eddie was out sick the day Ms. MacDonald’s class decided to dress up as farm animals for the class party. Everyone forgot to tell Eddie when he came back.
Ms. MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
The chicken costume is my favorite.
Tags: art, chickens, cows, farm animals, Halloween, kids, my art, painting, school, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
The prompt for Watercolor Wednesdays this week is: The Colors of Fall (an outdoor scene with children).
Fall Kids / Fall Colors
This is another attempt at layering. I like how it turned out, but I think I’ll do a bit more planning next time. Want to see how I got to the finished painting? Scroll down to see the other stages.
Yellow layer
browns and skin tones added
Orange!
blues and reds
The final step was to layer in all the greens, then add details with markers, to get the painting at the beginning of the post.
Tags: art, fall leaves, my art, painting, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
The Watercolor Wednesdays prompt for this week is to imagine Frankenstein as a child, so I painted Young Frankenstein with his first monster, FrankenTeddy, and his little dog Frankie. I think Young Frankenstein would have worn PJs with his lab coat over them.
Young Frankenstein and FrankenTeddy
Tags: art, dogs, Frakenstein, Halloween, kids, my art, painting, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
I’m back from vacation and will be posting my reviews for my vacation books soon.
When I got home, I saw that there were fun new prompts for Watercolor Wednesdays this month. Here’s the painting I did for the “Pumpkin Madness” prompt. It’s mostly watercolor, with a bit of acrylic and pencil too. I’m in a Halloweeny kind of mood already!
Kitty Ghost
Happy October everyone!
p.s. The winner of the contest for Elizabeth Dulemba’s new PB, Soap! Soap! Soap! is Amy Baskin – yay!!
Tags: art, cats, Halloween, my art, painting, pumpkins, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays
Posted in art | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Last week, I said I wanted to do a crayon resist for Watercolor Wednesdays this week, so I did. I’ve always loved crayon resist, because you never quite know how it’s going to turn out. I even learned a few things (or re-learned them, since I’m sure I knew them when I was 5), like: white crayons first, then black, otherwise the black will smear (duh).
So here it is, Sheila and her best friend Amanda talking about school lunch at Zombie High:
Brains for lunch!
Tags: art, crayons, my art, Sheila, watercolor, watercolor wednesdays, zombies
Posted in art | No Comments »
