Two Little WIPs came out to play

Woo...hello my dear friends!!  I haven't done too much arting this week, as I'm getting things set up for a shop on Etsy and Luulla.  So I've been looking at other store owners to see how they price their things, how much they charge for shipping and so on. I was supposed to do this last year, but didn't have the confidence enough to think I could actually sell anything. *laughs*  But this year...with being out of work again...I thought..."Well, heck...what could I lose anyway?? Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money." So, I'm going for it!  I'll also be offering special commissions in my shops too...you can do that right??  Because if someone doesn't see what they want...well, I could easily make it.  I'll post a link here when everything is all set up...there's just a few last touches I want to make first.

I have several art pieces on the go right now...and a children's book I've begun work on.  Let's start with the WIP for the children's book first:

Meet little Sandy...she's the lead character in "The Birthday Wish" that I'm currently in the works in writing.  I originally wrote this back when I was in grade 4, but I was cleaning out my closet recently and I came across it.  Though it does need a bit of a major re-write...I couldn't resist giving a fresh hand at it again...the story line is just too cute.  She's learns a valuable lesson in being very careful about what you wish for, as you just may get it.  That's all I'll say about it so far. *wink*  Doing a children's book is something I've always wanted to give a try at...as they are such works of wonders to look at and charming to read in their sweet innocence.  I've been studying on how to draw children, so I hope this little lady looks like she's 8 or at the very most 10 years old.

She was much larger than my scanner could handle, as you can see.  I'll have to get a high res scan at the print shop to get the entire image in.

WIP number two!  It's a little mermaid paper doll!

I still have as yet to ink and colour her...but that will only take about two days to do.  She's for my lovely friend Cameron who is hosting a fabulous mermaid giveaway.  How could I resist that?! Nope...I just can't.  This little mermaid will be about 20 cm when cut out...which I'm probably going to have to get my tiny scissors out for cutting around those tiny beads I drew.  Ahhh, I think I love to torture my hands. *laugh*  I also gave her a little trident to hold...and just to make it seems a little less scary, I capped off the pointy spears with pearls.

Oh! And just to answer a question, I one of the pens I use in doing some illustration work is made by Sakura.  They're called  Gelly Roll and the particular line I'm in love with right now is the Gold series.  I have two:

They come in Pink gold, Black gold, Green gold, Purple gold, Red Gold and so on.  They are really super awesome in that they don't clog, are smooth and quick flowing once the ink starts on the paper and dry fast.  And it's neat to watch the colour change as they dry...they go from a bright basic colour to a gold finish when dry, with a colour outline of what they originally were.  When I get more funds in, I'm going to get the whole lot of them!

I think the Sakura Gelly Rolls also come in white, neon and desaturated colours...I'll have to check though...it's been awhile since I was last at De Serres art store.

Okay, that's all for tonight. I'm going to tuck myself in bed with a good book.  Have a wonderful creative weekend my dear friends! Cheers!

A fresh Start, some blog changes...oh, and a wine lable too

Hellllooo my lovely fellows!  Sorry to have gone on a rather impromptu hiatus since last month without letting any of you know.  Shame on me or what?! *laughs* A lot of heavy things have been going on in my life lately, and I needed some time away from the Internet world to sort of get my head together, get my emotions back in check, and think about the direction of my life and where I really want to go and how to get there in the first place. *laughs*  I've been working on a small business plan, which has required an insane amount of reading at the library. Wow...so much to learn!

But first, I want to talk about this lovely little lady you see here first.  I've been working on some wine label designs lately....thanks to a very special man in my life right now who thought it was something I could try and from a another nice woman on face book who thought the same thing...plus my mum.  So, I couldn't ignore all that commotion.  Here's one of my first attempts at it.  I took some figuring out first by heading down to the liquor stores in my area to have a long look at what professional labels look like, then pulling out some books on Mucha...I had a look at what he created.  I've had on old sketching sitting around for ages, that has gone unused, and I've been looking for a reason to use the sketch for something.  I gave her a more updated look though and browsed through some manga books for some ideas on how to do up her hair.  After doing another rough, I inked her in with my trusty sepia fine liner pen and added colour with some coloured pencils, and I must say....I LOVE the new gelly roll gold pens I bought!  They add such an awesome effect.  She took a bit long to finish, about a week and a half.  I usually love to add a lot of little details, but I really wanted to have a de-cluttered illustration for a very clean and hopefully professional looking finish.  I'd love to hear any suggestions on what I could do to make any other improvements to this and I'm more than open for a critique.

Okay, I know, I know...this is a monster of a post already, *laughs*, but I'm making some more changes to my blog here and I want to know what you lovely people want to see in a blog.  What makes you want to return to certain blogs again and again.  I want to make my blog an easy and fun read for you lovely readers.  So talk to me, do you like seeing updates once a day, once a week, do you like seeing works-in-progress shots, having a look behind the scenes at studios,  everyday life stuff, tutorials, give-aways....or anything at all that you can think of that'll make this a wonderful and inspiring space to visit.  My ears are open to any suggestions, and you have my sincerest thanks in sharing what ideas you have with me. *big virtual hug*

Oh man, if you've read this far...you deserve a giant cake! Have a great and creative week dear friends...cheers!

Illustration Friday: Lost

Wow! I didn't think I would make it for this week's Illustration Friday theme. But, Phew, made it just in the nick of time.  It's amazing that I could get this done in a matter of three days, given the fact that I'm in the middle of moving chaos.  I was really inspired by this weeks theme and the moment I saw the word "Lost" on IF...the image of a little lost enchanted doll in a dark forest popped into my mind.  I didn't even do much of a rough sketch first either, I just sat down with the image in my head and drew it out in full.  Which I never do, as I'm trying to improve my composition skills, so I like to play with sketches before I go to a final drawing.

I used watercolour pencils, sepia inks, jelly ink in pink gold and a little bit of CorelDRAW for the background.  Which is a watercolour wash with digital salt.  She only took three days which is awesome!  But then again, there's not too much detail. Ha ha!

Speaking of lost...I'm quite in that state now.  I'm moving to a new province at the end of this month...and just about everything is in utter box mess!  So, all my art things are now packed up.  Ha ha, oh my, I shall get cranky if I'm left without my supplies too long.  But, I shall leave all this for another blog post before I hit the road to my new province. *wink*  Enjoy the drawing and have a wonderful and creative week my dear friends, cheers!

Illustration Friday: Suspend

Woo...blogging again after last night. *laughs*  Blogger is working much better today...which is awesome.

Anyway, this is for this week's Illustration Friday's topic, "Suspend".  I love looking through what other artists have contributed.  I decided to take a character from one of my mangas I'm working...this fellow is Dorian...and I hung him upside-down.  Looks like he likes that with the little wink on his face.  I don't know how well this goes with this weeks theme, but it was fun to create and I haven't submitted to an IF topic for a long time now.  So, I really wanted to do this weeks theme no matter what.

I haven't done screen tone work for about a month or two now, and I can't wait to get back to this comic so I can do more.  It's so great to work with them and being covered in little tone bits and dust.  I highly recommend every artist to at least experiment with it once.

Have a great, creative week my dear friends...cheers!

Tanpopo

Hello dear friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful June.  Though I don't know what happened to May...it seemed to have zoomed by so quickly.  But here in Vancouver, you wouldn't tell it was June at all, it's been very chilly and rainy and more like March weather.  We are all doing our sun dance here.

I didn't mean to wander away from my blog for a whole month!  My day job has been a bit crazy as of late and all I do when I get home is just crash out on my bed.  I've got my mum giving me some good kicks in the behind to get me moving on getting my projects done, which is helping.  I'm about to dust off an old graphic novel I was working on two years ago, so I'm really excited about revamping the main characters in it. Yay!

But first things first, one of my favourite artists, Camilla d'Errico, is holding a fan art contest and it was something I just could not pass up.  All entries will go to a gallery showing, so even if you don't win, you still do in a way...by having more people become exposed to your art.  Which I thought was freaking awesome.  Part of the rules were that you had to draw her two main characters from her manga "Tanpopo" and give it a poster treatment.  I went through a lot of rough sketches trying to figure out what would look best.  I wished I had scanned them in so I could show all of you.  I had the biggest trouble with Kuro, the fellow in the black cape, I just wasn't certain where to put him in the drawing and how close he should be to Tanpopo.  But I thought that having him sort of emerge from out of the drapes like black smoke would look pretty cool.  Although, I feel like I could have done a little better.  But overall, I'm quite happy with this.  This was my first time colouring in cut jewels!  I had about two books open as I did the colouring to get the light just right and to make them look like real cut pink diamonds.  I was also listening to the last Harry Potter book when I was colouring this, and I didn't realize until I was done, that a bit of Hogwarts had included itself in the drawing as well. *laughs*  I mean, how can you draw something and not be aware that you're drawing it?  I'm still stumped at that question.

So, this little lady will now be put in a mat frame and shipped off this weekend.  I have butterflies just thinking about it. *crosses fingers*


Wishing you all a very happy and creative week! Cheers!

Pencil Sketch: A little Glance

Hello my lovely blogger friends!  How are all of you this fine spring week?

I've been away busy with lots of different art projects on the go, and my current job has been keeping me on my toes.  I'm almost finished on an illustration for a book, which I hope the other end will like enough to include, and two comics.  I've also caught a very bad fever....Harry Potter fever ( I now totally understand what all the fuss over the books was about!  It's amazing to read...I find I just can't put it down.  After two months, I've eaten my way through 6 books! Just the 7th and last is left, I'm so excited.), so expect some fan art to show up soon. *laughs* Never have I needed to count on my trusty day planner so much as now.  I have to fight the urge to flop down after work and nap, but once I see my work sitting there staring at me like this little lady here, well...I seem to find renewed energy to get to my art with gusto.  There's never enough hours to do everything I would like.

Anyway, even with lots of things on the go it seems like that's when I get inspired by idea's most.  Which often puts me off track for an evening or two.  Like this little lady here.  She originally started as a warm up rough sketch, and oddly enough I like her so much I simply couldn't resist bringing  her into a more finished pencil sketch.  I don't know if I can get around to colouring her, but I think she looks delightful just as she is now.  I didn't know what kind of outfit to put her in, so, I just draped a nice sheer shawl around her.

Wishing you all a wonderful, happy and creative week my dear friends! Cheers!

A Water Sprite

Hello my dear blogger friends!  A very happy Easter and Passover to you all, I hope that you're having a fun time off on this holiday.   I know that this drawing isn't very Easter or Passover-like at all...*laughs*...but I managed to squeeze this in-between a couple of projects I'm working on currently, just for fun and for no particular reason.  I found an old drawing I did about two years ago, which was a mermaid and I suddenly felt this urge to update the drawing.  But this time I wanted to do a mermaid that wasn't your typical "pretty" mermaid, I wanted one that was a little more shark like in her manner and in her fish style.  The little fish that are swimming around her, well, I don't know what to call them. They are this weird kind of cross in between a Carp and a Goldfish...or something like that. *laughs*

I had originally intended to do this only as a black and white ink drawing, somehow though, gold colouring work itself in there and I kind of like how the final result came out...personally I think it makes it "pop" rather nicely.  I used my watercolour pencils dry, which gives such a lovely airbrush look to the colours!  I also used black and white ink for finishing up...and I managed to avoid splattering white ink everywhere on the drawing, that's a hard urge to fight off!  Anyway, this took only about four days to complete, a record for me, as I love to take my time on drawings and relish every bit of time I have on it, so normally it takes me a week to complete a final drawing.  I've been trying to decide what kind of frame she would look good in.  Any suggestions?

 It's been a crazy few weeks for me...I'm very happy to get to blogging today.  I have a new job that I've been at for three weeks now.  It's doing flower arranging again, not something I wanted to do again, but after a year with no work, it's better than nothing.  I'm still looking for other work in the meantime, because I would really like to do something else...something more art inclined.  This pays the bills, rent and gets me my art supplies, so I am happy about that.

It was also my birthday on Friday the 6th, which was also passover...so that was a crazy day!  My mum bought me an awesome cheesecake and a lovely bottle of  Alfred Sung "Forever" perfume.  I did a little happy dance in the store over that.  Also at Starbucks, the barrista wrote "Happy B-Day" in caramel sauce on top of the foamed milk in my coffee!  He had very lovely handwriting. *laughs*  I never had a vente sized coffee before...I don't think again though(until next year that is), that was more coffee than I could drink.  It was such a good day...best birthday that I've had in ages.  Can't wait to see what happens for next year.

As a parting shot, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom everywhere I look now!  They are so gorgeous and always bring a smile to the heart.  I love looking at them, they are one of my favourite flowers.  I took this shot in a local park just a few blocks away from where I live.

I wish you all a very happy and creative week, everyone!  Hope you all are enjoying spring and I'm looking forward to reading about what you've been up to.  Cheers!