Well, I finally have a Zazzle store set up. I've added enough products to get started, however, it's very easy for anyone to go in there and customize anything they want...not necessarily the exact T-shirt I have listed, you can change your own style. I just provide the image! ;)


buy unique gifts at Zazzle

I think I will get started on creating a Devianart shop and perhaps sell originals on Etsy. We'll see. :)

This is fun!

Not that I should be writing any tutorials by now, since I'm still new to all of this, but I wanted to show you my artwork in the creative process so here you go!

( Acorn Fairy Tutorial )


Using my digital art program, I added glowing highlights to the acorns and her wings using an airbrush technique. I also blended her pants and skin using the airbrush. I was able to right click using the color selection tool to automatically get the exact color match for anywhere on the painting! I used an embossing tool for the wavy pattern in her wings and a special effect sparkling trail.

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial!

Here are two new pieces I finished in the past 2 days. The birthday witch is in honor of my birthday and because I wanted to paint a witch that wasn't necessarily Halloween style. Both are water color ACEO's (4x6, etc) on 140 lb cold press paper.


Happy Birthday Witch


Mushroom Garden Party

Enjoy!

Sorry I haven't been around in awhile. I've been quite uninspired (artistically) for the past month. Pretty stagnant...until this week, I spent a whole day goofing around on my digital art program (Twisted Brush) and made these 3 pieces of art. Some were finally finished that I started over a year ago!

Hope you like, thanks for looking! :)( Fantasy Art )

My Mom's Birthday is in a few days and I created this piece for her based off of a photo taken of her in an orange grove pregnant with me! You can see it just inked first, and then colored later. If I ever feel like it, I could print the ink version out again and color it different. :)

We went to San Francisco this weekend and visited Goldengate Park, rose gardens, and the japanese tea gardens.

( SF Pics )

Here are some colored pages from my sketchbook, I hope you enjoy. All sketches were done in ink and not drawn out in pencil first...which means nothing could be erased while being drawn. I colored them in colored pencil.

A sketchbook is good to have because it is a place where you can feel free to draw whatever, without the pressure of refinement in order to get your ideas, inspiration, or play with color combinations.

( Enjoy )

Which ones do you like best or recommend I make a separate art piece of?
Thanks for your comments...it's good to have an audience to test them out on. ;)

I have one small complaint about California.

They make you pay to see anything beautiful. The beach. The forest. The mountains. The fires (j/k).

I thought I would be a free roaming beach person, but no. If I have to cough up $6 just to walk on the beach everytime, it keeps me at home.

Growing up in Oregon, this is just not heard of. This is an outrage! There is always somewhere to park for free when visiting "nature". Hey soos krees toe!

What ev.

...and yes I do realize that this money would go to preserving the area (or making someone with a private beach very rich), thus preventing people from going their in the first place. Hi. Welcome to Earth. You have to pay to see trees and water. The end.

I just made Branden's starryknight628's chicken tika masala tonight. I rarely find a recipe that comes close to what it actually tastes like in an Indian restaurant.

Here's how it turned out!



Here is the recipe, courtesy of Branden.
( Spicy stuff )

While at my Mom's, she saved some of my old college art. I was an initial art major and here are some of the drawings that I did. My favorite was figure drawing of course. Unfortunately, my Mom had a leak in her closet and my drawings had mold all over them. Ew!

So I had to take pictures with my crappy camera phone to preserve them. The smell was so bad, I gagged.

( Art photos )

We went to see my Mom up in Hidden Valley Lake, CA. We went through the gorgeous Napa Valley and over some mountains to grandmother's house we go...

Except she's my Mom. But if we had a kid, then she'd be grandma. Ok where was I?

Oh yes. Here's some pics. We just took it easy at her house. ( Pretty pictures )

We went to visit Mammoth Caves this weekend. Our tour was 2.5 hours long, yet we covered so little of the cave compared to it's extended 600 miles!

We saw a bat and people screamed.
We went through a small tunnel filled with the hugest spiders and I screamed.
We descended 250 metal stairs that were wet and the kid behind me screamed.
I could have cracked my head open with some of the passage ways and I would have screamed.
It never fails, a tour group can never be quiet in order to experience the "cave quiet" the tour guide led.
The cave is over 10 million years old and probably feels like screaming because of all the nasty humans that have abused it.
The visitor center needs a visitor center...yeah...you read that right.
I discovered that I liked to stay near the back, with the making out couple, because the rest of the group annoyed me. (and I wanted to make out...just kidding)
There are some seriously uneducated people out there...and they have offspring. *shudder*

Zaxby's is excellent. OMG it's chicken! Yes, I'm eating chicken again. I have no explanation.

I ♥ my new synched IPOD Nano - ette. ;)

My husband, Charlie, left a ♥ on my wet car window this morning.

Awww cheezy luv at it's best.

I've been having fun with this site Passive Aggressive Notes that Charlie showed me. I must have looked at the site and LOL'd OMGWTFBBQ for at least an hour.

It's addicting.

And what is with all these work people stealing other people's food?!?!

I am really excited that I'm getting back into my art. Digital art is going rather slow, so I decided to look into watercolor! I have always been reluctant to try watercolor because I felt I would not have the kind of control that I would want to have when painting.

Well....that was before I discovered WATER COLOR PENCILS!



You use them like colored pencils and draw with them, then add a touch of water and *PRESTO* you have an instant watercolor painting! I bought a starter kit and I'm pretty proud with how well I'm picking it up.

I'm looking into learning to improve my skill to the levels of the two artists I'm listing below. I also love fantasy art, but I don't feel that I will limit myself to any genre.

Carmen Keys

and

Molly Harrison

The really neat thing is that both these ladies live in Northern California! Maybe I will meet them someday. I really like that Carmen included a tutorial on her website about how she paints and draws. I'm picking up techniques.

Now if I can just sneak in my watercolor paints and paper into work...

;)

Just testing to see if this works:


moar funny pictures

I created this but didn't include my name or email, used a pic from their stock. So it is just listed anonymous?

NEWS

Charlie got his military transfer orders and we are moving to Petaluma, CA! It is about 1-2 hours north of San Francisco. His first day of work, as an instructor at the training center, is scheduled for July 1st. However, we are planning on being there at least a month before in order to find a place to live. I'm particularly interested in the Cotati/Rohnert Park area. http://www.ci.cotati.ca.us/

We are thinking the last week in May when the movers come. I may have my last day at work be somewhere around May 16th. None of this is set in stone yet. That's less than 3 MONTHS peoples!

Charlie and I are very excited. We will be going back West and we have Charlie's brother foultip in the exact same area and my Mother is only about 2 hours away. I think I have a zillion of my Mom's cousins who live there as well, some of them are realtors! Hey....are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin? lol

YIPEE....SO EXCITED!!!

So icestorms suck, but they are also really cool! I actually had some sort of sick enjoyment breaking off sheets of ice on my car, or chipping away at it and all the ice chips going everywhere, gently hitting my face or hair.

On the way into work, the trees looked really cool weighed down by all the ice. It's amazing how the ice just laced itself on everything.

I also had some ice skating lessons on our brick outside my office. Yikes.

*fwump*

Happy Valentine's Day!
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Give me a smooch.

I think my new music obsession is with IMOGEN HEAP, also in FROU FROU.

Here's one of my favorite songs: Goodnight & Go


Headlock (her clothes remind me of the 80's in this video, but the song rawks)


Hide & seek - I've never heard a song like this (all the harmony is her voice)...it's very unique and she is beautiful in this video.


And finally...this has got to be the most awesome live performance I've ever seen with only her recording her own voice as she goes and creating a song!


She seems eccentric, wears her hair up and funky clothes, yet when I went to her blog and saw her video blog entries...she wears her hair down and looks like any other person on the street.

Check her out on her i-blog: vblog#14
Imogen's Blog