Month: December 2015

Happy Christmas Eve!

Or happy whatever else! But for me, it is Christmas Eve, and that means having survived a weird foggy/rainy/icy/snowy drive from Madison to the Twin Cities to spend the holidays sitting around fireplaces and drinking tea with family. 🙂

I also lugged some of my art supplies with me. Because yes.

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In the related art news, the Rapunzel piece is very nearly done! Or it might be done in actuality. It is in a nebulous place where I might futz a bit more, but all the big stuff is complete at least, and I’m happy with the general outcome.

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A larger post to come later, but for now, Christmas Eve is quickly headed towards Christmas day, and it is past time for me to scoot off for the night.

Happy Holidays!

December (D is for Dark and Dim) Workspace

This was my morning:

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See how dark it is? Yes. Thank you for that, shortest day of the year. Thank you so much.

But the flipside of all this dim is that from here on out the days are getting longer, and there is at least the remote chance that soon during the week I’ll get to work on art in natural sunlight. (Shush, let me have my illusions)

To make sure you don’t leave on a depressing note, here is an out-of-focus phone pic of my cat last weekend gracing my drafting table with her presence. She’s good at that. Notice the piece of 12×18 board protecting my painting in the above picture? Guess why that is? (Hint: kitten paw prints over paintings do not a great look make)

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Please note the sunlight. Like my cat, my battery pack is best charged with solar energy.

Sun, please come back. We miss you.

 

Rapunzel – WIP 1

I’m working on a couple of things simultaneously right now, but one of my current projects is taking the fairy tale Rapunzel and updating it into an urban fantasy setting. Mostly that means I get to draw lots of hair. Luckily, that is okay by me. 😉

Here are some in-progress pictures.

Like all drawings (ought to a least…), it started with thumnails. A few years ago I took an online class from Chris Oatly called Painting Drama I; the main thing I took away was the importance of strong composition and structure and (you guessed it) thumbnails!

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And here’s the sketch I built off of it. As you can see, I made some composition changes along the way.

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But a thumbnail and a sketch do not a painting make. So on to the inking stage! I am lucky enough to have a Monoprice light table that two dear friends got for me last Christmas. It rocks, is ultra thin, and makes tracing your work from pencil (or in this case sharpie…) sketch to final inks a breeze. My previous set up involved a Tupperware box, a broken lamp, and a scanner bed duct-taped over it covered in tracing paper. Let’s just say this was an upgrade.

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And finally, the stage I’m currently in: painting.

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Site is live!

Welcome to my site! It is still under some moderately heavy construction right now, so mind your step for pot holes and strange occurrences.

This site is a fresh start: a blog and a portfolio all in one. I will be sharing my art process with frequent posts, and updating my portfolio regularly to showcase my current style and skill set.

I am still wavering back and forth on my additional social media presence, but that will all be linked to and from here when I come to that decision.

Thanks for following along!

*Waves