St. Patty's Day

Hello WaWe friends!
Just a quick watercolor here... sort of St. Patty's Day? :) It's been a while since I've participated here, tho I've been checking in to see what's happening. I've been working on an illustration job recently, creating the illustrations for children's song charts, which has been keeping me busy - I suppose that's a good thing huh? Love seeing everyone's work and ideas. It's such a blessing to be a part of this with all of you!
Happy painting!
Julia

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Toy Memories

Toys discarded from long long ago forgotten and alone waiting for that child to remember the joy of play.

Status Report 3/11/10

I was able to do some more work on this...

Mostly, I focussed on the dark green tree and the fence.

I believe I'll be changing the color of the hearts on the fence now this is not going to be finished in February. I don't want it overly hearty anymore.

Next up is everything on the ground plane.

greeting card / game - sruble

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.

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.

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

Back In the Day

I remember being on my hands and knees for hours
playing Jacks with my Sister Coy and trying to fix
the broke strings to paddle ball games. We stayed
outside a lot playing jump rope and endless hours
of Hide and Go Seek. Being a couch potato wasn't an
option he he he he!! Happy drawing everyone!

greeting card

I know it's been WAY too long. I know there'll always be excuses, but . . . I've just had other projects (including getting our house ready to sell) that have had to take precedence. Sorry. I do so want to be a weekly part of this group!

This isn't a greeting card, but I figured it was close enough. My good friend has a dog breeding business and asked if I'd do a logo for her a couple of weeks ago, and here's the finished product. You wouldn't think the words would take longer to do than the image, but so was the case with this. (I guess that's what happens when you're still unfamiliar with how a program works!)

It's been a bit busy for the past week

About this time last week an old client reconnected with me to do some work, a new client job got the go ahead, and some map work needed to be finished up.
Here's a bit of what the old client wanted.

There are more projects in the works with this client which is nice.

Here's a bit of what the new client wanted. It's waiting for final approval.


The client is in New Zealand so I can put a pin in that country and a mark it off my list.

The map stuff I can't show you. There aren't really any characters in it anyway.

For all 3 clients I do the work using a combination of hand drawing the rough and then pasting it into Adobe Illustrator and using it as a guide to draw the final art.
You'll notice that I have used two different approaches in the way the art is created for each client.
For the older client I used a soft blended approach without outlines.
There's a lot of gradient mesh use in that image.

The image of the girl is a flat approach using outlines. Kind of like a gouache painting.
I really have to push myself in both approaches to try to create volume in the art.
I'm not going for realism, but I don't want it to look flat like cut paper.
I like the way the girls hair is looking.

CAKE

Birthday card for the hungry.

Girly Greeting Card

I did this greeting card for possible card line. I wanted to keep it very simple
and clean, but very colorful.