A little bird finds a home

It's ages since I've posted here. I was very busy preparing for a show which opened just over a week ago. I did it as a fundraiser and have been delighted by the response with over half the pieces sold. One item was this little bird, bought by a friend for her six-year-old granddaughter who took it home and made a nest for it and gave it an egg to sit on. I always like it when I sell something to someone I know. It feels good that something I invested some of myself into is going to a good home. But usually that just means that it'll have a place on the wall in the home of a friend. In this case it feels as though a whole new life is starting for this little one.

And yet more birds

I quite often create a piece to fit a frame. In this case I had a very long thin silver frame which now contains this quartet of collaged birds. It was an interesting challenge to create them as four separate pieces that still needed to work together.

I keep painting birds!

 At the weekend we went to Mass MoCa and saw the latest shows. One that I really loved was the altered book by Tom Phillips, so I came home, found an old book that I'd already designated as collage material and used one page as the basis for this found poem/illustration.
Meantime I had my first sale on etsy of this painted panel. The purchaser decided she'd like a companion piece so I created the next two. She chose the middle one so the bottom one will go in my etsy store.

Illustration Friday - jungle

This is an oldie but it fits this week's Illustration Friday prompt.

Collage on panel

I've been having a lot of fun working in collage in the past few days. I had ordered some 6" x 6" cradled wood panels and all of these are mounted on those. I've put them in my etsy shop if you'd like to know more here.

My favorite way of working

I wasn't very happy with the digital shading of my sketches so turned them into watercolors with a bit of colored pencil. This way of working feels very comfortable to me.

I do like birds

A number of things have been keeping me from my usual creative endeavors - knitting illustrations, a bike trip, a singing workshop - but these birds asked to be made and here they are. They'll be in the Bennington Arts Guild gallery as of this afternoon.

(Almost) Daily Sketch

I've made the resolution before to do a daily sketch and somehow I've never done it long enough for the habit to get established. But here are my sketches from Friday and Saturday. Both started as pencil drawings. For the first I just changed the line color in Photoshop and for the second I added the tonal values in Photoshop. I have to say I prefer working in watercolor...

Lettering and Illustration

The course I just took in watercolor lettering from Val Webb has been very enjoyable and at the end we got to the best part - marrying words and illustration. I'm going to be on the lookout for more great (short) quotations.

More lettering

Decorated Letters

I've been taking an online course in watercolor lettering from Val Webb and these are two of the exercises I just finished.

What he saw in the grocery store

and what he missed....

Character Studies

This boy wants to be a detective. When what he really notices seems a bit boring his imagination provides other things...

Illustration Friday - urban

I went looking through the archives and found a couple of urban images, though in most ways I'd say I'm more of a country girl. The first is painted in watercolor with ink outlines. The second is collaged of pieces of paper painted with watercolor.

Illustration Friday - egg

Illustration Friday - eyeglasses

This sequence isn't new but fit the prompt for "eyeglasses". Having worn glasses myself since I was five I have a soft spot for kids who do.

Illustration Friday - talent

I had such fun painting the bears for the last Illustration Friday that I decided to continue the animal theme with this one.

Illustration Friday - whisper

Wonder what he's saying to her. Is he murmuring sweet nothings or are they watching their cubs?

Sculptures

I've been working on these for a while. They're similar to paper mache and I've been having an enormous amount of fun with them. I'm about ready to offer them for sale, but don't have much idea what to charge. Each one actually takes several hours to complete (maybe 6 - I haven't been keeping track), but the tallest is only 9" high and I suspect they're too whimsical and childlike to command serious sculpture prices...

Illustration Friday - wool

Thought

Because I have a few places where I'm pushing out the boundaries of my comfort zone...

Character studies

Some more images of the cat character in the cafe illustration.

Another coffee shop picture

This is not my first painting of people in a coffee shop. I did one a short while ago (here). But these ones have more of a story attached.

Illustration Friday - wings

I almost never work in pastel, but I have been admiring the work of children's illustrator Lynne Chapman and enjoying some of the videos she has on her website, so I bought a couple of sheets of sanded paper and used this weeks IF prompt as a starting point. You can certainly get some lovely bright colors with pastels, but I'm not a fan of the dusty messiness.

Four treatments - trying different materials

My most frequent medium is watercolor, but I sometimes worry that it doesn't have enough impact. I just tried painting the same image in four different ways to see which I prefer and I'd love to get feedback. Here they are in the order that I did them. For the first one I used water soluble colored pencil on brown kraft paper. I printed out a scanned pencil image and then colored it. I didn't stretch the paper so it got a bit wrinkly when I added water. The lettering is collaged on top.

The next one is gouache with a little colored pencil and marker.

Next I tried the ink and gouache method I've used before (explained here).

Finally I used watercolor.

Early morning moon

When I came down early one morning, I saw the moon through the trees and everything in shades of blue and wanted to paint the scene. I didn't actually see the fox. He invited himself later when the painting was almost finished. Here's a close up of him.

Cat in Winter

She may not want to be outside as much in the cold and snow, but Jasper still needs to keep an eye on her territory.

Still Life

While we were away for a couple of days over the new year, I treated myself to a book by British watercolor artist Shirley Trevena, "Breaking the Rules of Watercolour" and was inspired to paint this. She's much looser in her treatment - something I aspire to - but I definitely learned a few things.
My New Year's resolution is to do some drawing every day, even if it's just a quick doodle, though I won't necessarily be posting all the results.