Twas the Night Before Teacups

Just finished a watercolor commission for one of my art students parents. (a surprise Christmas present). I believe the key to a successful watercolor, at least for me, is thinking backwards from light to dark. Glazing layers of shapes that get darker and darker on top...not forgetting to add wet into wet washes within each graduated shape to create interesting reflected light. This project was interesting because my client, an engineer, had very specific quidelines for the outcome. I really had to reign in my extravagant/ flamboyant painting style. :)

Heavenly Ever After T Shirt

I was chosen to be camp director this past year for the youth of our church. The theme was "Heavenly Ever After" so I wanted to incorporate 2 ideas: one of a crown for royalty and the second, a temple spire for spirituality. I also thought it would be fun to put hidden images of girly things that I enjoy into the designs of the crown. Can you find the egret, fig, notes, flower, high heel shoe among others? This project really stretched my shape making skills, but I learned a lot!

French Baby Shower

Here is my first photoshop experiment using the paint tools. I watched a fabulous video tutorial by DaniDraws on Ustream. It was very interesting and informative. Basically, a sketch is scanned into photoshop and cleaned up using the erase, pencil and levels tools. An Alpha channel is created (select all artwork, copy, new channel, paste into channel, Select > load selection). Here only the drawing is selected, at which time it is inversed and deleted all background white leaving only the drawing on a layer. Draw marching ants around sketch, create new layer, and make a layer mask. (underneath sketch) Attatch the sketch to the layer mask by clicking in betweent he two layers with cursor. Colorize the sketch. Create layer under the sketch. Add basic color shadow, midtones, highlights. Create new layer above sketch. Recolor sketch in various places. Add shadows etc. Create a new layer and fill with color. Select "Hard Light" and create layer mask to erase most, but not all (opacity 80%). Create a new layer and add finishing touches. Clean up the edges of the illustration but going back to eh original layer mask and using black to conceal the rough edge. The idea here is that we are incorporating the original elements of the sketch, but cleaning them up and building layers among the sketch to give it more life.

Wanted to try this illustration in pen and ink. My favourite medium! Its so fun to create patterns and textures. I learned about a type of textile patterning called Damask. It incorporates elements such as spirals, leavees, scalloped edges, graduated dotes, etc.