Kabuki

Testing some watercolor PS brushes I found. They're a lot like regular watercolor brushes, i.e. can't go over with white, colors will get muddy if you layer too much. I just miss the happy accidents you get with water flow and regular watercolor paper!

Sketchbook Month

Yay!

Graphic design practice.

Instead of NaNoWriMo I'm doing this instead!

The other day I got a lovely Toulouse Lautrec postcard. I think soon I will make my own postcards so I can start sending them out to my lovely friends. :)

Windmill

Reference

Trying to get back into painting daily again...I always feel like I overwork paintings. My process is always to be super spontaneous for most of it and then go back and refine it, and I don't think it's really working for me anymore. Watercolor is a tough medium for my tendency of work-stop-work-stop-work, but it's my favorite medium, so I'm determined to make it work.

Another note: I hate masking fluid so much.

Here are a couple of watercolor artists I've been looking at:

Jack Tia Ke Woon

Ng Woon Lam

And here's one of Ng's videos:

I will just have to keep practicing. I really love watercolor so while not getting results instantly is always frustrating, I enjoy the journey. Being a watercolor teacher is one of my many many art related goals. That's something I love about being an artist; you can do so much. If you have some kind of boring career, people feel like they're limited to just doing that. But anybody can do stuff they love...they just have to remember they don't have to be boring and stuffy for the rest of their lives.

Hospital

Some sketches from the hospital waiting room.

I'm pretty sure this lady knew I was drawing her.

This guy was my favorite though.

Pea Coat

It's so warm and cozy!

Rock Candy

10.10.09

The green was labeled as "lime". Instant win!

Domo

From Thursday the 8th. :)

Dr. Pepper slurpee, mmm.

This was inspired by Kate Bingaman-Burt and her wonderful concept sketches about consumption. As an exercise I plan on doing one of these hopefully every day for awhile to practice my lettering and watercolors.

Hi

I worked for three weeks straight and I went on a little vacation this week so art is kind of scarce.
I did attend a session of watercolor earlier this week and visited some kindred spirits...Super thanks to Joe, Jeff, Candace, Mike and Dustin for giving me a really great start to the week. Being around other artists is always so refreshing and inspiring. I love seeing other people's work and being around people who love to create like I do. (And being humbled by seeing other people's pieces!)

I do have a couple of awesome artists that I picked out of my reader today that I want to share...
Nathan Fowkes Landscape Sketches
He does incredible little color studies of landscapes. Fast and simplified is not one of my strong suits so I can really learn a lot from looking at his work.
Asnee Tasna (flickr), Asnee's blog
A great pick from Urban Sketchers, his sketches are a dream to look at. I love his intricate linework and I love how he can make otherwise boring buildings look fresh and alive. 

Happy Saturday!

Shin Chan

In honor of the late Yoshito Usui.

As someone else wonderfully put it;
 "Thank you for for sharing your visions with us; thank you for bringing a smile to my face when I so needed one."

Staying Organized

My best way of GTD is just having a sheet with a calendar on it so I can see things at a glance; planners only work so well for me since I often work weeks or months in advance.
(Hey that rhymed.)

I missed doing design so I threw together a few calendars for the rest of the year. (Yikes, 2010 is almost upon us!) I just needed something cute, quick and simple.
If you're dying to have bigger copies for yourself, I'll gladly email PDFs to anyone interested. :)

On another note, I'm really glad Blogger is listening to its users! Label clouds, jump links...they've done really well this year with updates.

Olive

A quick watercolor of the new kitten, Olive. :)

SomD 2

Cups

Stuff on my desk.

Studiesss

Just some fast watercolor studies. Been sick lately so I haven't done much but lay around and watch TV.




Got a new project idea lined up...

MyMoth

Moth Fanart for Shay.
Experimenting in Illustrator.


Been in a bit of a rut; the last couple of weeks have been messy. Lots of family in town and painting walls and moving. Today I'm going up north to visit family for the weekend. I'm bringing my paints with me so hopefully I can get some plein air paintings done and just unwind a bit before the school rush begins again.
:)

New Toy

Winsor and Newton are my homeboys.
Paints are like shoes for crazy bored women, you can never have too many.