Saturday, November 17, 2012

It's been a while

Life has been busy busy busy since right after Halloween.  I had a cousin's mission home coming and my brother's wedding which resulted in family being in town.  Thing's have slowed down a little bit for the time being... But it doesn't look like it'll last long. Anyways, here's a quick sketch I did the other night.  


Thursday, October 18, 2012

Happy Halloween

Here's some little Halloween Characters I made a couple months back for a mock scrapbook collection.  Maybe I'll get around to posting the rest later.  And yes I stole the witches outfit for my banner...




Friday, October 12, 2012

More Art Time Fun!


Some time in the last week I decided that I wanted to get back into practicing watercolors.  I found this beautiful picture of a cheetah with awesome purples in the shadows on Google image search and couldn't resist.  Plus orange and purple has to be one of my favorite color combinations which probably has something to do with the whole being a redhead thing.  I took the time to draw out the cheetah which took a lot longer than I expected... Well in reality the animal itself went down quite quickly but I was silly enough to draw in each of the spots which I ended up loosing a lot of once I started water coloring.  Pardon the sloppiness of this drawing, primarily in the shading.  It was a rough drawing plus I have a fairly short attention span and was just anxious to start painting.  


I really surprised myself with this one.  I really was expecting this to be a bit of a mess since I don't really feel like I completely understand how to use the medium.  I used "maskit" to preserve my white areas and I was extremely happy with the result.  I have never used it before and I definitely learned a lot in the process.  I decided to add color to the cheetah using water color and then to use india ink for the spots.  I got a little overly confident after coloring the cheetah and destroyed the background... So just ignore the hideous background...

I couldn't handle the background and am a little scared to give it a go again so I doctored it up a tiny bit in photoshop... I think this is a little bit more inline for the value I was planning to achieve.


Monday, October 8, 2012

Wood Letter Crafts

Here's some crafting projects I've been working on as of late...





Thursday, September 6, 2012

LDS Relief Society Logo

I was recently worked on a project where I made some decorations for a relief society room... It was a lot of fun and I was pretty happy with the outcome.  I was a little frazzled with the move and all so I forgot to get some pictures.  I'm really bummed I didn't.  I ended up making a burlap "welcome" banner that turned out super cute!  While I was working on it I was surprized that I couldn't find a high resolution image of the Relief Society Logo... So I went a head and got one together.  You should be able to open them and save them at their original size... These are approximately 12" x 12" but if you need something larger or a different color email me.  Please notice the usage policy at the bottom of the post.

Note:  These are vector .png files so if you save it as a .png you should be able to size them indefinitely without any pixelation or graininess.

Original Colors of Seal

Black

Yellow


Blue


Actual Blue of Original Seal
 

Brown

These do not have a background color to them so if you were to print on colored paper it would look like this.

Just the "RS"

My husband had an old shirt that needed to be chucked but he really liked the design on it.  BYU has updated their logo thing and they don't sell this design anymore. So I scanned the shirt and threw together a vector image of the logo for us to have on hand.  When I finally get my Silhouette made I'll try making some stuff with it! 
 here's the shirt
 my copied design
  


 **NOTE!!  These cannot be used for retail purposes or anything unrelated to LDS Church activities... Also, please reference the LDS Church Handbook on proper usage policies for any and all church designs, emblems, fonts, and logos.**

LDS Handbook
http://www.lds.org/handbook/handbook-2-administering-the-church/selected-church-policies

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Toast's Win a Poster Giveaway!

One of my friend's from school just did his BFA Show and I'm bummed I wasn't able to make it.  He's pretty talented and very dedicated.  I've always been impressed by his willingness to hand ink work before he works it digitally. Definitely one of the most creative people I know... He's got some of his work up on his blog so you should check it out.  Plus, he's giving away a free poster which makes it even better!

Monday, August 6, 2012

I'm domestic

For those that know me well they're probably aware that crafting is pretty high up there on my list of favorite things to do.  It probably all stems back to my childhood.  My mom is really big into crafting and sewing and she got me started young.  I remember "sewing" some dresses for my American Girl doll in 4th grade for a project and getting some much praise from my teacher.  In reality my mom probably did most of the work and I just watched but that was kinda the beginning of the hobby for me.

Like two years ago I had bought some fabric and decided that I was going to cover travel cases for baby wipe holders to give to friends when they had babies.  I finally had time last summer while I was cooped up in a hotel room waiting for my husband to get done with his internship.  I had a lot of fun working on them and periodically throw one together when I get the itch to craft.  Here's a couple that I've worked on.  I threw them up on Etsy so when I get the "Oh! You should sell these!" comment I can say that I've tried.  I'm pretty proud of my photography work on these too.  I don't really have any time behind the camera so I was pretty happy with how they turned out.






 If you're interested check out my shop  http://www.etsy.com/shop/dwdecorative?ref=si_shop



Saturday, August 4, 2012

Doing what I can...

I redid this drawing with watercolor and I was a lot happier with the outcome.  I'm slowly understanding how watercolors really work.  Life's been a little busy the last couple of weeks so I haven't been able to get as much art related stuff done.  I have finished sewing a couple skirts which hopefully I'll get around to posting a picture of.  We're moving next week so I'll be going a little crazy with all of that business so hopefully I'll be able to have some art time this week.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Turtle Turtle!

This is just a fun little drawing I did.  I was in the mood to draw a turtle.  

Watercolor!

I've always struggled with feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem... My feelings about my ability to draw and paint are no different.  School was really hard at times and I seriously considering quitting several times.  There was a lot of really talents kids that were in classes with me so it made it really hard to feel comfortable showing my face some days.  Having a predetermined mindset that your work is awful doesn't really help you to get anywhere so it's been something that I've had to fight and try to overcome.  When I'm not working or in school I really have to fight to get things done.  I'm extremely lucky to have my husband around who doesn't by into this whole idea that everything I do is worthless.  He has a lot of patience and really encourages me to keep going and that my efforts are worthwhile.  It's completely different when you have someone to report to and when you don't.  It's really easy to just become complacent and let your latest and greatest achievement be enough.  I guess that's my real downfall.  I look at things like my Ryan Seacrest caricature and think why I didn't think I could ever do something that good and just kinda check out.  I spent the first few weeks of summer with that attitude.   I'm learning to have to overcome my self doubt and thinking errors and trying to continue to progress in my artistic abilities.

Since I'm lucky enough to take the summer off I'm trying to learn watercolor.  Up until this point I haven't done watercolor.  (Well I'll be honest I tried it when I was in like 4th grade and that one experience in an after school community center class turned me off to art until my freshmen year of college.)  It's been quite the experience watching tutorials and just trying to learn how the paint works.  It's a completely different approach then how I paint with oil and acrylic so it's been quite the experience.  Here some work I'd just been playing around with... remember I'm just trying to learn how to use the paint so they're not perfect.




While in college I was introduced into Stina Perrson (http://www.stinapersson.com/portfolio/watercolour/) and she's amazing.  If you're not familar with her you should be! Right now.  Her work is beautiful and I've been having a lot of fun trying to replicate her work. 


Fashion Drawings

Right before I graduated I took this amazing class that really encouraged experimentation.  Sometimes in classes you just have to do what you have to do to get the assignment done and you don't get to try new things.  This class was a huge turning point for me.  It really helped me to step back and embrace what I naturally do and I how I naturally draw.  I was shocked to see the improvement I made and was really happy with a lot of my end results.  One of the units I enjoyed the most was the fashion illustration unit.  I'm trying to keep up with my abilities and stuff so I've been doing some fashion drawing and these are a couple of the ones I like.  It's funny how much you can love something while you're working on it and then the next time you look at it you hate it.  

 

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

I've always wanted a miniature unicorn

This is a fun little piece I worked on.  It was created primarily in Illustrator and was a lot of fun to put together. I just love drawing so much and this is one of those pieces where I was so in love with drawing that it was hard to take it any further.


Saturday, April 21, 2012

Lets just say Ryan Seacrest isn't my favorite person ever...

This is the finished piece for the Ryan Seacrest assignment I was working on.  Over all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Any time I get to paint a face I'm pretty happy.  Hopefully everyone else enjoys it as much as  I do.  


Head studies


If it were up to me I'd spend the rest of my life painting people.  It's amazing to see someone come to life through  paint.  As I studied portrait painting I was shocked to see the diversity of color that exists in skin tones and to see how different everyone is.  These are 2 ink washes that I did a little while back.



More Sketches


Just some more sketches on toned paper... 













Still Life


This is an old drawing I did in school.  It was my first time taking a drawing class and I was so intimidated by the pure talent in that room.  It was a great class though I was so happy with my end result and didn't really believe that I could do something that well.  Makes me wish I had more time to just practice technique...

Oddles o' Doodles


I try and keep a regular sketch book and I'm happy that it's a skill that I learned early in my art education.  It's amazing to see the huge difference in your drawings just over a couple of pages.  All in all this is just a random collection of drawings I've done over time.  Hope you enjoy. :)