Red Vines!

It's been a pretty hot and fun filled weekend where I am and my brain is frazzled, all I wanted to make was some StarKidPotter fan art...don't know what that is? Well, the short answer is they a musical production company that makes some of the most imaginative, funny and heart felt plays I've seen.  I first got into watching them because I found A Very Potter Musical, the picture I drew today illustrates a scene in A Very Potter Sequel (which is actually a prequel I suppose, there are time turners involved).  Warning, do not watch these plays expecting them to follow the books, these are parodies, they aren't supposed to be accurate.  In some ways these plays touch on emotions behind the characters even more than the books did...sure much of it is made up (Draco didn't really wear diapers...or did he?) but there are many truly touching moments.
Alright, onto my drawing.  I'm going to do some more work on it in photoshop but for now this is a pencil and colored pencil version:

Digital Update- 6/17/2011

Rosie Cotton Paper Doll: Scourging of the Shire

I had to do it, I completed the Rosie Cotton set by adding an outfit: "The Scourging of the Shire"

Those of you who read the books and saw the movies may have noticed this was missing, this was a very powerful moment in the book for me and I felt the loss of it's impact.  By the way Sauroman was supposed to die here, during the Scourge, at Bag End, which for me was very poetic and fitting.  All in all I did love the movies even though there where plenty of other omissions I felt keenly (Bombodil and Glorfindel anyone?) and I'm looking forward to the movie rendition of the Hobbit.

Dream Big

Tuesday I was inspired by an advertisement I saw from one of my favorite companies TOMS shoes.  They are a wonderful company that donates a pair of shoes for ever pair sold,  the image has a model wearing their shoes sitting on a "skateboard" that is drawn, with a drawn background.  I love how bold, graphic and whimsical it is.  I have always loved drawings with photographic backgrounds but this twist of a very photo realistic figure in a cartoony, basic, bold background really appealed to me.  So, After some looking around on DeviantArt I found a little ballerina and wanted to illustrate a childhood fantasy many little girls have:

You can fly...

I pretty much never use oil paint...except when I do ;p.  So, the positives to oil paint is how well it blends, the things I don't like is how thick it is (need to get some thinner) how hard it is to clean (need turpentine) and how long it takes to dry (linseed oil?)  Which is why I had to take picture of the painting instead of scanning it.  It's pretty small...about 6x8 and I made it to hang over my desk for inspiration.  I'm quite proud of the lettering, it's nowhere near perfect, but for freehand I think it's pretty damn good.

More Outfits for Rosie

As promised I've made 3 more outfits to add to Rosie's Party Dress, I've made her bar wench dress, her wedding dress and her mommy dress.  However, I forgot to make her a stand...woopsy doopsy.  That will come eventually but right now I need some lunch.

Rosie Cotton Paper Doll

   Last night I had one of those ideas hit me out of nowhere, you know the kind...the ones that will not let you fall asleep until you write it down. Well here is my wonderful idea, a Rosie Cotton Paper Doll, its taking me a bit longer than I had hoped it would so for now here she is with her party dress, her bar wench outfit, wedding dress and mommy dress will be posted tomorrow. Oh and don't hold me to this but I think I may be making this fantasy paper doll thing into a thing.

It's a Gnomey Day...

I've been prone to cleaning and organizing fits today so I wanted to keep the artwork simple...what better than a a cute, helpful little Garden Gnome?

I'm Forever Blowing Faerie Bubbles...

Pretty bubbles in the air! This is for my friend Melissa who has an affinity for both bubbles and fairies and requested faerie bubbles last week...here's a pretty little watercolor...overlapping spheres were fun to do!

Someone's Been A Bad Girl...

The fourth Pirates of the Carribean movie just came out (haven't seen it yet) along with the accompanying video games.  Seeing all the trailers and hullabalou has it on my mind, and last night when I couldn't sleep I kept thinking about the first one, which is still my favorite, and all those spiffy undead skeleton pirates...then I tried to remember if I'd seen any female ones...nope.  Yes, I know that traditionally female pirates were incredibly rare, but they did happen sometimes and I wanted to have a bit of fun.  So, I found a fantastic reference and went with it.  I'm very pleased with the result, it's graphite and watercolor pencils on multimedia paper, and it was much fun. Enjoy!

Puff the Magic Hex Dragon

By hex I am referring to hex codes (internet color codes) not a hex casted by a witch.  While tinkering around with text colors on this blog I found myself searching for hex codes, and thought "This would be a good thing to put on my desktop".  However, it seemed very few images were actually be designed to be used as a computer desktop.  Then I thought, "Hey, what if I could actually make an image out of hex codes?".  Here is the image that resulted from that:

Hear No, See No, Speak No...

I felt horrible about taking the day off yesterday, but the pollen counts are horrible where I am and I'm really allergic to pollen...so drawing happened but really kinda sucked...and I wanted to spare your eyes from that, your welcome.  However a good idea came out of all the crappy doodling yesterday and today I rendered some of the icky drawing into a pretty polished looking illustration that I think would look pretty spiffy on a mug or mousepad....hmmm, I need a new mousepad.  So, here it is a variation of the "Hear no, See no, Speak no Evil" but in Gargoyles instead of monkeys.

Pixel Dragon

About 3 years ago I used to do pixel art, lots of pixel art.  I took up knitting and just stopped doing the pixel art, not sure why, it just ceased to interest me.  So, today I decided to try a little bit of fun with pixels...I'm a little rusty but I'm pretty pleased with it.  I'm thinking of doing some game sprites...though I don't know how to program a game...hmmm.  

This image is very small because it's done in pixels, it's designed to pack detail in a small package.

May is Strawberry Month...

In honor of Strawberry Month I drew a Strawberry Fairy .  Actually I didn't set out to honor Strawberry month, I was at a complete loss for what to draw to today so after drawing crop circles for 15 minutes I decided to fall back on my old stand by, fairies.  Meanwhile I remembered an image of cupcake stuffed chocolate dipped strawberries I saw at 1FineCookie and she had mentioned May was strawberry month...and so I drew a Strawberry Fairy.  Thank goodness I didn't decide to draw a cupcake stuffed, chocolate dipped strawberry fairy.

I Could Totally Use a House Elf...

Don't get me wrong, I agree with Hermione and her S.P.E.W. efforts, equality is good...but at this moment I could really use a magical being to just make everything clean.  Without getting into details there were some issues with a septic tank over here and mopping floors with vinegar is quite time consuming.   I've also rearranged my whole living area and the reorganization is quite a task, add to that a mountain of laundry and I think magical interference is the only way everything can get done today.  So, considering all that and considering my main computer with photoshop not being accessible today, I almost didn't do a blog post today, but I've been very bad lately and want to get back on my schedule, so I popped on Deviant art's muro app and made a quick doodle of a happy house elf:

Have a Fantastic Mother's Day!

I dedicate todays art to all Mothers out there, but especially to my mother Susan, who did a great job raising me and keeping me out of trouble....I know it wasn't an easy job. ;)  Also Happy Mothers day to my Mother in Law Joyce, My Grandmothers Antonia and Elizabeth (deceased) and my husband's grandmothers Eleanor and Thelma (deceased) as well as to all the mothers I know, have a great day on Sunday!

Hanko De Mayo!

Not sure if I've mentioned this before but I am a nerdfighter which is a youtube community full of nerds who are full of awesome working to decrease world suck, this community was started by two brothers John and Hank Green.  Hank's birthday is today on Cinco di Mayo (hence the Hanko di Mayo). Hank also plays Lego Harry Potter with his wife Katherine and I enjoy watching it very much so I made some fanart for Hank and Katherine and Lego Harry Potter...I think that qualifies as fantasy art because they are Lego Hogwarts students.  I made this on Monday actually so I could print it and send it in the mail as a card on Tuesday....hope he got it in time.

From the Sketchbook:Amazon Warrior

"A is for Asrai, Z is for Zombie" the book is underway...

I've started work on making my fantasy alphabet series into a book.  Today I made the front and back covers and am currently working on descriptions for all 26 images...which turns out to be more labor intensive then I originally thought...mostly because keeping the descriptions concise and clear is quite difficult... summarizing fairies into a paragraph was quite painful, lol.  But here is a sneak peak of what the picture book will look like, I'm using a program called Book Smart and it will be published on blurb.com