Hmmmm, here is...

 

 

........Something that's in the works.  Now what fabric to use?

Mollie Makes Birds

 

So my family and I made it through Hurrican Sandy OK, we didn't lose power or anything.

Being stuck inside all day gives you time to work on projects.  One of my projects is to design a bird fabric for Spoonflower's fabric of the week.  The theme is birds or flight and the winner gets their fabric on Mollie Makes a cool British blog/magazine. 

 

 

Rough sketches of whimsical birds.

 

The contest is palette restricted which means my design can only use these four colors chosen by Spoonflower or Mollie Makes or both.  I like these choices, they're cheerful and soft.

 

 

 

Some who don't mind a Wet Monday

We've had some tiny visitors on our driveway lately.  I'd have taken a picture of them but they are SO small that you'd be wondering why I've posted a pic of spilled birdseed.  K asked me to draw her a picture of them but ended up drawing her own.  I like her pic better because her snails are holding hands and there's a rainbow in it.  It's all about the details. 

 

Speaking of details, it's time for Halloween Costume time again.  K's new favorite cartoon is Invader Zim (which is not on any longer but thanks to Netflix a whole new generation of kids can enjoy its quirky humor and ask their moms to make them a themed costume) and her favorite character on that show is is GIR.

There are two versions of GIR, one as a silver-ish robot with blue eyes, the second is when he wears a green zip-up dog costume.  Unable to decide which she liked better, K asked me to design and make a costume that was both. Above is part 1.  Below is what I'm working on.

 

 This is ambitious I know as the only costumes I've seen are ones that are of the green dog.  I could've said no but truthfully, I want to see if I can do it.  Below are some sketches and ideas for the roboty part. 

 

 

Stay tuned!

 

 

So here it is, the whole GIR costume all together.  I should have had her turn sideways so the dog-suit hood was visible but my camera was dying (of course.)  There was also a large disagreement as to whether GIR should have hair sticking out of the bottom of his head.

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Right, so back to...

So, my Person-A-Day project. It's not going to be everyday, to be honest. Mostly I do them on the weekend so maybe it should be 4-people-or-so-per-weekend but that's not as catchy. So anyway-- here they are, some drawn individuals doing whatnot.

Lately, my oldest and I have been heavily into Dr. Who. This is my sad attempt at The Doctor and my not too bad attempt at R watching TV.

Letter Doodles

There's an 'N' in the works too...

For those of you who might want an entire set of paisley letters.

Graffiti

I've had to travel through NYC lately and I can't help but be impressed with the graffiti I've seen despite the fact that it's defacement and illegal.  It's got such good flow and rythm to it.  Want to see how your name might look in groovy swirling letters but don't want to risk being arrested for destruction of public property?  Check out the virtual Graffiti Generator it's

!

Hippity Hoppity...

Guess who's coming soon!?

Doodle Monday

This is the start of....something. 

Let it Snow!

For everybody Christmas is a crazy busy time.  Shopping, decorating, cards, crafting special gifts and the list goes on.  I'd say I'm about half done which is good for me.  But the one thing that's been cramping my style is the COLD.  Today it was 13 degrees BRRRRR!  I say there ought to be a law that if it's going to be that cold it ought to snow.  Here's some sketchbook snow for you to look at.  Happy Holidays!

Wordless Thursday

...

The Fattybat

Halloween is going to be here soon!

A Day Late

for a wordless Wednesday and oops I'm writing something anyway.  Happy Thursday :D

Artist's Block Remedy

Sometimes you start a sketch with something in mind, then it turns into something else.  Eventually you turn the page on your sketchbook and forget it entirely.  Then, you happen across it again (after a day of drawing stuff that looks like crud) and begin to think it has possiblitlies.  This is one of my more successful ways of dealing with artist's block.  Go back and look at something I've abandoned and see if it might fly.

And it might.

Pick-a-Pot o' Paisley

Am thinking that this might make a nice card or, if I cut out the flower pot etc. in Photoshop, a good mirror repeat.  I have a whole stack of things that need to be colored but just can't seem to get around to doing it.

Buncha weird circle things

As a whole it's not a good composition.  But it has separate elements that could be promising.  Again, I made the attempt to use colors I don't usually like (brown, tan, grey) but blue, green and purple forced their way in.

Inadvertently Inverted

Sometimes I sketch something and I don't really like it all that much.  I liked the bold lines of this and the fan-flowers but this sketch went ignored for some time.  I always thought it was too un-balanced.  It's all spiky on one side, bubble round on the other.

I've scanned most of my old notebook into my laptop.  When I'm scouting around for inspiration, I'll open one of these scans in Photoshop to see what I can do with it or what elements from it I might use.  By accident, I inverted this sketch and it looked so different--wow!  After deleting the black negative space around the drawing it looked like a stamp or a woodcut and now  I really like it.  I moved some of the smaller paisly elements around and rotated things to spread it out a bit.  I'm still fiddling with it but it's going to be a toile or batik design. 

Random Drawings

 

I save all my doodles.  Even the ones I do in margins or at work when it's slow.  This one was hiding in the side pocket of my purse.  The reason being is that once you get them home and into Photoshop, you can do all sorts of things with those random sketches.  I thought this doodle had potential. 

I just love these colors.  They remind me of sherbet or yogurt.  This particular drawing was inspired by my friend Amy Hooton who uses gold ink in a lot of her drawings.

I wonder who would live in a paisley house--besides me I mean? 

Pete -n- Repeat

Another easy way to do a repeat with a hand drawn picture is the mirror repeat.  All you need to do is copy and paste your picture, flip it vertical and join it up to the first part.  Then copy and paste the joined two and flip them horizontally.  Spoonflower already has this option in their software.  Sometimes it ends up looking odd.  This has been my experience when I've mirror-repeated designs with characters in them.  But sometimes,as is the case with ol' Minty Leafy again, it comes out fractally divine. :)

Here is another sketchbook peek.  I still miss my old sketchbook, which reached its last page about 2 months ago.  I really need to find another one like it.

Doodly Do--

My new scanner doesn't open up as wide as my husband's.  As a result, some of this drawing was chopped off.  I'm sort of reluctant to tear the page out though since it's a new sketchbook.

UPDATE:  Finally colored this in you can see it on Deviantart.