Adoption art

My friend suggested to me awhile ago to do some illustrations of families with adopted kids, here are some samples:

Illustration Friday: swarm

Sailboat on a swarm of bubbles... it might be a stretch, but I finally did some art this week!

Sketchbook

I signed up for a sketchbook project I meant to do last summer/fall, but since it had to be postmarked today I spent the last week trying to fill it when I had a minute or two. I originally thought of how awesome I would make it, but then I just had to finish it. (why do so many projects fit into that category?) Here is a link to some of the pages. The theme was "it's raining cats & dogs".

Painting in Photoshop

These images are from a project I did for a friend who made a book about her Grandpa and these illustrate funny things he would say or do:

Christmas present 2010

These are some images I did as a Christmas present for my sister-in-law who lives in Seattle:

Giraffes

Here are some more watercolors. One was a Christmas present for my cute niece. Good thing we've been to the zoo recently, I have lots of fun animal pictures to work from.

Painting Demonstration

Here is how I create a painting:

1. plan the picture, small sketches to create the composition

2. nice sketch on arches hot press watercolor paper and sometimes I pick the colors I'm going to focus on

3. get the paper wet in the sink and flatten it out on a board. Get paper tape wet and seal the edges of the paper (this creates a flat painting in the end)

4. paint the background first. Here I painted the whole area with just water, and then added a color I had mixed a lot of:
I did the top background, then added another layer to the bottom for the floor area:
You can see on the sides where I test the colors I mixed before I paint them:


After it's painted I ink the outlines with a nib pen and acrylic ink:
finished:
scanned & cropped: