Illustration Friday - Lonely

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "lonely." The mermaid idea just came to me.  Maybe she's the last of the mermaids and wishes she could join the people on the boat :0) 


With some help from commenters, I realized that I sometimes have a tendency to include too much of the background scene which takes away from the focus of the painting. 


So here is a more tightly cropped version of the painting:

Which do you prefer? 


Also, this is my 100th post! I feel great to have made it to 100, and I am still really enjoying blogging and the community of artists I have "met" through the blog. Thanks for reading! 

Illustration Friday - Carry

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "carry."  I had a bunch of thoughts for this one,  I went with the teacups because stacked teacups always seem beautiful to me. The bird idea came to me as I was painting. 

I did two things with this digital painting that make me uncomfortable, I included a person and went with a more "naive" style than a realistic one. I also played around a bit more with my digital techniques. 

Overall I like the whimsical quality of this one, and I'm glad I went outside of my own boundaries. I just have to remember that I'm not going to get better without practicing drawing people (duh!) and I should get over it not looking "perfect." 

Thanks for visiting, I hope you're having a great week! 

Illustration Friday - Suspend

Haha I'm finally back in action for Illustration Friday! This week's topic is "suspend." I was brainstorming hanging things and ended up thinking of a yoyo. 

It was also good opportunity to practice painting a hand/skin tones. I think this is the second time ever I've attempted skin in watercolor and it was just as hard as I thought it was going to be.

 I think my lighter color is okay but the darker area looks a little too brown. Anyone have tips for getting a good skin tone? 

Have a great Thursday! 

Illustration Friday - Shiny

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "shiny." I thought of shiny hair and blowing bubbles so I decided to incorporate both ideas. 


This was my first time really attempting to do hair since I've gotten better at painting. It wasn't as hard as I built it up in my mind.  


On the other hand, the bubbles were a lot harder to capture than I thought they would be. I did many practice ones before doing them for real and they still don't quite have that shiny feeling I wanted. I think it might be something that is easier to capture in another medium, like digital. 


At the end of the day, I'm pretty darn happy with this one. I hope you like it too! 

Illustration Friday - Hurry!

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "Hurry!" 


I thought of watching an hourglass and hoping that the time would go faster. Sometimes the things you want in life are slow in coming to you (jobs, promotions, love, etc) and you just wanna yell hurry up all ready :0) 


I hope you can see that idea in the illustration. 


Have a great one! 

Illustration Friday - Faded

This weeks Illustration Friday topic is "faded."

My first thought when I thought of faded was ombré (cause I like it so much) and because today's my birthday I decided to paint myself an ombré cake. Here are some instructions in case you'd like to actually bake one.

I'm off to enjoy the day, have a good one!

Illustration Friday - Sight

This weeks Illustration Friday topic is "Sight." After thinking of many different things I somehow ended up on a bit of a tangent with this magnifying glass. 

It helps Louise's eye sight when she reads old love letters. This one is from Carl, confessing his love for her. I had fun coming up with a story and writing the letter. I started out knowing that I wanted the "I love you" to be in the magnified area. 

I'm posting a bit late in the day because I got lost in the painting, forgot to eat lunch till 2pm (normally I barely make it to noon), and spent way way too much time on the stamp part of the painting. 

I typically spend too much time on minute details that aren't very important to the picture over all and I need to work on that. 

But the beauty of digital work is that I can zoom in and give you a close up look at the stamp: 

What do you think? Do you spend too much time on the details like me? 

Illustration Friday - Kernel

This weeks Illustration Friday topic is "kernel." This topic was super hard for me. Apparently a peach pit has a kernel inside it, so that's what I went with. 


This was one of those paintings where nothing seemed to go how I wanted it to from the sketch to the final. But I'm happy that I was able to paint a little bit looser, so I'm sharing it even though I'm not super pleased with it. 


Anyone else have trouble with kernel? Here's hoping next week's topic inspires me more :0) 

Illustration Friday - Jump

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "jump." After thinking about it for awhile this image came to mind. I think Goldie wants a nice summer beverage :0)  


I hope you like it! 

Illustration Friday - Heights

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "heights." I had a ton of random ideas in my head but didn't feel like most of them really communicated what I think of when I think of heights. 


At the last minute this morning this idea popped into my head of that second before you drop on a roller coaster. I am not a big fan of heights or roller coasters, so I tried to make the drop look extra terrifying (that's a bird flying below haha) to convey how I feel about the subject. 


I started sketching on my Wacom, thinking that I would do a rough sketch and then paint over it but I liked the look of it and kept going with the sketch. I added the paper background (it has schematics on it!) in to give it some more interest/texture. 


I hope you like it :0)

Illustration Friday - Puzzled

It's my first digital Illustration Friday! I had a hard time thinking of a concept for "puzzled" until I tried to park my car the other day, and had to decipher three different parking signs before figuring out it was safe to park there overnight. 

This is still a work in progress. I ran out of time and had to throw a background in there, but I think it would look nice to put in something less abstract. What do you think? 

Illustration Friday - Vocal

This weeks Illustration Friday topic is Vocal. All I could think about is how my cat Lucy is very vocal when she wants something :0) 


I painted the cat, bowl, and the shadows and realized I might lose some of the fur texture when I painted in the background, so instead I scanned the image in and added the background in Photoshop. I think it looks kind of neat. I might go back and paint the background on the original, we'll see. 

Illustration Friday - Return

This is my entry for this weeks Illustration Friday topic "Return." I had a hard time with this topic, there's just too many options! I ended up thinking of the phrase "return to your roots," and this is what came to mind.

Now that I'm done with it I'm thinking I should have added some grass on the ground. I think there's too much brown. What do you think?

Next week my goal is to have my illustration done before Thursday!

Illustration Friday - Swamp

Here's what I came up with for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "Swamp." I actually ended up watching the show Swamp People, which I had never seen before, to get some inspiration. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be! 

Swamp People is on the History channel and is a reality show that follows gator hunters through the swamp. It's fascinating, I promise!

So after all that alligator hunting I watched, I had to paint an alligator. Watch out, he's coming to get you :0)

Illustration Friday - Shades

I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to paint for this weeks Illustration Friday* topic, "shades." 


So here's what I came up with, shades of nail polish! 


On a side note, I love nail polish color names. OPI usually has the best "and this little piggy" or "over the taupe" are some of the clever names they've come up with lately. 


Do you have a favorite nail polish color name? 


* For readers who don't know, Illustration Friday is a website that gives a topic every week that artists illustrate, and then link on the website so we can see each others work. The illustration must be posted before Friday, hence the name. 

Illustration Friday - Yield

Who do you think will yield? I think the ant will let the ladybug go ahead, because he looks like a gentleman haha. 

I spent way too much time on the bugs without leaving much time to do the leaf, so I might go back and add smaller veins later. If I do I'll post an update. 

Illustration Friday - Intention

Rachel had good intentions when she made a traditional English trifle for Thanksgiving, but the dish didn't turn out as planned. 

Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday, I actually finished early this week!

The idea came from the tv show Friends, and If you haven't seen that episode you really should! Here's a clip on Youtube.

Illustration Friday - Capable

I didn't give myself much time to do this week's Illustration Friday, so this one is more of a messy sketch and less of a "painting."

I had trouble coming up with something said said "capable" to me, but one of the things that came to me is how a caterpillar is capable of growing into a beautiful butterfly. Which I think is kind of an inspiring message.

What would you have chosen to (or did you) illustrate for capable?

Illustration Friday - Fluid

Here's my painting for this weeks Illustration Friday topic of "fluid." When I thought about the topic I thought it would be a great week to practice capturing flowing water (which I find to be a challenging subject). 

Also who doesn't love a nice cup of tea?

Special thanks to my Dad who took a great pic of it when I couldn't get the scanner here to cooperate.

Popularity

This is my entry for this weeks Illustration Friday (it's my first one!). The subject was popularity, so I painted a phone ringing off the hook. Hope you like it!

And just for fun, here's the rough sketch I did before hand.