Woodland Circles Update

I couldn't resist taking a picture of some of the new log slice paintings I've been working on recently. I wanted them all to be a surprise for my upcoming holiday craft shows, but I'm just too darn excited about how they're all turning out! Don't worry - there will still be a reason to visit my booth at the holiday shows this winter, this isn't all of my new creations, so some surprises are still in store for this craft show season!

Leopold Racoon

I've been having an excessive amount of fun the last two days painting away on some more of my salvaged wood circles. I have tons of new woodland paintings ready for the upcoming (but still fairly far away) holiday season.

My new absolute favorite woodland critter painting is this cute little raccoon whom I have named Leopold. I normally think raccoons are pests, but this guy is adorable, and he's sorry about eating out of your trash can last night. I am never, ever selling him. However, I did paint Leopold 2 in his honor, and he (along with maybe Leopold 3 and 4?) will be hitting my Etsy shelves and some holiday craft shows in the near future. So look out world - I hope you can handle this gigantic amount of cute!

Find Your Voice Week Five

In this week's lesson I explored my "design style." The all encompassing style component of my stories and art. The end-of-lesson prompt I chose encouraged me to find a project that has a style I really admire and would like to emulate. I was then to create a project of my own using the admired project as inspiration. When completed, I was to sit back and take a look at similarities and differences between the projects.

Lately I've been in love with the minimalistic and geometric trends that I've been seeing on Etsy, in home improvement magazines and in clothing (think color block clothes). I kind of use minimalism in some of my stories and creations, but it's typically in a cute and cartoon-like fashion, and not in the sleek, modern way that I so admire. I would love to develop some minimalistic drawings of my own, but those clean, simple designs are harder to create than you would think!

There are a lot of big brands that use minimalism in their design. One of my favorites is Lacoste. You know, that iconic little alligator.

 

So, I decided to try to draw my own minimalistic animal. One of my favorite animals right now is the fox, so I decided to put my focus on foxes. I first drew a fox like I normally would, all fuzzy and full of motion. Then I slowly whittled away at it until I reached a point at which I no longer felt comfortable whittling any more. I tried to add some geometric elements in as well.

Here is the evolution of my minimalistic fox. It was hard for me to ignore all the little furry lines I wanted to add in, but in the end, I managed. I like how the little guy turned out, I even like the triangular patterns I added to the tip of his tail and legs (I was unsure of them at first). He still definitely seems a little more "free" than the Lacoste gator, but I guess that makes the drawing a little more "me".

Now I'm off to use my new minimalistic fox drawing to make a secret, surprise project for a friend! More info will be posted later.

UPDATED 7/29/13:

Here is the project I created using my drawing. It's a little wooden pendant that I hand cut and painted and then added to a necklace for my friend, Lauren, for her birthday.

Watercolor Submarine Branding

I've been spending a considerable amount of time working on branding for both of my shops. I finally got to a point where I felt like I could take some fancy branding photos of my Watercolor Submarine merchandise. It's easy to get carried away with finding pretty ways to package and present my artwork, because it's way too fun! I've drawn several different logos for stickers, but I think I like the actual submarine the best, which is what I've shown in the following picture. If you've somehow landed on my blog page and have a couple of spare seconds I'd love to know what you think, your comments are more than welcome!

 

The character of the day today comes from Tangents: The fox in the snow.

This fox is thankful for the snow. He can't wait to sink his paws into the fluffy stuff and build a family of snowfoxes.