Illustration Friday: "Whisper" (With Process)

Mother Nature whispered, "It will be all right, little one."

I really wanted to do an optimistic sort of illustration this week.  This is a crow quill drawing on Canson bristol board.  The piece went through several sketches and line work practice studies, so I saved my scans and stages as I went along for a long-overdue process post.

Thumbnail sketch, approx. 2"x3"

Traced and revised from enlargement of thumbnail

Revisions in Photoshop

Digital line study over final sketch

Further work on the digital line study

Trying out a border

Final illustration

T-Shirt Report

My "Sometimes" shirt (or as my husband and I call it, "Angry Guy") t-shirt arrived from Society6!!  I can now personally report on the shirt quality.  I love it!!  I think the design looks great on it and the shirt is made of very nice, soft fabric and not too thin.  The art is printed right into the fabric instead of being a rubbery layer on top.  I didn't describe that right, but I hope you all know what I mean!

One thing I discovered the hard way is that the ladies' fitted shirts at Society6 seem to run a little on the small side.  I'd suggest any ladies who order t-shirts from there order a size up unless you like a tighter fit.

You can find the shirt at my Society6 shop here.

New Custom Pieces

Here are a few custom illustrations I've done recently.  I really love doing this kind of work!  Perhaps it's because I know that someone is going to own work I've done and enjoy it.  Perhaps it's also because so far I've been commissioned by fantastic people that allow me to have fun with my illustrations and have been a joy to work with!

My sister is a runner and I got started doing custom art through running friends of hers.  As a result, many of my new contacts have been runners too.  So these pieces feature runners and athletic events.  They are ink drawings colored with either watercolor or colored pencil.  I tend to use watercolor for smaller pieces and colored pencil for larger ones.  Some of the lettering has been obscured.

Ink with colored pencil, 7"x9"

Ink with colored pencil, 5"x7"

Ink with watercolor, 5"x7"

Ink with watercolor, 4"x6"

To see more of my custom work, please visit my Facebook page and my portfolio site.  My contact information can be found on those two sites as well.  As always, thanks for visiting and come back soon!

A Portrait of Shoes

My Mizunos

Shoes have so much life in them after we've worn them around for a while, don't they?  These are my old Mizuno running shoes.  They are old but not worn out, and very bored from lack of use lately.  I needed to do some trials and work on style anyway, so I made this shoe portrait in hopes that I might get inspired to lace them up and get out of my house!

I used ink and watercolor on Strathmore 400 series watercolor paper.

House Red With Mermaid

While I was waking up one day last week I imagined an image of a tiny mermaid, bored in a glass of wine.  It seemed like it could be kind of fun to draw, so instead of forgetting about it as I usually do with that kind of thing, I made this illustration.  I like it!  It's a little weird, but so what.  It could happen, right?

It's a crow quill pen and ink drawing on Strathmore Mixed Media paper/board.  I find that board takes ink very nicely.  Colored pencil looks good on it too, as does watercolor.  I wouldn't use it to do a watercolor painting or anything where the watercolor should be the focus.  But it works great for coloring an ink drawing with watercolor, where I want the ink drawing to be the focus!  It even allows me to rework a watercolor area a little bit without it looking "scrubby".  One bad thing about it is that it's too thick for me to trace a sketch onto it using a light table.  I have to trace with a transfer paper.  All in all it's a really nice, useful, great-looking paper.  Give it a try sometime!

"House Red With Mermaid" is available in my Society6 shop.