Illustration Friday: "Tension"

I wish I could spin some meaning into this, but in reality it was just about procrastinating, doing a fast sketch for fun and drawing thick lines with my brush pen!  It felt great.  When I realized it would work for Illustration Friday, it was a nice little bonus!

Shirley's Tree

I recently designed this tree for a friend who needed a tree illustration for a "roots and wings"-themed event.  She wanted a line illustration;  the color was my addition after the design was done.  I do think the color adds something....a little bit of weight maybe.  But yet there's something about the line drawing that keeps bringing me back to it.  I wanted to share them here.  Any comments would be most welcome!!

(Post update 7/28/2015:  I replaced the original posted art with these photos of printouts.  I hope this will help stop it being used without permission as clip art.)

Both versions of Shirley's Tree are available in my Society6 shop here.

Custom Plates for Preakness 138

Hi everyone!  I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while but I was working on this year's souvenir plates for Preakness 138.  They are gifts for the owners whose horses are entered in the race and they aren't supposed to see the plates until the day they receive them.  But I can post now so here's a selection from the group of nine.  Orb won the Kentucky Derby and Oxbow won the Preakness.

Detail of the design.  This plate was for the horse Goldencents.

I wish the photos were better, but by the time the plates were done it was dark and I don't have a well-lighted photo area set up!  I used acrylics for use on ceramics on simple, white plates.  The edges were painted freehand with small pieces of sponge.  For the center parts I used a template so the plates would be as uniform as possible.  I designed the plate to incorporate the logo design for this year's race.