The Elusive Miss Dashwood

This Spring I did an ACEO pen and ink drawing of Marianne Dashwood, a character from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (see it on this blog here).
I liked how it came out and I even printed it on the back of my newest business card.

That being done, I wanted to do an illustration of Marianne's older sister in the story, Elinor.  What I did not anticipate was that capturing Elinor Dashwood in a small portrait-type illustration would be a tricky thing for me to do!

Here's my first attempt, which was designed to be a "sister" piece to Marianne.  Play on words intended.

I like her as a piece of art, but there was more I wanted to say about Elinor than this illustration was saying.  What's going on in her life during the story isn't easy, but at the same time she's resigned to be content with her situation and make the best of it.  She's responsible and understands where she fits into society.  When it comes to emotions, Elinor doesn't show hers easily.  Elinor #1 looks too open somehow and doesn't have the hint of hidden emotions that I think a picture of Elinor Dashwood should have.  

Here's my second try.

It was fun to use so much color!  I like Elinor #2.  She looks like something silly is going on nearby and she can't get herself to join in. However, I think she looks a little younger than I intended even though her age at the beginning of Sense and Sensibility was supposed to be only 19 (source).  The elusive Miss Dashwood was proving to be a hard character to draw!  

I think I'm happiest with my third version, which at the time of this post is still in my sketchbook.

As a matter of fact, I might leave this version as a pencil sketch complete with messy lines and eraser marks.  Somehow the work-in-progress suits Elinor!

Illustration Friday: "Hybrid"

Fog

                                          The fog comes

                                          on little cat feet.

                                          It sits looking

                                          over harbor and city

                                          on silent haunches

                                          and then moves on.

                                                                    -Carl Sandburg  

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.

Illustration Friday: "Talent"

Betsy Ross, 2.5"x3.5", ink with watercolor

Betsy Ross was a talented artisan and businesswoman.  A trained upholsterer, she maintained a successful upholstery business throughout her life.  One interesting place to learn about Betsy online is at the Betsy Ross House website 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.

Illustration Friday: "Water"

"Kisses from Fannie Finn"

I should have been designing business cards today, but instead I was working on this!  I hope you like it.  It's ink and watercolor.

"Fannie Finn" is available as a print, iPhone case, pillow and more at my
Society6 shop here.

Darn naggy art pencil.

A page of male faces

Thinking about it now, I wish I'd done a Santa hat on one of these!  Pen and ink with black watercolor wash.  

And...more bunnies

What always happens to me is that I'll get an idea for an illustration, do a sketch I like, and then not be able to decide how I really want to finish it. After finishing the Illustration Friday "silent" bunny from this week I still wanted to try it a couple of different ways.  Here they are:

The first one was drawn with brush pen on paper from an old Arches watercolor block.  The paper has a lot of texture to it and the brush pen really picked that up.  I think I like this one better than the one I posted for Illustration Friday!

The black and white version was drawn on watercolor paper too because I was planning to color it.  I have a thing for black and white art though, so the color never happened.  The paper is smoother than the other one, Canson Aquarelle, and I used both the brush pen and my crow quill and ink.

Funny isn't it, how different styles of finishing a sketch can have such an effect of the feel of it?  I haven't decided if I'm done with this yet.  If I try anything else I'll post it here!

Illustration Friday: "Silent"

This week's topic made me remember the sweet, silent baby bunnies we had in our yard at the end of this summer.  They were so still that I had to put leaves and sticks next to them so I could hope to find them again in the grass!  I drew this little interpretation with pen and ink and colored it with watercolor.  My watercolor skills are a little rusty but I'll keep working on them!  The posts with bunny photos are here and here.

Added 11/17/2011:  two new versions of the bunny!  Check them out here.

Watercolor block sketchy doodles

Last night I used an old watercolor block page as a sketchbook.  I had just opened a little watercolor set ( Cotman Sketchers' Pocket Box by Winsor & Newton) and I really wanted to play around with the cute little blocks of watercolor.  I was sketching mostly with ballpoint pen so I couldn't correct anything.  Then I touched up some of the drawings with pen and ink after the watercolor dried.

You can see the little boy's head from the top picture in the bottom corner of the bottom one.  I cleaned the top sketch up to post alone because it was my favorite.  No judging the bad proportions!  Pen sketching means you just kind of....go with the flow!

Illustration Friday: "Mysterious"

This guy knows about as much about being mysterious as I do!  I used Dr. PH. Martin's liquid watercolors over pen and ink .

First digital painting!

It's about time I tried painting (not just coloring) in Photoshop, so today I did and I love it!  I didn't take the time to develop a good drawing because I just wanted to play, but what the heck?  Now there will be something to look back on if and when I improve!

My favorite things about it, at least today, are the lack of mess, the ease of changing things, and the almost instant gratification.  Nothing had to dry.  And there is no fear of messing up.  Very freeing.

Illustration Friday: "Gesture"

I've read a couple of good Regency romance novels recently (my favorite reads) so for "Gesture" I drew Regency romance mice!  I used pen and ink and watercolor.

What I've been up to: gift plates for the 136th running of the Preakness Stakes

For the second year I was proud to be asked by the Maryland Jockey Club to create gift souvenir plates for the owners of the horses entered in the 136th Preakness Stakes!  I'm sorry I haven't been posting much lately but I wanted this to remain a surprise until the presentation day so I didn't want to show anything online.  I took some pictures as I worked, which I'll share here.  I'm not a very good photographer but I hope you'll get the idea!  I loved doing this work and I hope you enjoy taking a peek at the process.

First, I like to tie the plate design to the Preakness logo.  For each year, there's a new one.  This is the 2011 logo design and a few of my sketches based on making the plate tie in with it.

Logo image source and design information

A few rough sketches in Photoshop

Final design choice.  "Triple Vision" was used for design purposes only and was not a Preakness runner.

I printed the design out a couple of times and created templates for the top graphic and the jersey and cap.  The horse's name would have a guideline only and be painted freehand.  The paints I used are Folk Art Enamels, which are acrylic paints designed to be used on glass and ceramics.

Top graphic template

After the template

The ribbons on the top graphic were created using templates as well.  The type at the bottom was painted freehand using a guideline like the one in the center area.  At the time this picture was taken I had already scraped off the guideline.  Smoothing edges and scraping off guidelines was done with an X-acto knife.

Freehand painting of the horse's name

The last step is painting the jockey's silks

Bad lighting and photography aside, this is what
the final product looked like.

The painting of these plates involved a lot of scraping and repainting.  Any time a letter looked bad or I damaged one too badly trying to perfect the edge I had to scrape it off and start over.  I found that the freehand painting of the horses' names was the hardest part of the painting because it was difficult to space the letters properly with each other and to space the name as close to center as possible.  The letters also have to be pretty close to the same size.  Due to all my "perfecting", each plate took approximately 5 hours to paint.

Here is a picture of all 14 finished plates!