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.

Illustration Friday: "Wings"

My art tools this week were black Sharpie pen and low-bleed paper.  I used Photoshop to clean things up a little and add/change the color.  I confess that I've been following my own advice, as illustrated above, WAY too much lately!

This art is available as an art print, pillow, t-shirt and more in my shop here.

First Impressions of Online Selling

Hi everyone!  I'm still a newbie to online sales but I want to take a minute to do two things in this post.  

First, I'd like to thank all the people who have been following me, supporting, sharing and promoting my work, visiting this blog.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Thank you as well to my family and other customers who have bought products featuring my art.  

"A Little Crooked" iPhone case / Society6

Secondly, I want to give a little report about my first few months as an online seller.  As of now, I have a shop at Society6 and one design in the marketplace at CafePress.  I'm happy to report that so far the products have been delivered successfully and that my customers are happy with them!  I ordered prints from Society6 myself as a test and thought the quality was very good.  One of my biggest worries about selling designs through vendors online was that after people would order something with my art on it that the item would look bad or be of bad quality.  So far that has not happened!  I have not earned enough yet to be paid by CafePress but payments from Society6 have had no problems.

"Kisses from Fannie Finn" iPhone case / Society6

My sales have been slower than I'd hoped but I really had no idea what to expect when I started so I was very happy to make any sales at all! Things have been picking up a little;  I've signed up on Pinterest, Wanelo and WeHeartIt as well as starting a Tumblr blog to increase my exposure. I started an art page on Facebook as well.  Please visit me on any or all! It's too early for me to get a feel for whether any of those sites are working for me vs. how much time they will take to maintain, but for now I'll let them play out for a while and see what happens.

"Holiday Curls" t-shirt / Society6

Through another artist I did discover one of my images had been stolen, was being used on an iPhone case and was being sold from an online shop.  The product was taken out of the shop after I contacted the seller so that incident had a satisfactory ending.  I will be searching and keeping my eyes open for the next time.  I appreciate that an online friend noticed my work and reported it to me;  I send emails now to others when I recognize the artist and suspect an image theft.

"Sometimes Angry Mug" / CafePress

The products in the photos I've posted here look good, don't they?  I'm excited to continue selling online.  It really feels great to find out that someone has chosen something because it has my art on it and has spent money to buy it.  It inspires me to keep creating!  Thanks again for supporting my work and for the visits and support of this blog as well. Cheers!

Illustration Friday: "Ocean"

This week gave me a chance to draw from Greek mythology, which I love to do!  Here's Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, riding on a charging hippocamp.  The original drawing was pen and ink on smooth paper.  I was experimenting with different line weights to create different tones without using crosshatching.  Then I colorized it and added the background in Photoshop.

"Poseidon" is available as an art print and more in my shop here.