A Little About the Digital Part of My Illustrations

"Midnight Mending" in Red

"Starry Stroll With a Red Umbrealla"

Yesterday was tremendously productive. I haven't had a chance to paint as much as I'd like to lately so having the opportunity to paint yesterday was absolutely dreamy.
After painting, I took high resolution photos of my paintings, converted them to black and white, so I could color them using photoshop. Sometimes you can scan paintings, and I do on occassion scan, however, I use highly textured, heavy weight arches 300 lb watercolor paper and the camera pics up the detail wonderfully but somehow doesn't pick up too much of the texture of the paper. This way the whites are more white and I don't have to fiddle with the brightness of the image too much.
After taking the pictures and uploading them to my computer I added small punches of color to them. I'm in love with the look of black and red together. I will definitely be doing more of this style soon. Perhaps even tonight! "Midnight Mending" was just the first of a series of three illustrations featuring a handmade theme so I'm axious to finish out the series.
I'm also thinking about making some gift tags out of the Midnight Mending Print? It's funny how you make something and you latch on to it.

A Little Watercolor

I decided to pull out the watercolors today! I love what painting with a limited pallet can produce. In the two paintings above only blue and brown were used. A little pen and charcoal were added at the end.

This next one makes me think of how much love goes into a handmade gift. I think there's a tremendous amount of joy that goes into making something for someone you love. It's like the love is stitched, glued, painted or even baked right into the item. It also make me think of my mom. She sews. It's her passion. She stays up late at night and often her stitching companions are her cats. The next day she'll tell me all about her little disputes with the cats as she attempted to make progress with her sewing project.

All are available in my shop: www.GumballGrenade.com

Even Barbed Needles Can Make the Softest Things

I made a new creation over the past couple of days. It started with a desire to sculpt out my little cat character, Bethezda. She's cute, but also a bit grumpy at times. I couldn't decide what materials I wanted to make her from, paperclay...maybe, polymer clay...not quite, PMC silver clay...tempting! Anyway, I've been wanting to try out needle felting for a while now and was feeling a bit crafty so I gave it a whirl.

If your unfamiliar with needle felting it basically involves repetitively stabbing at a soft little tuft of wool roving until you tangled all of the fibers together get a desired shape. Warning: if you go too fast you will stab your finger. It's not so much the punching of the needle into your finger that hurts, but the pulling it out! It's a barbed needle with several tiny little razor ridges. Ouch! Did it twice, don't plan on doing it again.

Here are the final results. Cute little Bethezda, with a little satin stitched embroidered heart, wearing her finest party hat (that I made of paper, ribbon, and another tuft of wool), sits atop a little treasure box (that I painted, distressed, and sealed with acrylics). Of course a little treasure of some miniature sized prints (embossed corners, rivets, and bit of ribbon) of Bethezda tuck neatly inside the box!

She was quite fun to make. I think I'll make another!

Shop Update! Halloween Goodies!

Yay! I've been waiting to get these! They finally came yesterday and now I've packaged them into little Pin Packs! They are now available in my etsy shop.

I'm a finalist!!! In Etsy's Handmade Kids Challenge!

Thanks all! I'm so excited! If you feel inclined, and I hope you do, then vote for me! You can find my work here: (It's the "To Sail With a Whale" print!"

http://www.etsy.com/voter_list.php?room_id=20

The Foundling of Fox Tail Forest

This weekend was so busy! However, I did accomplish getting several illustrations finalized and listed in my etsy shop: GumballGrenade. You can see from the photos that the pictures tell a bit of a story that goes a bit like this, although this is the extremely rough and abbreviated version....

The Foundling of Fox Tail Forest

The story goes a bit like this...a star is abandoned in Fox Tail Forest. It's discovered and bought to a girl from the neighboring village...Who could the star/wish belong to? So she takes the star to Mr. Narwhale. He would surely know.

Well Mr. Narwhale isn't quite sure, but he is very excited to help this little one on her search for the owner of this star/wish. Mr. Narwhale tell the girl to tie the star to his horn and they will take to the sea and begin "a most adventurous journey."

Away they sail and on their journey they discover that the foundling star belongs to everyone. Back up to the sky the foundling star goes. "You Belong Here!" she tells the star.

All of the pictures above are listed in my shop and available as prints. I hope to have a mini book available soon.

Custom Work

The Company She Keeps

The Company She Keeps

"Little witch, little witch,
What company you keep!
Three prowl about while all others sleep.
Ghosts and ghouls await your play.
Then passes another year
Waiting for that special day."

Can I just tell you how much I love Halloween! I love nearly everything about autumn, from pumpkin spice, to apple cider, to dusty corn fields, but I find my self anxious for that one special evening where ghosts and ghouls come out to play! So here is my latest illustration that celebrates one of my favorite time of year! Prints of this illustration are available in my Etsy shop: GumballGrenade. Today I'll be working on painting her out onto canvas!

A Tale of Two Sisters

I painted some angels today. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to the folk art, primitive, angel motif lately but I am. So I've gone with it. One of my little ones namesake comes from the root word seraphim (meaning: angel). So here are the two sisters:

The Timid Magician Continued...

I just couldn't put this illustration down. She just needed to be painted out onto canvas. So I did just that today! Now she's a sweet little 5 x 7 inch acrylic on canvas!

The Timid Magician

Let’s play a little game of magic and pretend.
It’s a performance I’ve practiced again and again.
If you have imagination and patience to lend,
I promise you’ll be surprised in the end!

I was feeling a little inspired by vintage illustrations today. I picked up my pen and started sketching. Here's the progression:

as always available in my shop: GumballGrenade

Paintings in Progress: Halloween and Space

I think it's a misconception that girls aren't interested in space. One of my favorite experiences as a child was going to the planetarium. My dad also helped with this interest by setting up several large telescopes in our back yard and letting my brother and I quiz him about what
wonders were out in space.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun posting my last progression of paintings so here are a couple more that I've been working on this week that I'd thought I'd share. The photos aren't the best because I'm a little rushed on time! My apologies!

The Wild Kingdom

This is certainly no professional camera work. The person in the background snickering is me.

A Nightime Love - Painting in Progress

This is just a quick post to share a work in progress. You can see how the painting evolves. I apologize for starting a few steps into it but it's fun to share either way!








Yay! Almost done...but not quite!

Here we go... this is the final version. The canvas size measures 16 x 20 inches. I probably won't be selling it due to it not being a gallery wrapped canvas. But it was fun to paint and experiment with some new techniques!



Oh wait...it's not done yet. I still have one more thing to do to it.

I'm so in love!

So I promised to share a little about an artist that I simply adore! His name is Fernando Coellar and his paintings are just so very, very, lovely. They are absolutely something to cherish and gobble up with the eye! Here is a link to his portfolio online, but first, and even better, is this link to one of his gallery openings...it's amazing how he puts the viewer into the place of the child! So clever! I love it! The cotton candy, red headed girl, and the masks are my favorites! Enjoy!

http://www.fernandocoellar.com/fcfc.html