Room Decor

I really enjoy creating art that I know will go in kids' rooms. The idea of one of my creations making a child smile as they grow up seeing it on their walls makes me really happy. So, having a baby, I got a chance to decorate a room for a child that would be in my house!

We didn't need to paint when we were expecting our baby. We planned ahead when we moved in and painted the room a bright neutral green. I believe the actual color is Valley Poplar, picked out by my husband, who did a great job. Green is hard to pick, just ask my former roommate about the cheery citron green I thought I picked for our kitchen that turned out to be highlighter yellow-green (gross!). We had sort of a purple and green theme in what was the guest room but when the guest room became a baby room it needed a change.

I'm big on color schemes and themes. Usually I start with colors that I like together and build from there. The room was green and I loved green and blue for baby boy rooms and green and pink for girls. I contemplated the idea of not finding out the gender of the baby but wanted something to look forward to. We found out our baby was a boy but I really liked the idea of keeping a lot of the baby things neutral so that when baby number 2 came along we could still use everything if baby was a she and not a he! So I picked a lot of yellow and green baby things and then put blue around the room too.
I obsessed for a few weeks over the paintings I was making to go with the pond theme (we like right next to a lake/pond), knowing that someday we could tell him that I made the paintings just for him. I love doing sets of 3 because it just feels complete to me. It was also important to have 3 pond friends because I felt that I could honor the two other babies that we'd lost.
The room is bright and cheery and light-filled...one of the happiest rooms in the house. Makes sense because our baby boy is a gift and a joy and the greatest work of art we've ever been a part of!

Obsession

I totally forgot to share with you guys my latest artistic obsession and how it turned out. I spent a couple of months being obsessed with pandas. They are so exquisite, so beautiful and so foreign to anything I get to see here in New England. I love them. Doesn't help that I live with one....


Okay, maybe she's not a panda but Kita-Bear and Petit Panda are some of her many nicknames! Just to show you the tortured mind behind the artist.... (click on the pictures to see them larger)

First I thought a panda with a parasol would be cute.

But the parasol drove me nuts.

Then I switched to an idea of a human child hanging out with a real-life animal (yes, as an artist I am allowed to live vicariously through my artwork, thank you very much!). So I decided on a little girl and a panda having a tea party. I loved how the panda turned out. And really liked the color scheme I decided on but I could not decide on the background scene. Should it look like a messy playroom? Should there be lots of furniture when most of my drawings are simple? And then I drew the little girl two small. She looks to be about 7 instead of 4 or 5 like I wanted her to be. And compared to the giant panda, the girl and her tea set all seem miniature. Toyed around with just finishing it and them fixing things in Photoshop but that added another layer of questions and decisions. So I put it aside.

Still feeling obsessed and inspired by pandas I came back to the idea again and decided that I would keep trying until I had an illustration I liked. Which meant starting all over. Worked hard on practicing little girl faces and bodies that would look young enough. Changed the perspective of the panda and ditched background furniture for crazy wallpaper. (And somewhere in there the little girl changed ethnicities.....I have no explanation for that one...)

So what do you think?

I was putting a lot of pressure on myself because I'm focusing on building a solid portfolio. So of course I had all these criteria that I wanted to meet which only makes the decision making process worse. I'm pretty happy with the result but I still love the beautiful face of that second panda. And the final product still isn't perfect. Oh, to be a perfectionist and an artist.

I've been obsessing about something else entirely different lately. It has nothing to do with my artistic goals but has become a greater and greater obsession of my heart as of late. I'm hoping to share it with you in the blogging world soon.

You would think it would be genetic....

but I did not inherit my parents' skill with a camera. When I showed my dad (a professional photographer for decades) the B&W pictures I took for my college photography class, he looked at them, thought for a second and said "there is no black and white in this picture!" Yes, thank you Dad. I know. So if you catch me blaming my inadequate pictures (which by the way is kind of important if you are trying to sell your work people have to be able to see it and love it if they're going to buy it!) on the camera, the lighting, etc. I'm lying. I stink at taking pictures.

Of course it doesn't help that my assistant is always getting in the way.....

He munches on my props,

he can't keep his tail to himself,

and he's nosy.

Why don't I just lock him out of my art space when I'm working you ask.....



because I've already locked this one out! If they were both running around together even worse things could happen! Oh well! Just a day in the life of a non-photographic, pet-loving artist.

Something old, something new...

You might recall the original sketch I posted of this guy a long time ago:

Done way "back in the day" when I first started the turtles...I had to put him aside as my first Craft Show approached and I didn't have time to finish ALL of the turtle ideas. Here he his all festive and bright, coming to help you celebrate!

Besides trying to work on a couple more Love Turtles, this past week we celebrated my mom and one of my sisters' birthdays. In honor of my mom I started a birthday card doodle that turned out way better than expected. Here it is for you to see, but mom gets the original!

Notice how different it looks from the others. Only two things changed here, I used a different paper and overlayed the colors. All of the other turtles I'm using a vellum bristol which is very rough. I'm not pressing down hard and covering up the whole paper which gives it a textured look. This smooooooooth paper makes the pencil lines look completely different, adding some colors on top of each other made it come alive and I was very happy with how it turned out. This is a little closer to children's book illustration in my opinion. Every once in a while everything just works! So Happy Birthday to Mom and Cristi, I'm so glad to have you in my life.