The Wheat Wife

When I was just starting art school, a couple of my roommates had been hanging out with a guy who said with questionable sincerity that he could "see fairies." Although I, myself, have never "seen fairies" and cannot help but draw into question that sanity of this statement/person, he did once describe a little fairy-man that he had once seen who had wheat for hair. This description apparently left an impression and I'd always wanted to illustrate this character. I could never envision the fairy as a male however. So here is my interpretation:












I'm thinking she's some sort of harvest fairy. It seems only appropriate to have her carrying bread in her basket.


The composition for the painting is still subject to change, but in terms of color, I'm planning a very earthy color scheme - lots of brown, yellow ochre, gray, and white.

I've had this image floating in my head for a long time, so it will be nice to get it out of my system. So, credit goes to John-Who's-Last-Name -I-Can't-Remember-If-I
-Ever-Knew-It for the very cool 'wheat as hair' concept.

Christmas Card - Finished!

This one took a pretty long time, but it's finally finished:


My intent was to use this as a promo/Christmas card this year, but I kind of hate to sit on it that long and am wondering if I could find a home for it with a greeting card publisher. I've never had much luck getting attention from card publishers in the past, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to try again.

I started this one with a monochromatic watercolor under-painting, since that method seemed to work out pretty well on "The Tea Merchant." I'm still undecided if I'm going to incorporate this method into all of my work. It does add a chunk of time to the process, but not as much as I would have thought.

Changing the subject completely, we went hiking this weekend. Actually we go hiking on most weekends when work/time/weather permits. This weekend, we hit the Getty View Trail which is more or less across from the Getty museum. It was a big surprise to us that this trail even existed in this location since it's literally right next to the 405. My husband used to drive this highway to work every day for four years and never had any inkling that there was parkland right here.

This was probably one of the more harrowing trails we've hiked as the path was very narrow and parts of it appeared to have started to slide down the hill. It was a mile-long series of switchbacks up the side of a low mountain. The reward at the top of the trail was a pleasantly wide fire road that runs along the spine of a couple mountains and grants stunning views of the landscape below.

It was kind of hazy, so the view was probably not quite as nice as it would have been on a clear day, but it was still majestic nonetheless. Needless to say, at the end of the day we were exhausted!

Cherry Blossom Fairy

I didn't think I'd be back here updating so soon, but my "Cherry Blossom Fairy" painting is now available at Ellen Million Graphics as greeting cards and bookmarks. And since I'm not featuring it too prominently on my website, I thought I'd write a little bit about it here.

At my house, we watch a lot of anime. Those of you who also watch anime will know all about "Cherry Blossom Viewing" since practically every series that takes place in Japan seems to include at least one, if not many references to cherry blossoms and/or the annual cherry blossom viewing festival. I must have had cherry blossoms on the brain this spring because when March rolled around, I remembered that there are reputedly something like 2000 cherry trees around Lake Balboa in Encino.

Desiring to have my very own cherry blossom festival, I dragged my husband over there the last week of March and we strolled around and took a lot of pictures:

A lot of the trees were pretty small, so I can't quite say we had the grand experience of walking through huge, billowing clouds of cherry blossoms, but it was still quite a sight. We even had one of those petals-fluttering-to-the-ground-I'm-in-an-anime moments. Next year we're going to have to take some sake with us.

Some time before this, I had seen an Omar Rayyan illustration that feature a parasol-toting fairy, albeit of a more European persuasion. It always seemed like a cool idea to me. I think the cherry blossoms and the fairy smashed together in my subconscious (I dreamed this image) and this painting was the result. (So, thanks go to Mr. Rayyan for his inspirational work and credit for the parasol-fairy concept!)

I don't know whatever possessed me to paint it in watercolor, as this is only the second watercolor painting I've done in something like nine years. The image just demanded watercolor. It was a brutal reminder of how weak my watercolor skills are. It's something I guess I'll have to work on.

Oh yeah, the original painting is available for sale on my Originals page.

A Gift for Mom

Since my Christmas card is still very much in progress, I don't have anything really new to post this week. So I guess I'll post this:

I finished this piece a couple months ago, but I couldn't post it anywhere until just recently since it was a birthday gift for my Mom. (Her birthday was Tuesday!)

I picked a personal mother-daughter theme for this one. When I lived at home, we would go out to coffee all the time. It was one of our favorite things to do. Without giving away what I was doing, I tried to grill her on her favorite animals, colors, etc. to figure out the details of the painting. I spent a long time on Flickr trolling around for good reference photos of blue flowers. The lily-of-the-valley were thrown in for variety and because they are my mom's birth-flower (and mine too!).

If anyone is interested in prints, they are at my shop.

One more little piece I sketched out this week:

It's my first ever ACEO. For those that don't know, ACEO means "art cards editions & originals" and they always measure 2.5"x3.5". I'd noticed how many fantasy artists seem to be producing these and it seems like a good, quick way to put down an idea that you otherwise might not have time to complete. So, one day I cut up some left-over board into various small-format sizes and tossed them into a drawer. I thought it would be nice to just be able to grab a piece of scrap board and slap down an idea. Of course, knowing me, I have to draw it out on paper before I can "slap" anything down. I'm sure I'll make this into more of a production than I originally intended....

Usually my ideas wouldn't work out too well as small formats, but I finally had one that seemed ideal for an ACEO. The idea for this one came from a dream. Not a terribly original dream, but a dream nonetheless. It's probably difficult to see, but there's a snowflake drifting down toward her hands, hence the pending title: "Winter's Last Snowflake."

I guess that's it for this week. Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas in April?!

Never too early to start working on my Christmas card, right?

I've had a thumbnail of this in my sketchbook for ages and always wanted to finish it, but never had the time - until now...

I'll most likely add type to the center of the wreath when it's all finished. I think it looks incomplete without something there. If I manage to finish this one before I get too busy, I think I'll submit it to the Courage Cards Art Search. We shall see what happens...

Tea Merchant (again)

So I finished up this painting a couple days ago. In keeping with my current efforts to 'not over-work' a painting, I varied my technique just a little and tried to paint thinner than I have been in recent years. I used to paint much thinner several years ago, but somewhere along the way I slipped into painting somewhat thickly which is more time-consuming, but not really more effective. I was only partially successful with this little experiment. . .

I started with a light monochromatic watercolor under-painting to place shadows and such. Then I slapped down the sky in messy watercolor. The background in this painting was really an after-thought and I'm aware it's a bit lacking in many regards, but since it's just a personal experiment, I didn't want to put a whole lot of time into it. I then switched back to my usual acrylics to paint most everything.

I was doing pretty well keeping the paint thin until I started working on the bird character. I quickly fell back into my habit of starting really dark and having to work up to the lights - not that this is an inherently bad method, but I think it does take longer and sometimes makes the painting too dark/heavy. On the original, I think the bird-guy looks a bit too dark for the rest of the scene, but it's okay since this one is just for me.

The background bushes and grass were actually really fun to paint. The paint's not all that thick and it went really fast. It's a bit more earthy, but I think it's on par with my usual time-consuming, thickly painted backgrounds. I'm going to try to carry these efforts forward in future paintings....

Thanks for stopping by!

Tea Merchant character design - in color!

Since I liked the sketch of this character (see previous post for rough sketch), I wanted to commit him to paper in a more permanent fashion. I inked him first with a crow quill (yes, I prefer inking the old-fashioned way) and then colored him with acrylic mixed with a whole lot of matte medium.

I was looking at some older DiTerlizzi work - a D&D Monstrous Compendium, full of character designs just before I painted this one. I like how finished his work looks, but when you study it closely, you can see that it's probably done fairly quickly. I always admire the energy apparent in works that are completed rapidly - especially since I'm one who tends to spend way too much time scrubbing away at a painting. I know a very complete painting can often be accomplished without laboring for hours on end and over-working it - I'm just not so good at accomplishing this myself, but I'm working on it!

Anyway, it was really fun to use a technique different from my usual and this painting really did go pretty fast. I've started working on the second Tea Merchant painting (again, see previous post) and am trying to keep with this 'don't over-work it' theme. We'll see how it goes...