Look at the Baby!

I know, I know... it's been a while since I've posted. I've not been slacking (at least not to the limits of my ability). I've done a lot of work that couldn't be posted easily because I was working on a canvas too large for my scanner and my phone wouldn't pick up a decent image. 

I know I should have posted that I have awesome stuff I'm working on, but no one can see. I could have described the process in detail and done a neat little picture for you in text. Instead I decided to post this much too late taken with the mediocre digital camera on my cell. I command you to ignore the time periods and the quality of the picture and enjoy what I am now able to post. It's not finished yet, but it will be soon.

Easy way to get by all this is to look at the baby. Look. Are you looking yet? Good. The baby wants you to bring me a coffee. No? I'll get it myself.  Some people...

New Works in Progress

I've been very busy lately and haven't taken the time to post. Every day is busy for me with having a baby, but the last few days have been particularly busy. 

Saturday I went to Surrey Public Library's grand opening Ceremony. It was nice but very crowded. Not the time to check out books but I did manage to check out a couple of good books. 

Sunday I went to Word on the Street, a book and magazine festival, in Downtown Vancouver. It was a horrid windy/rainy day. It was cold, and I'm afraid some of the books and magazine's didn't make it. Luckily I saved a stray picture book from a fate worse than book death (no, I don't know what that means, but it sounded good). There is a lot of fun things to buy there. My favorite part is buying the book bag for $20 and filling it as much as I can stand to carry-- something that's almost impossible to do in the pouring rain. I have a ton of magazine samples now, many of which I can use to send submissions to later! I was lucky that my son slept through most of the event in his stroller. My husband also had an especially good time because he met up with three friends he hasn't spoke to in a long time.

I've not been idle during my non-posting days. I've done sketches for a couple of paintings I'll be finishing in the near future. I'm sorry about the poor quality of the scans. I promise better quality in the finished pieces! 

Edit: Just wanted to add a quick note about the quality of these drawings. These drawings were done very lightly because they will be painted later. Being so light in colour it was hard for even my photo editing software to give a decent contrast to these drawings. It also doesn't help that I have a cheap scanner. 

Portrait of David

I've been working on this drawing of my son the past couple of days. I keep wanting to go back and add change things. It will never be done if I don't stop now.

I'm now off to start another portrait!

Artist ADD

Maybe I just have Artist ADD, but today I have a strong urge to push aside the illustration work and do portraits. Baby portraits in particular. My son is getting so big and I want to make sure I have a few pictures of him. Photos are nice, but a painting or drawing looks so much better and lasts longer. I'm working on a drawing of David now so hopefully I'll have a drawing to show within the next couple of days.

Web Page

I haven't been posting as of late. I've had internet access issues for the past couple of weeks, and recently I've been working on my website. I'm still working on the layout of the site, and have mostly just thumbnails of my drawings here. I have to work on this sometime, so I thought I might as well get it started ASAP and update with new drawings in the future. Right now it's just a basic website, but it gets the job done. I might try a fancier layout when I have time to design, but for now this will have to do:

Fairy Finished

I had a friend who wanted me to draw a fairy for her. So I decided what better time to experiment with new techniques than on a drawing for a friend. In the past I've used ink and sometimes acrylics to outline my drawings, but this time I chose to work with coloured pencils for an outline. It changed the drawing in ways I didn't expect and caused as many complications as problems it solved. All in all it made for a nice experiment. Let me know what you think.

I had meant to post an update half-way through the drawing process. I am having a terrible time with my internet right now and I haven't been able to do much on the internet because of this. This problem should be resolved this week or next. I hope it's sooner rather than later because I'm suffering from internet withdraw!

Fairy for a Friend

As you have probably noticed I didn't do a book of the week. I have decided to discontinue this feature for the time being, mostly because I'm not posting other things enough and the non-fiction books are taking over. I'm not kidding... they started asking for equal rights and were picketing on my bookshelf. I decided enough is enough, so until they learn I'm not going to do another non-fiction book of the week.

I do have a sketch for you today. It's not a finished sketch by any means. I'm working on this for a friend and will have to do a lot of changes in the next few days. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the month. I wont be able to if I have more non-fiction book issues, so let's hope that doesn't happen.