"Lady Beatle" - Digital Mandala

I adore the colours in this one. Shades of aqua/blue and pink together make me so happy. I thought this one looked like a scarab in feminine colours, so I called it "Lady Beatle".

"Lady Beatle", Digital, September 2015

"Circuit" - Digital Mandala

Tinkering with computers must have put me in the mood to draw something that looks like a piece of computer hardware. It must have been an unconscious connection, because I don't think I would have even noticed if it wasn't for the green and gold colours that look like part of a motherboard.

"Circuit", Digital Mandala, October 2015

"Blue Totem" - Digital Mandala

This is another one that didn't get posted from September. I like monochromatic colour palettes. Not much else to say about this one.

"Blue Totem", Digital, September 2015

"Dream Catcher" - Digital Mandala

This is the other artwork I'm considering for my first printed handbags. I love the aqua and blue tones in this one, but I still think I'm edging just slightly towards the first. This one makes me think of feathered Native American headdresses or some kind of Mardi Gras decoration. 

"Dream Catcher", Digital Mandala, September 2015

I would have liked to create something new today, but I just spent the morning trying to fix some problems with my wacom tablet. It seems I need to spend an hour fixing things every time I try to create something. But I'm pretty sure I'm close to having all the kinks in my workflow ironed out.

"Warm Flowers" - Color Throwdown 362 - Digital Repeating Floral Pattern

Today's pattern was made for Color Throwdown's colour palette challenge, but once again I was a day late to submit it to the link list on their website. Either way, I think it's worth posting here anyway. 

I took the inspiration quite literally, as I'd been wanting to draw some more floral patterns lately. This one has orange roses and red pansies, as well as random sprigs of mystery leaves and white dots. 

"Warm Flowers", October 2015

"Warm Flowers Tiling", October 2015

I don't mind how this came out, even though I'm not a fan of brown. This brown is pretty chocolatey, so it's not so bad. It's a pretty warm colour palette overall. This week's colour palette is a lot more pastel and beige, so I'm not sure if I'm going to try something with it. I'll see if I can make it work.

Autumn Feathers - Pals Paper Arts Challenge 271 - Digital Mandala

A little out of my comfort zone with this colour scheme from Pals Paper Arts. Brown is well outside my usual choice of colours, but I guess that's what makes these challenges interesting. It's something a bit different, that you wouldn't have necessarily chosen for yourself. That makes it a bit more fun.

"Autumn Feathers", October 2015

I've posted both the single tile and the tiling version, as the tiling would be a bit harder to see in a thumbnail. Also I'm not sure if it's just me, but my blog pictures seem to be coming out a little blurry. I'll have to keep an eye on that. Hopefully it's just my imagination.

"Autumn Feathers", October 2015

"Ditsy Leaves" - Color Throwdown Challenge - Digital Repeating Pattern

Time for another colour palette challenge from Color Throwdown. I always intend to do these, but I rarely get around to them in time. I spend too much time trying to decide what I'm doing, and suddenly a week has gone by. This week's theme is green, yellow, black and white.

I wanted to make sure I submitted something, so here's just a quick ditsy leaf pattern. I'm starting to practice patterns where I have to arrange different elements and make them look like a balanced repeating pattern. This is a lot easier now that I have a Wacom tablet and can draw in additional elements to fill spaces rather than sketching on paper and scanning them in as I had to do before.

"Ditsy Leaves", Digital Repeating Pattern, September 2015, 15x15 Inch

It's still a bit rough and I might go back to clean it up later, but I'm pleased with the technique and look forward to doing it again with more complex pattern elements. Look forward to some paisley and floral patterns in the near future. 

"Space Highway" - Digital Mandala

Talking about your own art can be one of the most difficult parts of the process. I've always wanted to share what I'm working on with others, but coming up with a spiel to go along with it tends to trip me up. It feels strange to just post an image with no accompanying explanation, but I find there isn't much to say. I'm not a very conceptual artist, so even coming up with a title can be tricky. And while I like to be a positive and uplifting person, talking about how much you like your own art leaves you balancing the fine line between obnoxiously self-confident and annoyingly self-deprecating. It can be hard to convey the fact that you're happy with your work (sometimes more than others) but you see there are things you'd like to improve upon and areas you'd like to explore. Except in that one exact sentence, and that hardly lends itself to a second blog post.

My favourite art bloggers seem to have galleries that they exhibit in, art-related businesses that they run, sponsors to talk about, or ongoing personal projects to discuss. It's easy to compare yourself to someone who has spent many years cultivating their online presence and find yourself falling short. But it's important to look at the things they do well and create those traits in yourself. 

I wonder that I don't have any projects to work on, but I don't start them. I get distracted easily by other ideas, which makes it very difficult to work in series or finish a long term project. But I intend to change that. For the last few months, I've been planning to have some things manufactured with my designs and sell them online. In a manner that is most unlike me, I've made concrete steps towards my goal, rather than planning things in the abstract until I lose interest. I know I have to see actual results, such as sales of products that I've created, so that I know the effort is worthwhile and I should keep going. The next step is to decide which artwork should adorn my first item and have the sample made up and sent to me.

I've been working on several abstract designs that I can have printed on handbags. So far, this is my favourite. Whether this ends up being my first printed design or not, I still haven't decided. But it's nice to be making art that I can feel proud of again.

"Space Highway", Digital, September 2015

Amy Work in Progress - Symmetrical Tiling Abstract by Renee Dillon

Here is my offering for the 1st of February, my very first hour of the month, as mentioned in my previous post. The first image was actually from January, and doesn't count as time spent in today's hour, but I thought I'd post it anyway. It's a digital draft or colour palette test that I whipped up by colouring over my sketch in Photoshop. I think I should do these colour tests more often, but I think I should stick to them rather than choosing random colours for the digital version and then choosing random colours again for the painting. The digital also tiles at a smaller scale than the original, which makes it harder to see the detail.

As usual, my photo of the painting is a little crooked, so please forgive that. Also, the colours didn't photograph very well. The grayish colour you're seeing is supposed to be metallic purple paint, which looks quite nice in real life. The yellow and green were markers, because I thought I'd go a bit more mixed media with this one and see how it turned out. The markers definitely give a lot more control in small spaces, which I like. Bic Mark-Its also seem to be fairly streak-free in small spaces as well, which I love.

I won't necessarily be trying to post daily in February, but I'll try to stay on the wagon as far as actually creating art goes. Wish me luck!

Total Time Spent Making Art in February: 1 Hour