Poinsettia Christmas Flower Repeating Pattern

I had so many Christmas designs ready to go, and somehow December has almost crept away from me without posting any of them. This poinsettia design is bright and cheery. It puts me in the mood to draw some more floral designs.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Thanks for looking.

"Succulent Christmas Fern" - Christmas Themed Repeating Design

One thing I've learned about Christmas designs is that the best ones in my opinion are the ones that aren't necessarily that Christmassy. There are plenty of designs that look like Christmas decorations at the time, but don't look out of place for the other eleven months of the year. That means you get a good amount of use out of them, without having to find somewhere to store your decorations. That's what I was thinking when I came up with this design.

"Succulent Christmas Fern", November 2015

I think this would make lovely place mats or napkins for a Christmas place setting with red and white accents (such as plates, napkin rings or table runners). Or if you want a non-seasonal place setting, it would still look nice with neutrals such as cream or white.

"Succulent Christmas Fern Repeating", November 2015

I'd like to think more about designs that can be used outside of Christmas time, especially since a lot of people like to change their Christmas decoration colour scheme every year. If those people can resell or give away their decorations to people that can use them straight away rather than waiting until next Christmas, the decorations are more likely to be reused rather than thrown away.

"Potted Succulents" - Tiling Cactus Repeating Pattern

Some days you start drawing, and come up with something that you absolutely adore. Thanks to these adorable little cactus pot plants, this is one of those days. Succulents in happy little brightly coloured pots must be one of my favourite novelty patterns. I'd love to have this printed up and made into a dress.

"Potted Succulents" Digital, October 2015

"Rosy Lavender" - Color Throwdown 367

Here's another Color Throwdown challenge that I'm just managing to get done at the last minute. I'll get better at remembering the deadlines for these, I promise. 

I've decided to go with more of a greeting card style for this particular challenge, since to be fair that's what I'm actually supposed to be making when I enter these. If you wanted, you could pop a sentiment on the bottom left corner, but I decided to leave it blank. I tried to go for a loose colouring style with a soft brush, but I'm not sure if it just looks like I accidentally went over the edges and didn't bother to fix it.

"Rosy Lavender Greeting Card", November 2015

Thanks for looking. :)

Strive Home and Design - Handbags Coming Soon

Well I've been working hard this past month at my day job, so this morning I was feeling pretty fatigued. Luckily, I received an email this afternoon with some exciting news that has invigorated me. As some of you may know, I've been planning to have my designs printed on some things to sell in an online store. I've been going though the plans for the last few months, researching possible objects, finding manufacturers, discussing logistics, calculating potential cost and profit margins. It seemed like a big undertaking, with a lot of things that could go wrong. But, despite my cautious nature, I decided to say "Why not?" and took a chance on it. And today, it's looking like that chance is paying off.

This is the very first sample of the first handbag I've ordered. You might recognise the pattern as "Space Highway", from an earlier blog post. And here it is. On a bag. That actually exists. And I'm positively thrilled about it. All that remains is to look at the handbag in person when it arrives, then go about placing my first bulk order.

There are still some decisions to make, and some work to be done before I can start selling, but this is a huge step forward for me. I'd really love to be able to develop a business around my designs and today I'm the closest I've ever been to making that a reality. It's a good feeling.

"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

"Frogger" - Digital Repeating Pattern

Lots of blue and green shades in this one. The aqua dots make me think of the little sticky toes on a frog, so I've called it "Frogger". The more I look at it the more eyes I see.

"Frogger", Digital, September 2015

"Feather" - Seamless Repeating Pattern

At this point, I'm not even sure why I called this one "Feather", but that was what the file was called so I guess I'll go with that.

"Feather", Digital, September 2015

"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

"Disco Ant" - Digital Mandala

Another of my mandalas, completed back in September. I have to start posting these as I do them, rather than thinking of something clever to say, or they'll never get posted.

"Disco Ant", September 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

The Curly Haired Lady - Acrylic Painted Portrait by Renee Dillon

After the slow blogging month I had in April, I've decided to try posting daily again, like I was doing in January. Unfortunately there isn't another 30 in 30 challenge going on this month, but hopefully I'll still be able to motivate myself. It's all about developing habits, and not letting myself get distracted by other projects.

My theme for this month is simple, graphic, pop art style portraits on 12x12 scrapbooking cardstock. I'm still working on exactly what I want to do with them. I like the simplicity of just the lineart, but I think I like the background to be painted a different colour to add a bit of contrast. In this piece, I decided to add a bit of colour to the lips, eyes and jewelry, to see how I liked it.

For today's portrait, I was inspired by this weeks Color Throwdown colour palette - bright pink, lime green and sky blue. Excuse the dodgy photograph, the colours are much brighter in real life. I'll take a better picture with my camera in the morning. But for now, it's here, and that will do. Not sure what possessed me to do pink for the eyes instead of green, but it is interesting. Experiment, try new things sometimes.

Fergie - Mixed Media Portrait by Renee Dillon

I feel like I've found a solution to the problems I was having with finding a substrate for my art. I thought I'd get a nice pad of watercolour paper to try out. Instead I found a Canson Acrylic Pad at Lincraft. It has an almost canvasy texture to it, but it's still thin enough to use on my lightbox. It doesn't crease and the paint sits nicely on the surface.

This was my first experiment using the new paper and I'm loving it so far. It feels a bit more classy than regular cartridge paper, so I wouldn't feel bad selling an artwork made on it, but it's not so expensive that I'm too afraid to use it.

PRODUCTS USED:

(Not this paper pad, but something very like this, various brands of paint)

"Amy" - Symmetrical Tiling Abstract in Acrylic Paint

So I've been keeping at my plan to create for an hour a day during February. I'm already a little bit ahead for tomorrow. I find it interesting that sketching and lineart seems to go by so fast, I finish a drawing and I've hardly used up any of my time, yet when I sit down to paint it feels like the time flies by. Maybe I'm focusing harder when I have the paints out because painting is still so strange and different for me. I've been drawing for years, but I'm still quite new to paints, in a way.

Blogger is refusing to justify my text for some reason. It's annoying me to no end.

Paintings in the Works: "Sargent Peanutbutter" the Horse, "Cookie" the Pug, "Fizzy" the Pug, "Lesley" the Cow, Other Misc Art

"Milo the Red Heeler" - Acrylic Painted Pet Portrait

I follow a Buy Swap and Sell page for pets on Facebook, because I like the cute animals that pop up in my news feed. Mostly it's things like rabbits and birds, but occasionally cute puppies come up and I have to draw them. This one was a red heeler, a different colour variation of a blue heeler. It was actually a pretty difficult colour and texture to emulate in paint, but I like it the way it is anyway.

I love the way the colourful hills and bright blue sky came out. I'll have to do backgrounds like this more often. If you want to buy prints of this image, including items such as throw cushions, greeting cards and phone cases, you can check out my account on Fine Art America.

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

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 11 - Bethany

Just a small, simple abstract today. I played around with some simple techniques involving layering that ended up with me spending a large portion of the day on what turned out to be an unsatisfactory Mark Rothko impersonation. I put this together from unused paint and ended up preferring it to the main artwork I was working on. Such is life.

I've decided to work a little bigger for a while, which may slow down my 30 in 30 progress. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a portrait to show off that I'm a little more pleased with.

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 6 - Half Pear

I'm finding that even redrawing the lineart that has been painted over it makes such a difference in how much the image pops. Also found out today what a difference it makes to paint an underpainting in a completely different colour to the one you want showing on top. That will be coming up in a couple of days. Todays pear was an experiment in painting a thicker layer rather than being so sparing, and I'm pretty happy. The colours aren't quite what I originally envisioned, but I quite like this one as it is.

I almost missed the deadline for submitting this one to the 30 in 30 linkup on Leslie Saeta's blog. It was sitting in my email ready to upload, but I didn't realise I hadn't submitted it.