Free Printable - Christmas Wreath Lineart

I felt like doodling a Christmas wreath today, and decided to offer it up to anyone who wanted to use it in their Christmas crafting. Feel free to download it for yourself and colour it in, put it on a Christmas card or a scrapbook page, whatever floats your boat. 

Click these links to download the full sized image or download a page with four smaller images. I hope these links work, because I'm using Dropbox for the first time to put these up. Also, if you don't have a Dropbox account already, I get some bonus space if you sign up using this referral link. So I'd really appreciate that, because it makes it easier for me to post new free printables for you in future.

I hope you have fun with this free printable wreath lineart. Merry Christmas, and Happy Crafting.

Ponytail Woman - Portrait by Renee Dillon

Okay, starting to get back on track now. Here's my post for the 4th of May (even though today is the 6th, but whatever, I'm getting to it). Believe it or not, this is drawn on lime green cardstock, which just appears grey because of a bad photo taken on a stormy day. Light is funny like that. 

"Cookie the Pug" - Colourful Pug Painting in Acrylic by Renee Dillon

Black and white lineart of a pug called Cookie waiting for a tasty treat.

This is of course going to be a colourful pug painting, but I found that I absolutely loved the graphic, black and white quality of the lineart. I'd love a picture of this pug on a tote bag. I need to fix the settings on my camera so I can get higher resolution images for printing. They come out looking fine at the moment, but they need to be larger to be accepted on Society 6 and Fine Art America. Duvet covers (or quilt covers) in particular require a very large resolution.

So for now, this image is just a preview of the delightful pugliness to come.

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 22 - Amy Lineart WIP

So very close to having my painting space back. Today the computer that has been living there for the last couple of weeks will be going to its new home and I can move my painting supplies back onto the desk and up off the floor. Looking forward to it.

Here's the lineart for another abstract. I've been getting a few things started lately, but not quite finished. Looks like that might be a job for next month.

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 10 - Jared

I've named this abstract Jared, mostly for the reason that I can't think of anything else to call it. Went with a male name this time, since it's fairly geometric, as opposed to some of my other abstracts like "Samantha". Might add some colour to it later, but for now I'm liking the black and white.

"Dobby the Whippet" - Colourful, Contemporary Acrylic Paint Pet Portrait

This charming little fellow is a whippet I've called Dobby (because of the big, floppy ears, of course). He's the first in a series of small pet portraits I've been working on. I've been wanting to get more into representational painting since I had some success on Austin. I also wanted to see how much water my sketchbook paper can withstand without warping (turns out, very little, but it can be mushed back into shape with a heavy book, so that's nice). 

"Dobby the Whippet", Pet Portrait, Acrylic Paint on Paper, 6x6

I intended to have a bit more purple when I started, but I quite like the bright primary colours together. It's a bit Fauvist. At least, I think that's what the Fauvist movement was about. I was never that into art history, personally. A quick Google images search shows me that I can't be too far off.

I have a bunch of sketches of different animals - dogs, cats, cows, ducks, bunnies, llamas, etc - so expect more animal portraits in the near future, hopefully as delightfully brightly coloured and cheery as this one. 

Art Nouveau Work in Progress Continued

My Art Nouveau painting is coming along nicely. I've been adding colours here and there to see what it will look like. I'm thinking of adding purple and a little lime green in parts. I might make some of the yellows a bit more orange too.

If you'd like to see regular updates of this work in progress, follow me on Instagram or like my Facebook page, Renee Dillon Art.

Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting - Work In Progress

Admittedly, it's been a little while since I've updated my blog. Mostly that's because I've been thinking of taking my art in a new direction lately. I enjoy making tiling patterns. I enjoy fabric design and scrapbook paper design. But the design part of that equation was where I stopped enjoying what I was doing. There were things to contend with like deciding how many papers to go in a pack (while still fitting the upload limit on Etsy) and working out what size repeats should be to fit people's craft projects. I wasn't feeling satisfied about the end result because the colourways I really loved got lost among the colourways I figured someone else might like.

So ultimately, I decided to work bigger. Rather than making art that exists only in the digital world, I'd like to get back to creating art that exists in real space. A real, tangible thing that I can look at and say "Yes, I made a thing." Put it on a wall, maybe, I don't know.

I like the idea of creating something that is infinitely reproducible, that can be used and enjoyed by many people. But I also like the idea of something of which there is only one - something collectible and coveted and rare. I like the thought of somebody seeing my art and loving it so much that they want to put it in their house and look at it every day. And I like the idea of people seeing my art on this blog or social media and just enjoying what I do for free, as I've enjoyed the work of so many artists who share their work with the world.

All of this soul searching has resulted in me deciding to try a big canvas artwork for a change. Not something I'm typically comfortable with. My usual working size is less than A4 (usually even less than A5). I wanted something with large visual impact, though, and I knew for an abstract that the scale would be an important factor. What I've ended up with, so far, is this.

I'll go through the process in a future post, but basically it's a geometric Art Nouveau style abstract. It will be painted with yellow, orange, sky blue and hot pink acrylic (Jo Sonya and Monte Mart Silver Series paints). The thick black lineart was painted with a Posca paint pen. I'm sticking with my love of tiling, seamless, repeating patterns. I actually really liked it at the lineart stage, so in future I might work on some purely black and white pieces too.

Once it's complete I'll have to think of a name. Once again, I'm thinking of giving my abstracts people names rather than vague artsy nonsense. There's just something I like about a painting called Margaret or Georgia or Sam. It makes the painting seem friendly and relatable. After that I'll probably set up an account on Saatchi Art. Maybe I'll put it in my (currently empty) Etsy shop.

Come back soon to see the colours start to go on. I'm already really pleased with how it's turning out and can't wait until it's finished.