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.

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.

"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. 

Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge - PPA 195

Getting in just in time for this challenge at Pals Paper Arts. I liked the colour scheme so much that I couldn't quite decide what I wanted to do with it. In the end I went with some bunny silhouettes and a cutout rectangle Happy Easter banner. I like the cutout words technique over patterned paper and will be using it again. Probably with a smaller print next time.

Pals Paper Arts

I've been finding that I like using simple card designs and letting the patterned paper speak for itself, but I'd like to get into a bit of pattern mixing. Maybe next time. As always, you can find my papers at Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. These bunnies might be up in the next couple of days.

Cardmaking Challenge - FTTC 262

Flourishes

I tried my hand at another digital greeting card tonight. This one was inspired by the Flourishes "It's a Wash" Challenge. The theme was washi tape, and I'm not sure that fake digital washi tape counts but it looked fun so I thought I'd try anyway.

I shrunk the pattern on my paper called Christina to make faux washi tape strips. Not sure how I feel about the empty space in the top right corner. Maybe I should have made the strips horizontal to full that a bit more, or made the card square so it wasn't such a large space. Never mind.

If you're interested in checking out this patterned paper for yourself, take a look at Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking.

Christina

Abstract patterns are harder to name than figurative ones. This pattern started with the name 'Diamond Rift', but I wasn't sure I liked that. Then it had the working title 'Circular' while I finished it off. Eventually I decided that I'd rather give my abstract patterns proper names. This one is Christina.

It took a bit of fiddling, but I'm glad I finally managed to make this design tile properly. If you'd like to buy it, head to Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking. :)

Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge - PPA 194

I'm not much of a cardmaker, but I like the idea of challenges, especially colour palette challenges. I thought I'd have a go at the Colour Challenge at Pals Paper Arts.

Pals Paper Arts

Above is the colour palette I had to stick to. Not my usual cup of tea, but I guess that's the point of a challenge. It can be good to try things that aren't in your comfort zone.

My friend has a birthday coming up and his favourite colour is blue. The flowers might be a bit girly, but hopefully he won't mind. So that works out nicely.

If you'd like to see the rest of this scrapbooking paper set, have a look at my Etsy shop or look at the previous blog post. Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Overlapping Flowers

Finally opened a Twitter account today. My opinion that I would not like Twitter has not yet changed, but apparently it's pretty big in the scheme of social media and reaching new audiences. You can find and follow me @6thFloorStudio (apparently typing "Sixth" made it too long). As a known rambler, having an arbitrary post size limit bugs me. I don't like changing the grammar in a sentence so I don't have to remove content, but that's what needed to be done to fit my first tweet within the limit. What was the problem with blogs, anyway? You can be as long-winded or brief as you like, and people can follow you and see what you have to say. And you don't have to figure out this ridiculous hash-tagging business. I sound so old.

Anyway, here is my new scrapbook paper set. I'm still playing with ways to make tiling images. Spacial thinking isn't necessarily my strong point, but I'm getting better. It gives me one of those special headaches that mean you must be growing new neural pathways in your brain.

I've made one of these papers into a digital card for Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge. That can be found in the next post. If you'd like to purchase these papers, take a look at Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking.

Corgis

One thing I anticipate about starting up a blog and a business selling art is that the beginning will be fairly quiet. The internet is a big place, and content doesn't come up in a search necessarily because it's what you're searching for. What I've learned about Search Engine Optimization so far indicates that there are a lot of little rules to follow if you ever want anyone to find you. Apparently having a free blog rather than a paid website and domain name is a bad start for SEO purposes. Links from other websites (particularly high traffic ones) boost web search ranking. Frequently updating content can apparently help. 

But despite the tiny amount of SEO tips I've learned, I figure I'm still going to have to be pretty patient. Every time I see a new page view on my blog or Etsy shop, I get a little bit excited. It means that a person, even a single person, maybe only for a brief moment, has seen what I've created and acknowledged it in some small way. They might not even like it, but that's not the point. At least someone else in the world knows that it exists.

It's weirdly validating for your efforts to be seen. I could draw every day and keep my art in a box in my bedroom if I wanted to. But I want to share it, as scary as that is. It's like sending a tiny, vulnerable piece of yourself out into the world. Hopefully one day soon I can share my art with more people.

This happy corgi design is one of my favourite papers so far. I need to draw more dog papers.

If you want to see more of my papers or purchase this one, head to Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking. :)

Wobbly Lines

This one is more abstract, a wobbly line design. I feel like the colours are a bit all over the place, as I wasn't planning as I worked, but I've learned from that experience since making this set. It can be important to think of how a set of papers will look as a whole, as well as individual papers, as that's the first impression customers get of your set.

I like the white page with black lines. It could be used like a colouring in page for people that want to make their own colour schemes. If you want to buy this set, go to Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking. :)

Broody Chickens

My new Easter design, Broody Chickens has just been uploaded in my Etsy store. It comes with a simple polka dot pattern set in matching colours. Not sure if I should keep working on Easter designs or if I should build up a stock of year round patterns. Either way, I think these chickens can be used for other projects at other times of year.

If you want to buy this set, go to Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking. :)

Pastel Easter Eggs

One thing I was really hoping to do with my new shop was get Easter themed stock in time for Easter. It's kinda hard to plan ahead for a holiday. It requires thinking ahead enough that you have time to create and list an item, and customers have time to find that item and make their own crafts out of it. The middle of February might seem a little early to be planning for the 20th of April, but that time counts. There's no point starting on a new set of images the day before a holiday (hence the lack of Valentines images for tomorrow). 

I went with a pastel colour scheme and a punchinella style which can be used for art and craft projects year round. I also have some bunny and chicken themed papers in the works, which should be available in the next few days.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy

Tropical Pineapples

So pleased with my progress today. I've had some test prints of my papers made at Officeworks and they look great. Now I've opened up the Etsy shop at long last. Click the link to see Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Or you can check out my happy little widget in the sidebar.

Also, here are some happy pineapples. This purple version is one of the ones I printed today, and it looks delicious. The pineapples look so juicy and delicious in print. I'll definitely be using the yellow/green/purple colour scheme again in future.

Here is the first colour preview. To see all of the colours, go take a look in my Etsy shop. 

Watercolour Butterflies

These butterfly designs were the first series of images I made for my Etsy shop. They were coloured with watercolour pencils and altered digitally. There are 14 pages in total and the previews below show the assortment of colours.

If you're interested in purchasing these printable papers, you can find them at my Etsy shop, TheSixthFloorStudio, which will go live shortly.

I'm rather pleased with how this pattern turned out. Hopefully there will be more traditional media papers in the future.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy

The Lotus

Here's another preview of a printable paper I've created. This one features a lotus flower and some happy little squiggles.

This is a snippet of the full A4 sized sheet. I'll be adding a link to the Etsy shop when I've set it up.

Also, apparently I didn't have the option to schedule posts set correctly, which explains why I'm uploading two posts today. For some reason I really want to have four posts per month at least.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy

Autumn Forest

After some amount of fiddling, I finally have an art space set up. Most importantly, I have the scanner in my room where I can use it at any time without bothering anyone else in the house. It's nice to be able to upload a design and play with it digitally as soon as I'm inspired. 

Today, I've been playing with some tree doodles to make this tiling pattern. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to arrange my scrapbook paper packs in my Etsy shop, but this will definitely be one of them. This image is reduced quality to stop people from saving and printing this version without paying for it. I might offer some free printable images after I have the shop set up.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy

A New Year for Blogging

Well, it's already January and I've been trying to get this whole blogging thing underway for a while. I'd really like to showcase some of my art and maybe provide inspiration and entertainment to others, like the many talented bloggers who have inspired and entertained me. I just haven't quite been able to get over the scary hurdle of actually starting. I can't decide what I want my blog to be like. Should it be highly professional and only geared towards salable products in my Etsy shop? Should it be devoted to finished pieces of original art? Or should it include experiments, failures, mistakes, tutorials, tidbits about life?

To be honest, I don't really know how this blog will turn out. Maybe it will stick this time, and I'll actually get into the habit of posting regularly. I've been drawing at least a page per day in my sketchbook since September 2013, which is itself an achievement for me. I think the goal now is to stop worrying about what this creature will be. It is what it is. If I don't stop worrying about achieving perfection, I'll never get it off the ground at all. I want to share with others. I want to show people things that they find beautiful or amusing or interesting. That is my plan for this, ultimately.

2014 is the year to make that happen. I hope you will be entertained. Happy New Year, everybody.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy