"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.

"Autumn Flame" - Pals Paper Arts 274

Some days, whatever you try to create just doesn't work out. I knew I wanted to spend today creating new art because I had a decent chunk of time to do so. I tried about three different things before coming to the conclusion that being creative just wasn't happening for me today, so I decided to work on some more businessy things instead.

But still, I knew I wanted to create something nice today, because I knew I'd be a bit sad about it if I didn't make anything nice. This was my third attempt at the Pals Paper Arts colour palette for this week, and I'm glad I persevered, because I'm pretty happy with it. 

"Autumn Flame Repeating", November 2015, 15x15 Inch

I don't know how I keep end up doing the colour palette challenges with chocolate brown in them, and skipping the ones that don't. It's a weird trend for someone who isn't that fond of brown. But it works quite nicely with the coral and yellow colours, so I can't complain. 

Thanks for taking the time to look at my art. Don't forget to add Renee Dillon Art on Facebook and Instagram to keep track of my latest work.

"Connection" - Digital Mandala

This one reminds me of those construction kits that were a thing when I was a kid. Not sure if they're still around. I think they were called Konnects or something. They were like plastic paddlepop sticks with holes in them. I've named this one "Connection" based on that memory.

"Connection", Digital, October 2015

"Corn" - Digital Repeating Pattern

A friend of mine just posted a picture of his dinner on Facebook. His delicious corn-filled taco meat inspired me to make this pattern. Now I'm hungry.

"Corn", Digital, October 2015

"Ditsy Daffodils" - Colour Throwdown CTD364 - Repeating Floral Pattern

The running shoe seems appropriate because I'm in the middle of a marathon of shifts at work. My blog posts for the last few days have been scheduled and updated automatically, which is good because I've hardly had time to touch them. Unfortunately that also means I forgot to upload this one in time to add it to the list on the Color Throwdown website. Aah well.

I miss drawing at the moment, but in a couple of days I'll have a day off, so hopefully I'll get something done and won't be too tired to work on the ideas that have been floating around in my head lately. Today, here's a ditsy daffodil pattern, 

"Naughts and Crosses" - Digital Mandala

Another stripe-style mandala. I like the happy white cloud shape in the background.

"Naughts and Crosses", Digital, September 2015

"Naughts and Crosses Tiling", Digital, September 2015

"Cross Stripe" - Digital Mandala

Another mandala from back in September. I think I need to keep better track of which pictures I've uploaded and which ones are already on the blog. When everything is all together in one folder it's easy to lose things.

"Cross Stripe", Digital, September 2015

This one becomes a patterned stripe in tiling form, because the pattern doesn't touch the sides. So that's a kind of cool thing to do.

"Cross Stripe Tiling", Digital, September 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

"Mermaid" - Digital Mandala

I loved this one so much I made it my new Facebook cover image. In hindsight, I wasn't that happy with the 'temporary' art I'd put there but forgotten to replace. So glad I finally realised that I had nice new art to replace it with. The brighter colours really freshen the page up.

"Mermaid", Digital Mandala, October 2015

"Chrysalis Psychedelia" - Digital Repeating Pattern

Today's piece has a bit of a simpler shape than some of the other art I've been working on recently. It's just an oblong with some marks inside. I'd like to create more like this, because I think it makes a rather striking repeating pattern. It's simple, but the gradient adds a bit of texture to it. The shape makes me think of a butterfly chrysalis, hence the title.

"Chrysalis Psychedelia", Digital, September 2015, 36x24 Inch

"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.

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. 

"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

Taking the Plunge

Now that I'm not pushing myself to post everyday to my blog, I find that I'm trying to come up with blog posts that contain more substance. If I only post once or twice a week, I feel like I should be able to come up with something relevant or profound to say to accompany my art or my process. Which is all well and good. But the pressure of creating fewer, better quality blog posts is leading me to avoid posting at all. I've still been painting and drawing this past couple of weeks, of course. But the idea of the deadline that spurred me along is gone. I've been second guessing the things that I want to say and the work-in-progress paintings that I could have posted over the last few days.

I find that this happens a lot with my art. I'm getting better at the concept of just creating something, without worrying whether it will be right or good enough. But when it comes to things like taking print quality images of my finished art, connecting with other artists and bloggers, writing tutorials and useful guest posts to share my art around and developing blog traffic, I put it off. I think there's a part of myself that puts these things off because they make it too real. If I haven't done them yet, I can still consider myself to be at the beginning of my journey. I haven't made the attempt yet, so I can't consider that it hasn't worked.

It's not even the fact that I believe it won't work. I'm almost positive that if I do the things on my to-do list, it will increase traffic to my blog, followers on my Facebook page, sales of my prints and original paintings. But the nagging feeling is still there that it won't happen straight away, or at all. As long as these concepts are in the future, I don't have to deal with them just yet.

Now is the time to let go of that mentality, and move forward. It's time to start really trying to advance my artistic career and see where it takes me. One day I'd really like to be able to work as an artist full time, both teaching art and selling my work. The only way I'll ever get there is to do what any other successful artist has done - plunge in and start working towards it. It won't happen all by itself. There won't ever be a better time than now.

After writing this blog post and psyching myself up, I finally got a decent quality photograph and uploaded my artwork Austin to Fine Art America. Judging by my previous blog posts, I've been meaning to do this since about August last year. Better late than never. You can now buy prints of this image as well as throw cushions, phone cases etc. The original is also still available for sale for $1800.

"Austin", 29x39, Acrylic on Canvas, $1800

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 9 - Beach

So here's a drawing of a beach in coloured pencil and ink. The colour of the sky and water seem to be too close together in this picture. The sky is more purple in the original. Every day, I have less and less to say about these pictures. Daily posting is hard.

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 7 - Two Pears with Dots

Experimented a little with using strongly contrasting colours to make shading and texture with this one. The white of the polka dots was done with a sakura gel pen, but I think I might go over it with white paint as well. Next time I try some colourful pears I might try adding even more colours. It's hard to experiment with things that need a lot of layers to dry when you want to upload something every day.