Just for fun

In July Betsey and I visited my friend Lauren. We had a great time together. Lauren works at the pentagon, which I think is really cool. Betsey and I did DC while Lauren worked and then at night we met up and stuffed ourselves silly! We ate at Carraba's and some pizza dive that looked disgusting but the pizza was excellent! Lauren made us take a "walk around the block" which ended up being like 2 miles so that we could burn off some of that food. We hit up the mall and got in a very tiny booth to get our pictures taken. I don't know why I couldn't get my computer to flip the reference photo so you will all have to crane your necks to see. The two drawings are from the photo on the far right. Betsey is on the left and Lauren is on the right. These were so much fun. I miss them both very much. Just in case you don't know. Lauren, Betsey, and I all met while we lived in California. Our husbands all deployed together at least once and Lauren's husband and my husband deployed 2 times together. They are my best friends, we have been through a heck of a lot together.

NO HOT WATER!

Today I took a freezing cold shower. I checked the water heater and the carpet was soaked! Now I'm in the process of getting a new water heater....lucky for me I rent and I have an awesome landlady! I can't express enough how important it is to have an awesome landlady, some of the other places I've lived I could have gone days before a plumber ever showed up.

On to something a little more lighthearted....I started drawing with a pink pen and I love it. Anyone that knows me, knows that I love color so its only natural that I would love a pink pen. Its just a cheap Bic Atlantis but it glides really nice across the page. Of course that new notebook that I got from Old Navy has super smooth paper so that helps. Thinking about that makes me want to go and see if they still have any more notebooks. Ugh, but I'm really trying to save money especially now that Christmas is over. The portrait is another one of Crizzal Star.

Happy Birthday Crizzal!

This is a pen sketch of my friend Crystal, aka Crizzal. Today is her 21st B-Day! I hope you have a great one!

I hope that everyone else had a great Christmas! I know that I did. Faith was hilarious, she is still telling me she wants to tell Santa that she wants puzzles, random toys etc. Will it ever end? She does know that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and sang Happy Birthday. She is so smart sometimes she shocks me.

I found these great sketchbooks at Old Navy. They are supposed to be stocking stuffers and they are perfect for my purse. I bought some and now I'm waiting and hoping they will go more than 60% off. I'm on a budget guys!

I LOVE TO DRAW!!!

I hate to admit that I have a day job. I wish that I could just make my living from my art but so far that hasn't happened. I'm still young though so I got time...either that or Brian needs to step it up and start making the big bucks so I can just do whatever I want! Back to having a day job, I haven't been getting very many hours so it has freed up a lot of time to draw. Which by the way I have some new pictures to put up here soon of some custom work I did last week. I got all of my Christmas artwork done and now I get to draw my friends again! I love drawing facebook pictures because there is no pressure. No one even knows that I'm drawing them so if the picture isn't working for me then nobody ever knows! The top picture is Keisha she is the girlfriend of a friend of mine from work. Look out Sean your picture might be next! The middle one is Heather a friend from back in the day....all the way back to high school. Whew, 10 years has it really been that long!?! The bottom one is me, and it may not look exactly like me but as the artist I'm allowed to make myself as pretty or not pretty as I want. Its my pencil and I'll do what I want!

sketchbook and snow

It snowed yesterday! Faith got to play in the snow. I made snowballs and let her hit me with them. She thought it was great! I went to Golden Corral for breakfast this morning and filled up on sausage and gravy biscuits it was yummy. I am supposed to work tonight but I called in because I know that coming home at 10pm is going to mean I would get to skate across alot of black ice...which is no fun in a car! Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.

Opened up an Etsy Store!

I've just opened up an Etsy store! Right now I only have one listing. I'm in the process of getting some more paintings and drawings up so please be sure to check it out! I'll be posting some pictures from my sketchbook in the next couple of days. Everyone always wants to see whats inside an artists sketchbook so I'm going to give you sneak peeks into mine! The top picture is my mother in law and my nephews. The bottom picture is another Facebook picture "Emily"

A break from Facebook

I know I was on a roll there for a while drawing Facebook profiles but I got distracted by other things. Here are a few pictures I've been working on since my last post.

Facebook Day 5

I spent this past weekend living it up and stuffing myself beyond reason. It was my birthday on Saturday and I had tons of fun. Even with all that going on I still managed to squeeze in some time do some facebook drawings. From top to bottom Beau, April, Amy, and Ami. I just realized I had two Amy(i)s on here. Ya gotta gimme a break, I'm an artist not a rocket scientist!

Facebook Profiles Day 4

From top to bottom: Steven, Brittany C, Adam, and Heidi
I decided to do Brittany again because her picture in a previous post was the lightest and hardest to see.

Facebook Day 3

I am really enjoying my facebook project! Its so fun to draw my friends and I really like the way these two turned out. I switched to a red pencil it works so much better on the camera than the blue. Problem solved! The portrait on top is Carrie and bottom is Cindy. All I want to do now is draw, I think about it all the time! Which is great because I've been struggling with making myself focus and do art, whether it be painting or drawing. Its so much easier to watch tv, shop, or veg out on the internet.

Facebook Portraits II

More Facebook profiles! From top to bottom Brittany C, Betsey, and AnnaBonanna. I'm still trying to figure out how to get better pictures. That blue pencil just doesn't show up very well.

Facebook profile pictures

I started a new project last night. I'm drawing my friends facebook profile pictures. Here is Alia(top) and Amy (bottom) A couple of weeks ago I read about a guy who paints facebook profiles so I figured why not use my friends for practice! I don't plan on doing any kind of detailed drawings. I just really want to explore using as few lines as possible, with a kind of cartoony look. The originals are done in a light blue pencil. I had to darken them on the computer so that they would show up in the picture.

Memories

Here is my newest commission. I love the photo! It looks like they are having so much fun and I love the pink jacket. I started it in pencil but it really wasn't working for me because of the lack of detail in the faces. That is a common problem that I run into with snapshots. Snapshots are the best pictures because they have so many feelings and memories attached to them. I enjoyed the challenge of making this picture work and I really hope that I got the feeling across.

Joy to the World

This is my idea for a Christmas card this year. I will be ordering it for myself so if anyone else would like some let me know! The inside of the card will say "Joy to the World".
My friend Betsey asked me to design a Christmas card for her. This really didn't match up with her vision but it certainly did with mine. I think a common vision is a constant struggle for artists who are working on commission. I find that what I have in my head and what the customer has in their head can be two totally different ideas. The trick is to find what works for both of you. As an artist I have to find that place that will make the buyer happy but also satisfy myself because I want to be proud of anything that I sign and send out into the world.

These are my niece puppies, Layla aka The Original, Lucy aka Sir Pugsalot, and Cocoa aka Cocoa the Stripper (because Cocoa just sounds like a stripper name) I know that Layla looks like she is smiling in this picture but she really does look like shes smiling because of her really funny overbite.
It was a lot of fun to use the crazy colors to paint the doggies. I painted it from a picture while I was at my booth at the Gibsonville Fall Festival. Everyone that stopped by the booth loved it! Don't you want to get your puppies done?

My first blog!

Hello Everyone!
I'm so excited to be starting a blog! I plan to try to post something new at least once a week. I will be posting new artwork along with random and not so random ramblings here.

I had my second Lighthearted Party today. For those of you who don't know, a Lighthearted Party is an in home art party. I bring my artwork to your house, you invite friends, and I have a little art demo. Then you get to shop my art, note cards, and prints. Its like having an art gallery come to your house. By the way artwork makes great Christmas presents!