Happy Halloween, My Friends!!!

I wanted to wish all of you a very Happy Halloween! I may be fairly busy tomorrow, and wanted to get this in before the craziness starts. Here's a pic of one of my very first watercolors ever, "Jack's Visitor". This was when I was still using watercolor paints like acrylics, thus the strange textures.
And, as a side note, I highly suggest asking your child what you should be for Halloween... Mine wants me to be a chicken, and I've had so much fun planning this crazy costume. ;)
Have a fun and safe Halloween!!!

Another wonderful treasury!!!

I'm in another fabulous treasury, this one by heatherknitz at Etsy! You can see my "Winds of Change" bookmark on the left, second from the bottom. :)

First try at watercolor and ink...

After months and months of wanting to try my hand at watercolor and ink, I finally bought myself a waterproof pen and gave it a shot! I'm actually pretty pleased with the results, and I have a really detailed piece I want to try out with them soon. I usually only have the pencil as an outline, and I really like the crispness of the black ink.

Treasury!

I'm being featured in this lovely treasury by pinkparchmentsoaps on Etsy! You can see my Angel bookmark on the top in the middle. :)

IF - Repair

My new sketch for today's Illustration Friday. I sketch straight in pen, so it gets a little messy. Plus, I chopped my hair off last week and now I seem to be drawing more and more ladies with short hair! ;)

Marigold Wishes and Corn Stalk Dreams...

We took a trip to an incredible pumpkin patch last weekend. But we were all much more interested in these two things: a sea of marigold flowers, and a great corn maze. It was burning hot during the day! Not like fall at all. But as it started to get dark it really cooled down, and then we were able to pick out our pumpkin by the light of the moon.

Three Little Birds

I finally finished my newest painting 'Three Little Birds' over the weekend! It's done in watercolors on 140 lb. watercolor paper, and measures 9x11.
The thing that inspired me to paint this particular piece was a great song (I unfortunately don't know who sings it) that opens with the lines, "Three Little Birds sat on my window, and they told me I don't have to worry." Painting the girl behind a window is really new for me, and when looking at it straight on the highlights aren't as prominent as if you look at it as pictured here from an angle. I hope I didn't over-do it! Any feedback is welcome, as I'm not sure it comes across quite right.
This piece was certainly a challenge, but alot of fun, too!

IF - Late

I am so loving these Illustration Friday themes. They really jump start my imagination!

Illustration Try #1! Need Your Feedback, My Friends!

As many of you may know, my ambition in life career-wise is to become a children's book illustrator. I've decided to really start concentrating on that, and am doing everything I can to go forward with this dream of mine. I decided to try a little mock-up of an illustration in this vein to see how it comes out. It's just a work in progress, but I need all the feedback I can get on it! and please, be as honest as possible (within reason! Hahaha!)

(As a post-sidenote, pencils reallllly don't scan well! There's alot of detail that just didn't show up, even on the darkest scan I could manage! And...it's amazing the problems I can see right off the bat when viewing it not on paper but on my computer! Ugh!)

New Orleans - Revisited

This is one of my very favorite pictures I took while visiting New Orleans last year. They have these horse posts all over the French Quarter, and this one particularly caught my attention, with its (perhaps generations of) layer upon layer of paint.