Penguin paintings in watercolor

After doing the fox circle paintings, I wanted to do something similar with penguins...



















I think these also came out pretty cute :)  I love baby penguins...they're all fluffy and awkward. Here are my sketches beforehand:

 Some detail:






















I think I prefer this look for the sky:

Yay penguins!

Fox paintings

A friend of mine is expecting a baby boy this summer and her nursery colors are green and orange (sort of a woodland theme) so I thought I'd try painting a fox picture for her.

Pretty cute huh? 

The funny thing is, in my first few sketches the foxes looked kind of like birds (eg the sketch on the far right)! 

ZOMBIEPLATE

Here's another pottery piece I painted recently...this one was a special request by my friend Ryan. I'd never drawn a zombie before so I wasn't sure how it would turn out but I FRIGGIN LOVE IT. Definitely one of my best pieces :)

My favorite part? The dead fish carcass!
   

Snow day art projects

I had off yesterday afternoon because of the snowstorm...and since I was stuck at home, worked on some pear collages that I'd been thinking about for a while.

I like how this one came out...it is pretty much how I pictured it...only I'm not sure it is "weird" enough...despite the odd bandage illustrations I glued on there in places.

materials: Strathmore Bristol (smooth), Plaid Royal Coat Decoupage Finish in 1401 Clear, Faber-Castell Pitt artist pens (#169 and #177), various books, magazines, paper tape, paper towels, transparencies (leftover from my Kaplan days) and other paper ephemera.

 

Finishing old projects: decoupage boxes

Recently I've been doing a lot of cleaning projects...and in the process, I found a bunch of old craft projects in need of finishing. Last night I knocked out two decoupage pieces: a set of drawers that would make a great jewelry box, and a shadowbox frame (courtesy of IKEA, of course).

I've been using a crap abridged illustrated copy of The Mutiny on Board HMS Bounty that I cut up and glue in pieces...for these two projects I was using just the text, no illustrated pages.

I love the look of black & white lately and have been wearing a lot of black/white/gray...no surprise that this theme continues here. It's sort of a wintry look :P

Sometimes I like to collage the book pages in small pieces for a patchwork effect, but for the drawers on this I wanted to use one solid piece of text...which was a pain in the butt (particularly with the little drawer knobs), but I like how it turned out.

More book ruining later, perhaps...

materials: IKEA wooden shadowbox frame, wooden mini dresser, black acrylic craft paint, books, Plaid Royal Coat Decoupage Finish in 1401 Clear.