Yours Truly: 100 Postcards for Human Rights at Alexi Era Gallery

I'm honoured to be a contributing artist to tonight's "Yours Truly: 100 Postcards for Human Rights" show at Alexi Era Gallery, in St. Louis.

Human rights are something I'm very passionate about - whether it's constitutional rights, like freedom of speech and expression; women's, minorities and LGBTQ rights and equality; religious freedom and mental wellness... Basically everything under the sun that has to do with human liberty, and overcoming the barriers that stand in our way.

Here's my postcard sized painting, entitled 'Sorrow Fall'. The title means literally that your sorrow is falling away, and you're being filled with growth and renewal out of a bad situation. I have infinite faith in our ability to overcome our struggles and continue being a better species.

I created this piece over the span of a day, filled with inspiration from the show. I drew it all out in pencil, refined the sketch, inked it with my microns, and then painted it with watercolours. I added some acrylic gold touches to the nest.

I hope whoever ends up with my piece is filled with hope and overcomes any obstacles in their way. :)

The Sweet Succubus

Who knew a succubus could be so sweet?

For the Femme Thou Art 'Monochrome Madness' auction, I was a bit stumped about what to create. Monochrome Madness meant that you had to do a painting in black and white (and grey), plus one colour. I don't mind limited colour pallets, in fact I quite like doing them - I've created some of my strongest pieces using this technique - but for some reason I was lost and didn't know what to make.

Eventually a concept drifted down from the heavens, and hit me on the head. I thought about crimson red scarab beetles and a beautiful girl with white hair. Thus 'Sweet Succubus' was created.


1. When the imagery popped into my head I sketched it all down madly, making sure to get the feeling for what I wanted to create and the colour pallet.

2. Then I started to sketch out my concept onto Arches Hot Press Watercolour Paper (best paper ever), and worked out all of the details... For anyone wondering, I use a generic mechanical pencil for sketching purposes. I like the perfectly sharp end.  I ended up changing the figure's composition quite a bit by the end of my sketching, and also came to the decision that the piece should be in a circular shape, and that I wouldn't be extending her body outside of the circle.

3. Inking! Gone are the pencil marks, and now onto the ink. I made a decision long ago to pretty much always outline my figures. There's a rich, elegant beauty about line art that I just can't resist. When you ink something, it's saying that you've made your decision on the direction that that piece is going to take - there's no going back now!

I was kind of going for a Japanese aesthetic with this piece, and wanted her hair to resemble the wavy smoke designs in old Japanese artwork. I like making things ambiguous - is it hair, or is it part of a tree, or ribbons, or smoke? Things morphing into other things.

4. Another moment of inspiration hit - and I realized that she needed a scale print on her dress.

5. Deciding her tones and colours went by fairly quickly as I had already done a scribbly sketch to get an idea of how I saw her and the placement of colours and tones. I wanted the piece to be gothic, but kind of light at the same time. There are few places of concentrated blacks, aside from her gloves and the line art itself. I used pencil crayon for horns, dress, gloves, and ribbon, and watercolour for the background effect.

The spiral bit in the background was a happy experiment. I used a wet on wet technique to apply a grey that I mixed myself (which has a slight greenish tint to it). For some reason I was envisioning the Faun from Pan's Labyrinth and the spiral patterns on his face, while I was doing the background.

I'm also a big fan of using instagram filters on my works in progress to really emphasize a piece. To be honest, I kind of love this instagram pic below more than the scanned version of the same picture. :/

5. Tah dah! The Sweet Succubus is all finished! She's not in my shop yet, so please contact me if you're interested in purchasing this piece.

How to get People to Read Your Blog

Have any of you ever googled how to improve your blog and attract more regular followers? I read a few interesting articles today (Why most artists’ blogs fail - GapingVoid), and realized that if I want to attract more readers to my blog, and hopefully increase interest in my products, there's a lot more I could be doing.

Some of the tips they (along with other articles) gave were to have a unique voice, extremely focused/narrow topic for your entire blog, be a leader or expert in your field, and most importantly INSPIRE. People will keep coming back because you inspire them - they want to be inspired by you, your life, and your creativity. The artwork you create comes second to that, no matter how gorgeous it is. 

So then I got to thinking - what is my unique voice? What is my narrowed down super duper specific blog topic? How can I show I'm an expert in my field? Do I inspire others? If not, how can I inspire them? 

As a writer I think I come off as laid back and informed, and very analytical. My blog topic has changed a bit over the years, but I have narrowed it down to being an art blog focused on girly fantasy illustration and fine art, as well as my crafts. I wonder if that's specific enough? As for showing my expertise as an artist an self-promoter, I've thought about sharing some of my learning experiences and tips/advice. I may not be where I want to be (selling art full time), but I'm sure I have some good tips and experiences I can pass on to others. 

The hardest part for me to really figure out is how to inspire others with my artwork and me as an artist, aside from sharing the artwork I've created. Art videos are hard to make because I am in a sort of awkward position for the camera to capture me painting (which makes it hard for me to get into the flow of painting), and editing the video footage is an absolute pain in the arse. But the videos do seem to get a lot of views and comments, so maybe I should concentrate on doing more of those. I do like that I get to narrate a bit, and share my process verbally with others. It seems a lot more intimate than writing text on a blog. 

For my fellow artists and bloggers out there, what do you do to attract blog readers? Is there any advic you  have for me, or anything you'd like me to do differently or add to my blog? 

Last but not least, here is Birdy, a piece I did for the Femme Thou Art Collective's Moth's and Melancholy art auction a couple of months ago. The piece is still available for purchase. 

I really do adore this piece. I love the sepia toned lines, which I did using a sepia Micron pen, as well as the simple colour pallet. She was inspired by the Art Nouveau greats, like Mucha, and the Age of Golden Illustration (think Arthur Rackham). I hope to create some larger pieces like this, and perhaps make posters in the future. 

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend and that the sun is shining wherever you are! :)

Spring is here!

Spring is finally here! I'm so happy that the gloomy grey days are almost behind us. I'm also pretty excited about some of my Spring and Summer adventures I have planned:

I'd really like to go to Vancouver Island again and explore more of the cave systems at Horne Lake. I'd also really like to visit the butterfly sanctuary, and maybe take home a few colourful specimans (and photographs - my camera died the last time I was there sadly). Some family friends also moved back to Kelowna (more specifically Westbank), and I'm really excited to stay with them for a couple of weeks and visit the local attractions: the gorgeous lake, tiny shops, and perhaps my first winery. Depending on finances I'd really love to go on an Alaskan cruise for my birthday, and see the Aurora Borealis in person. That would be amazing.

Art and business wise, I've saved up just about enough money to finally get my fancy printer fixed so I can start offering art prints and other nifty items in my shop. I'd really love to make some cute greeting cards, as well as experiment with other sorts of paper crafts like paper dolls.

I've been dreaming up some new mixed media pieces, that would involve scrap-booking and origami papers, a lot of matte medium, and a few canvases. I'm really excited to start experimenting!

A few days ago I began the task of switching over to a large watercolour pallet with about 25 large pots to put paint, I suddenly felt a burst of inspiration. I really want to paint, and mess around with all of the colours. I found some Arches paper scraps, drew out some simple faces, and then started adding the bright watercolours. It was relaxing, and so much fun.

I ended up deciding to do little random 'giveaways' of the doodles, two of which have already been sent off to their lucky winners. Stay tuned on Instagram and Facebook for more giveaways!

The two bottom doodles have gone off to their new homes. ^^

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend! :)

Meloncholia

Greetings all! I'm a little behind on my arty posts (among other internet things). My computer has been running really slow lately and I'm not sure why. It seems to be fine when it's not using the internet though, and I ran virus/adware scans. Perhaps it's just my internet connection?

Last month I created two pieces for the Femme Thou Art Collective's 'Moths and Melancholy' auction. I was really pleased with how my piece Melancholia turned out, and how perfectly she fit her baroque style frame.

The response to this piece was really overwhelming. It's funny, but I never know how fans will react to a piece I make. Some of my favourites aren't popular at all, while ones that I'm not too fond of are big hits.

Well with this piece in particular I had 'that weird feeling' while I was making it that I was making it for someone else. As if the fate of the painting was already written before it was even hatched. I just knew that it already belonged to someone. It was a really weird feeling. It sold immediately in the auction, so it appears that my gut feeling was spot on! :)

Here are the progress pics for the creation of 'Melancholia'. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed the 'making of' pics! If you have any questions, let me know. I don't bite! ;)

Artist Block

Lately I've been going through a little period of artist's block. It feels as if all ability and desire to paint is gone, and I sit looking at a blank page (or in my case works in progress), feeling uninspired and directionless.

Usually I force myself to finish the artwork, but don't really enjoy the process when I'm all art blocky. It feels like I'm making guesses at what I should do next, or what colour I should use, rather than following the inspiration feeling that sort of gives me clues as I paint. There have been times where I just put art aside, and ignore it for weeks and sometimes months, and wait for the feeling of creativity to reignite.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), when you're trying to make art your career, you can't just drop off the map and suddenly stop producing artwork. People will forget you, and you won't have created as large a body of work as you could have, and your sales will diminish.

In my case, I have the added bonus of pressure to complete certain artworks by certain deadlines, and that pressure also contributes to the artist block, but in a way it forces me to have an allotted time where I have to work through the block and eventually resolve it.

Art often feels like a chore to me, especially lately. I remember when I was younger, and I created whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. But then I started to share the work online, and started creating for the feeling I would get when I finished a piece and got to show it off to the world. Then I decided that I wanted to try to make a living off of art, and then you find yourself looking at what is trendy and popular (what art is selling), and try to be inspired by it, and have it influence your own work.

These pressures really do put a halt on my creativity, to the point where I often don't know what I want to create.

I felt myself going into an artist block emotional space a few weeks ago, and decided that since I had some time before artwork was due, I would completely drop painting for those weeks/projects, and do other entirely different things.

I ended up spending six hours writing 9000 words of a story I made up off the top of my head. I have no idea where the creativity for that came from?! I think it may have been the feeling of freedom to just create and express whatever I wanted, even if it was drivel - because no one would see it except myself. I haven't even reread it or anything. I just typed it all out, and then saved and closed the doc. It was the process that really felt fulfilling.

I've often considered trying to publish stories, but you know what, I think you have to keep some things sacred - for your eyes only. If art is the part of my heart that I share and try to make a living off of, than writing will be my escape from all the pressures of the art world. Whenever I feel artist block coming on, I will write, and without pressure. And if I happen to write anything I consider good, I will share it (and who knows, possibly self publish!), but there will be no pressure on those projects. No living to make.

This blog post is kind of a stream of consciousness type thing, so I hope it doesn't sound too confusing and rambly. I find writing helps me sort things out, and who knows, it might help someone else too! :)

So,  now that I feel the art block lifting, I am going to go back to my drawing and painting projects, and perhaps write a little more, tonight.

Rococo Girls - Violet

Ladies and gents, please meet Violet (pronounced Vee-oh-lay). She and Toulouse enjoy eating sweets, and decorating wigs with ribbons, bows, and anything else peculiar they can find. 

Both original paintings have been sold, and hopefully I will have some limited edition, hand embellished prints available soon. ^^

I recorded the process of painting Violet, so after I edit the video and do a little bit of voice over, it'll be ready to share with you all. ^_^