Fresh Design with 2 of my Favorite Elements

Hello April, finally! This has been on long winter in the mountains. Everything is still very brown, but I heard birdsongs outside my window this morning. Very soft and subtle, but pretty soon, my mornings will be nosier. A quiet reminder that things are growing... looking forward to more birds returning and pansies galore.

I kept this Mother's Day card soft and delicate... a sense of stillness before spring really wakes up.

 

Enchanting Sconset, Nantucket

Oh, the magic of Sconset, Nantucket! A place where shingled houses and beach cottages line the streets, each telling a story of its own. As you wander through this quaint village, you can't help but feel a sense of peace and tranquility wash over you.

 

Excercise with Values

 Old master Jean-Francois Millet wrote that "If a sketch seen in the dim half light at the end of the day has the requisite balance-ponderation-it is a picture: if not, no clever arrangement of color, no skill in drawing our elaborate finish, can ever make our a picture." 

another exercise in getting messy with values

Summer Colors

 Beginning of Summer in upstate New York.

Backroads Inspiration

      This birthday design was inspire by cruising around the backroads,

      on these lovely June afternoons.
 

From Antique Dress to Licensing

 Distant hills & sky outside my window is usually the source of my art. But inspirations can show up in any form.

On my artist journey, there was a time when I collected antique dresses. This delicate dress is perfect to be rendered in watercolor.

Just an excuse for me to document & remember forever this gorgeous dress. It also happens to make a lovely mother's day greeting.

 

 

Learning to work with Layer Mode on Procreate

Most of my design starts as a painting. It's a lot slower, but I still enjoy playing with art supply. After scanning the original painting, I bring it into Procreate. I usually start off by clicking on different layer modes to see the possibility. After alot of clicking, this version was the most interesting.

I thought I better write it down, cause I definitely wont remember the steps involved to recreate this again.

The bottom layer is soft teal on blue, I clicked on SUBTRACT mode...

the soft teal turns into this lovely deep shade of blue....

I place this oriental blue clouds on top of the bottom layer...I then click on DIVIDE...

which is how I got this gorgeous magenta & white sky.

If the blue clouds did not reveal itself to me, I probably won't finish it off as a landscape.

Inspiring Evening Sky

 A very rare meeting of Venus & the Crescent Moon. I was treated to a lovely pairing off of the two brightest objects in the night sky, as I got home yesterday. I would not see so many stars if this is a full moon.

Today's Inspiration

 Daily dispatch...another day, another sunrise.

 Woke up to a little bit of magic outside my window.

My Process over the Years

 

 

Came upon this old card from the 80's. Got me thinking how much my process has change since I design my first greeting card for Sunrise Greetings. I just started to travel after college. Everything was definitely fresh & inspiring. Many of my travel photos were turned into illustrations. Then I got my first cat & other pets...

                                                             Greeting cards are perfect for adorable pets.

Some of my best selling cards came from my beloved pets. It's true what they say, paint what you love. These days, a lot of my designs kind of reveal itself on the computer.  I pull up a few existing designs from my archive & click away on Procreate. I will save the file if I see something that appeals to my eyes. They can languish there forever. Once in a blue moon, I will focus on a pretty design & see where it leads me. It's still fun, even though I dont paint that much, there's always some new trick

to learn & experiment.

Winter's Last Full Moon

Hibernation get  boring with our long winter. But there's always beauty.

 The full moon thru my window is spectacularly bright. This is the final full moon of the winter season. March's full worm moon reaches its peak today.

Cherry Blossom Reflection

Whether it's a simple sketch or detail painting, I like to think I can capture the joy & beauty of life. Been spending more time with cherry blossom this week.  I'm going loose & abstract with this study...trying to capture the atmosphere using oil pastel. 

oil pastel on paper

Working with a medium I'm not familiar with allows me to stay loose & just experiment.

pastel over oil pastel

Another Morning, Another Sketch

From soft to high contrast in 10 minutes, rapid studies of the morning sun.

Bluebird Inspiration

Sighting of a pair of bluebird, at the crack of dawn, got me into my studio.

Blue on Blue, nature's never ending supply of new color palettes!

Winter Magic at the Farm

The poetic landscape around me has always started many of my designs. Came across some lovely snowy px from La Basse Cour, on FB. A picture perfect farm in all seasons, right in my backyard.

Just have to sit down and play with some images from my archive. Focus is such a constant struggle for me, feeling pretty happy with

 this new holiday design.

Outside My Window

Smudged graphite is my favorite technique to indicate a black & white foggy morning.

graphite stick

black & white, outside my window