Watercolors and Lulls

I am ashamed to once again have not posted in quite a while!  I feel as though lately I have been going through a bit of a lull.  I have so many projects that I NEED to get finished, that the ones that I WANT to get finished must take a place on the back burner, which kind of stinks creatively, but it’s certainly no one’s fault but my own.

That said, here are a few paintings that I created several weeks ago but never posted, as well as at least one that I posted alongside several others but I now have a much better image of.  They are all watercolor and are ACEO size, approximately 2.5″x 3.5″.

ACEOs and Fishies

Recently, I signed up for an ACEO swap (ACEO stands for “Art Cards Editions and Originals” and are often swapped like trading cards – each card measures 2.5″ x 3.5″) and although I only pledged myself for 3 pieces, I have been really enjoying painting these tiny sized cards.  Each one takes me somewhere between 1 and 2 hours, so it’s easy to start and complete one in one sitting.

I tend to latch on to a subject matter and go with it for several paintings.  The first several that I painted were exclusively nature scenes, lots of them with night skies and moons.  Painting similar things is good practice, and fun as you hone your style.

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In the last few days I have started looking at images of fish.  I love the colors of the ocean, and there are some seriously marvelous fish and plants living down there, so they seemed like the perfect subject to paint.  The Koi was the first fish I painted, but I have since tried painting two Bettas and an African Cichlid.  Of course, the night sky and the moon snuck into a picture for no good reason.

I will continue to make these in my spare time, and may end up putting a few on my Etsy store.  They are fun to make, and can be really affordable little original pieces of art!

There’s really not enough time in the day for me to pursue all of my art interests!  I need to continue with my clay creatures too.  Luckily, I have almost the entire month of July off from work, so I should be able to get done with a lot of the projects that have been waiting for me.

Bear Family & Tags!

I recently ordered out for hang tags for my creations, in the hope that it gives them a nice added touch when I put them in my Etsy shop – I think they came out beautifully!  I created the image using one of my more recent watercolor paintings as a background.

Here is one pictured with my family of bears!  I am not positive on how I want to attach them to pieces, but I definitely want them to be removable, and the best way I could see on the bears was to tie them on like a little garter belt.

From top left: Lemon Bear, Blueberry Bear, Chocolate Bear, Grape Bear, Olive Bear all made of polymer clay.

From top left: Lemon Bear, Blueberry Bear, Chocolate Bear, Grape Bear, Olive Bear all made of polymer clay.

Putting them around their necks made it seem like a noose and anywhere else was pretty much impossible! If they only had the same size bottoms I would put them on with stickers, but I don’t think that’s feasible with my little creations being so many different shapes and sizes.

Also, this is my first picture taken in the new light box!  I think I need at least one more lamp to take care of some of the shadows, but I think it’s looking better and better.

Naptime Dinosaur

Continuing with the “Naptime” theme, I sculpted a Dinosaur in much the same style as the Naptime Dragon.  This guy is holding a little “stone” dinosaur plushy and he seems pretty excited to go to sleep – a rare trait for a young dino!

I am still waiting (im)patiently for a light box to arrive so that I can take better quality pictures, but it looks like it won’t arrive until Thursday, so I decided to post some less-than-awesome quality pictures of what I’ve been up to anyway!

I was also inspired by Bleach to create a little demon guy.  I was attempting to make him look “cute”, but he just kind of looks creepy.  I still like him though.

I made two more bears also, and my hang tags came in!  I’ll have to post those next time though, maybe once my light box gets here.

Triplets!

I was inspired by a friend to try to create a Cerberus out of clay.  After about 3 hours and 2 armatures of attempts, I gave up on that idea (for now) and made a teddy bear out of the brown clay I had been working with.  I think partially because I had worked and reworked the clay so many times that there was a bubble of air in the bear’s back that I missed, so he has a bit of scoliosis going on, though you can’t see that from the front of course!

Still, I thought he was pretty adorable so I decided to go with the same idea and create more bears in different colors with different patterns on their patches.  You can see some subtle differences between each of them size-and-shape-wise, but otherwise look pretty similar.  I could do better though, so I plan to make the rest of the rainbow out of bears (a blue, a red, a yellow, and perhaps an orange) also.

Maybe they will be my first clay additions to my shop.. are they worthy?  I think they are, though I may just have to keep Chocolate Bear, and not just because he has a slight defect.