Femme Thou Art Collective Auction

A baroque inspired painting for the January 2014 auction on Femme Thou Art Collective on facebook.
8.5x11in watercolor, colored pencil, acrylic and graphite on mixed media paper. Bidding starts at $5.
https://www.facebook.com/FemmeThouArtCollective

facebook-liking-what happened?

When I started my facbook art page, I was so excited that I had taken a step to show the world my art. My friends saw it and it got a bit of attention-  at first. I have noticed that fewer people are seeing my posts. I also noticed that posts and status updates from pages that I 'liked' were not showing up in my feed. I was dissapointed that none of them were posting anything---- but they were posting- I just could not see it, because now they have to pay for me to be more likely to see it. It isn't really fair to the fan pages or the fans. What I learned is that you can hover over the 'like' button on a page you like and choose 'Get Notifications'. All the pages I like show up in my feed now. I wanted to see what they had to share. That is why I liked them in the first place. If you would like to keep seeing things you 'like' feel free to use this little poster i made. It has instructions on how to do it. Post it wherever you feel it will be helpful. The goal is for it to become common knowledge. 

Work in Progress..

A pic that I am working on. 

Here is the sketch:

Here is what it looks like right now. I still have a bit to go-

Photoshop adventures

I took the sketch that I did about ten days ago(http://flutterbliss.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/i-am-having-a-sketchy-friday-the-13th/) and colored it in Photoshop. It wasn't a complete sketch so I had to do quite a bit of coloring and fudging around the corners. Here it is:

 I learned a lot from this project. I learned how to make the closest thing to a pencil in Photoshop. And how to add a grainy overlay to add texture so that it doesn't look entirely airbrushed. I got that tip here: http://www.3dm3.com/forum/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=101. While the approach was more subtle in the tutorial, I like how it looks like it could have been colored on an art paper that has 'tooth'. I am not sure if my experiment was exactly successful (not crazy about my weird fuzzy border), but I feel like I got some education from it. I have never been a fan of filters in Photoshop for regular digital illustration, but now I may be a convert- At least for making a nice texture on an image. The original sketch can be found here: 

Oldies but goodies

I have been working on all the 'work' part today, so I do not have any new art to share today. I do, however, have some older art that I am glad to share. :)

This is a watercolor piece that I did about 2 years ago. 

This was my the first piece of art where I incorporated any digital anything. I did this one years ago. I drew it by hand and colored in in Photoshop.

I really like the dreamy feel of the latter. I think I might experiment like this with some of my new sketches. I have found that sometimes I make a great sketch or pencil drawing in a sketch book and no matter how I try, I can never replicate all the little details onto watercolor paper or canvas. I think this is a good reason to scan and color digitally. 

Feel free to comment or critique. :)

other pages that contain my art

https://www.facebook.com/HollyBroxson.Art

https://www.etsy.com/shop/FlutterblissArt

http://flutterbliss.deviantart.com/

http://flutterbliss.tumblr.com/

Digital Painting adventures

The past week has been a bit chaotic as it usually is the week before Christmas. I have been too busy for art or for blogging. It missed it!

I have spent most of my life doing some kind of art, but painting digitally is somewhat new to me. My education was in graphic design, so I understand the programs. It is this Wacom tablet that I am having to get used to. I used one a lot at one of my jobs back in the early 2000s, but I was just airbrushing and editing back then. Completing an entire painting is a whole new hand-eye coordination exercise. So, last night I worked on a painting. It isn't hyper-realistic, like so many amazing digital works out there, but it is in my style. That is something that I did not know if I could achieve digitally. What I have done so far is this: I am still not sure how much more I will do on this particular painting. I am ready to start on one that is not a practice piece.

Friday night sketch session

Another late night sketch

To all the artists, writers, crafters, bloggers: When do you do your best work?