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

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/

Dryad painting walkthrough

I took photos of my process. Here is a walkthrough-

Materials used:

Strathmore mixed media paper, pencil,watercolor, colored pencils, acrylic ink(brown), brush tip marker, and a tiny bit of white acrylic.

I started with a basic sketch of the face. I did not add much hair or the branches. I wanted the paint to do the work there.

I then began to add light washes. I believe I used yellow ochre for the hair ans skin, and brown for the branches. I used a wash of rose madder on the nose, cheeks, lips and any parts of the face that would be ‘rosy’. I used a blue wash for the sky and the shadows on the face and neck.

I continued to add color to the hair. I chose a reddish brown. I filled in the iris of the eye. I did not worry about painting around the pupil, since I was going to color it in with a dark color later. I noticed that the brown on the branches was washing away as I painted, (My first time using this paper) so I simply wiped it away with a damp cloth. I used a small brush and some brown ink to define them instead. It worked well. I also used a bigger brush and used the brown ink in the hair. I used colored pencils to add detail and wildness to the hair.

I got out my brush tipped marker and filled in the pupil and lined the top eyelid and added more wild hair and loosely outlined some of the branches. I used the colored pencils to shade the details of the face and neck and added a couple of tattoos. I used pinks and browns. I then used white acrylic to make the shines in the eyes and.a reflection on the bottom lip.

I finished up using more colored pencils just to darken the rosy bits and the shadows. I drew eyelashes to accentuate her eyes

And here is the final product- scanned and available in my Etsy shop.  https://www.etsy.com/shop/FlutterblissArt

Feel free to leave comments or questions for me.