New ACEO Auction!

My mini-dragons in this series seem to be getting less and less mini. lol :)
Watercolor and white goauche. 2.5 x 3.5"

ORIGINAL AUCTION HERE!

Darkest Night -- finished painting

I finish this tonight. Another mermaid finally! I don't paint them very often. This is only the 3rd or 4th I've ever done, I think.

I hope you like it! :)

Watercolor and white goauche. 9 x 12"

Prints available on my website... ACEO prints may be available soon. I have so see how it looks that small first.

Details:

Sea Dragon Painting WIP

I got started on painting this. I did the sketch transferring and painting preparation on Thursday. I got most of the background done. I have a feeling that this painting won't take very long to finish. I like how it's coming along so far! :)

Sea Dragon and Mermaid Sketch

This is a sketch that I've been working on. I don't paint many mermaids, but this idea came to me. And I've been trying to paint more dragons too because they're my favorite fantasy creatures. I've just always been better at painting/drawing people.

I don't really know exactly what kind of colors I want to paint this yet. All I know is that it is going to be night, so it'll be pretty dark. :)

Below are some of the little thumbnail sketches that I did to figure out what pose and composition I wanted to use. Yes, they are very rough! :) I decided I liked the third one the best. It seemed the most natural to me.



Well, that's about all for now. I just thought I'd share what I'm working on at the moment...

Shadow Dragon -- New ACEO!

I was originally planning on the dragon being green when I first started this, but it went in a completely different direction. I'm really happy with how it turned out though! I think this is my new favorite of my mini-dragon ACEOs! Before this one, I liked Dragon Angel the best. :)

Watercolor and white goauche. 2.5 x 3.5"

ORIGINAL AUCTION HERE!

New ACEO Auction!

"Coming Storm"

I started this ACEO about a month ago, but I stopped to work on my Valentine's Day painting and a Commission. Now I finally got back to it. It's funny because it only took another day to finish it. :) It's another one of my mini dragon series!

Watercolor and white goauche. 2.5 x 3.5"

EBAY Auction Here!!

Limited Edition prints are available on my website HERE

ACEO Printing

I just got done doing the limited edition prints for "Dragon Angel." *wishes I'd thought of a better title*

I decided to do an edition of 18 this time instead of my usual 9. I think that I'll start doing 18+ from now on. It seems like I needed more. Anyway, I'm now making the corners rounded on my ACEO prints too and not only on the originals! I found a neat punch that rounds the corners perfectly and easily.


You can see the prints to the right pictured next to the original. I got the colors adjusted pretty much perfectly this time. It can be really frustrating when the picture can't be made to look just like the original. I always try make it as close as I can.


And below is my super sophisticated storage of all my ACEO prints. LOL It is effective enough. :)

ACEO Finished! Dragon Angel

Yeah, I know the title is pretty bad, but I couldn't think of anything better. lol

I'm very happy with how she turned out! As I mentioned on my last blog entry, I was trying to use some different colors that I haven't used recently. So I settled on a reddish purple. The scan is pretty close. In person, her dress looks almost exactly the color of grape juice! :)

I love to paint white hair! It is one of my favorites. I was thinking of giving her black hair at first, but I'm really glad that I settled on white. I think it complements the purple really well.

The original ACEO painting is for auction on Ebay for the next week. For those who don't know what ACEOs are, they are small, trading card-sized paintings that are always 2.5 x 3.5" They are very collectible and very popular on Ebay. You can see my auction HERE.

There are also limited edition prints available on my website HERE. The edition is of 18 prints. I do my aceo limited editions in multiples of 9 because that is the number I can fit on one sheet of 8.5 x 11" paper. So then I don't waste any paper. :)

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

Snowy Weekend!

Wow, has it been snowing a lot this weekend! Friday morning we had a bad storm and got 10 or 11 inches dumped on us, and now it is snowing again this morning! I'm already sick of winter! :(

I've started an ACEO painting. This is another one that has a dragon in it, sort of like my last ACEO, "Moonlit Companions." Only the dragon is a little bigger in this one, but it's still a pretty small dragon. I like the little ones; they're cute! lol Anyway, I'm really trying to use some different colors that I haven't used lately. So definately no blue or green. It's looking pretty so far, but I won't tell what colors I've settled on. ;) Hopefully, I'll get that done sometime this week. Maybe I'll make a series out of these ACEO dragons. :)

I'm thrilled about the response to my newest painting, Enchanted Evening! I thank everyone very much! When I first began to sketch that out, I was thinking of doing a tutorial about sketching from a reference and showing how I went about it. But I lost some enthusiasm for the idea as I went along. I did take a bunch of pictures of the process though, which can be seen to the right. I've noticed that I sketch completely different now than I did just a few years ago. I used to always start first with the eyes and then work my way around that. I don't know exactly when that changed, but now I always start with a rough outline of the figure and then go back and keep refining and detailing. I think that this has helped get the proportions more accurate and with getting things positioned better on the page. I use a sort of point to point measurement system to get things as accurate as I can. You can see that in the sketch progress from the faint lines. :)

That is about all for now. Happy Holidays everyone!!