Spring Sale!!

I have a sale going in my Ebay Store for the next week!  Get up to 20% off on EVERYTHING!!

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I've started the sketch for a mermaid painting, of which I showed a little concept sketch of a few weeks ago in this blog post.  It is kind of slow going because I've been sick with a cold this week.  This cold has been going through my family for the last few weeks, and I thought I was in the clear but it hit me last.  :(  It's actually the first cold I've had in several years, so I've been lucky.  I hope that it will pass soon, so I can get some real work done!  I hate being sick.

Broken Halo WIP

A couple days ago I did a couple of quick, messy concept sketches.  I almost always do these before doing my more refined sketches, just to get my composition planned out.  Then I wasn't sure which I wanted to start with, the angel or the mermaid, so I asked my Facebook friends to help me decide.  The majority voted for the angel, which truthfully I was leaning toward myself.  :)  But I fully plan on doing the mermaid soon too, if not immediately after the angel.

So I got started on the angel sketch.  I worked on it for several hours yesterday.  While I was working on it, I took some progress shots.  While this isn't really a tutorial, I thought some would still find it interesting to see how it came together.

And I had a little visitor while I was working.  Loki had to investigate what the heck I was doing!  I guess he wasn't too impressed because right after this picture was taken, he began to chew on my drawing board!  lol

"Broken Halo" final sketch

Here is the finished sketch!  The photo washed out a lot of the background detail, but I was too lazy to scan it.  This is a fairly large picture, at 11 x 14"  I plan to transfer the sketch tonight and hopefully get started on the painting too.  I hope that the painting goes as smoothly as the sketch did.  :)

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...

The Storms #3: Tornado Sketch

I finished the third sketch for my storms series. Now I can start painting them!! I think there will only be the three, but I can always continue it if I feel inspired later. I like how this one turned!

#1: Rain

#2: Lightning

New Sketch!

This is a sketch that I've been working on for the past couple of days. I'm going to paint her next and then maybe get back to doing the third storm sketch so that I can start painting those. I haven't decided on a pose for that one yet.

This one was partially inspired by Laurell K. Hamilton's last Merry Gentry book. There was a scene in it where a vine grew into one of the guys and became a tattoo. I thought that was cool and wanted to paint something with it at some point. At first I was planning on making it a guy fairy, but I started sketching this and ended up using the idea. Oh well. :) I have to paint another male fairy soon. I haven't done that in a while... though I do still have my rat master elf guy to paint. ;) If you remember that sketch from a couple of years ago, I'm still hoping to paint him one of these days!

The Storms #2: Lightning Sketch

Here is the next sketch for my storms series. Lightning! I had so many problems with this one!! It gave me such a hard time. I just couldn't seem to get everything to work together. First I couldn't draw her face and then her arm was too long! I almost gave up on it altogether! I finally decided to transfer the parts of the sketch that I did like and begin on a new sheet of paper since the other had so many eraser marks. lol. Well, I finally got something that I can work with out of it. :) I'm pretty happy with it. She has the intensity that I wanted. I may fix a thing or two before I paint it, but I'm going to move on to the next one.

I have to sketch one more and I'm going to start painting them. I thought I'd be more likely to keep up with the series, if I had them all sketched out first. :)

Here's Rain if you haven't seen it: RAIN

Oh, and I almost forgot... I'm having a special offer on both my website and ebay store through February 9th. Buy one print get one free!! Visit either my website or ebay store for details.

The Storms...

Happy New Year, everyone!! Hopefully 2009 will be awesome! :)

This is a series that I've wanted to do for a while, and I've begun to do some of the sketching for them. It will be a series of storm goddesses. I think there will be at least 3, but I may do more if I get motivated. I want to get at least 3 of them sketched out before I start painting them. I have a fascination with the weather. I love storms... as long as they don't get too severe!

Above is a portion of my sketch for Rain. I cropped most of the background out of it. That will come together in the painting for the most part anyway. And all of her foot will be present. ;) I've made a few adjustments to this since I scanned it. So I've since adjusted her far cheek area a little. I'm pretty happy with her, so I'm going to move onto the next one. As of now, I'm planning on that one being Lightning. :)

I've also started another ACEO. I did the sketch for it and all I need to do is paint it. And those are pretty quick. It's another little dragon one. I haven't felt the greatest the past couple of days, so I've taken a couple days off. I hope to get some painting done tomorrow though!

And finally, I've added a few mugs to my Zazzle gallery! Those are fun to design! I'm going to do some more soon. I need to add more stuff to my Zazzle shop anyway. :) See all mugs HERE

Bed of Skulls mug by elvenstarart
Design personalised mugs With Zazzle.com
See other Creatures Races Mugs

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!!