Art from Russia

A couple of weeks ago I made an awesome trade with a new trading friend from Russia. This was back when trading was still relatively new to me. I gave away two custom paintings, one of some elephants because they’re pretty popular! And I also repainted Buckden Towers since my first one sold on eBay.

 

Russian post is apparently a little sluggish so I was worried when it took nearly a month for them to arrive, but it’s all ok and we’re both happy bunnies.

 

I am thoroughly pleased with the ATCs I received. Victoria does these amazing tree doodles with some awesome vibrant colours and face collage, such a unique way of throwing things together. Collage is something I’ve never been able to achieve well. We will probably do more trading in the future!

 

Check out her blog over at 365 day Zentangle Project

 

I also got an altered envie – which inspired me into doing my own. I really love the trading community!

 

 

Thanks for looking :)

Baby Georgie Atkin

As promised here she is - the cute Georgie Mary Ann Atkin.

Born 16th April 2013 at 2.48am - 7lbs 10oz, 18 inches long.



Georgie is Born - Watercolour ATC

She is now nine days old, given me three sleepless nights, five not so bad nights and one good night of sleep.

She has thrown up on two baby grows as soon as they've been put on.

Georgie sees Cookies - Watercolour ATC

Gone through three bags of nappies already.

Two packs of wet wipes.

Georgie Gremlin - Watercolour ATC

She always sneezes three times in a row.

She gets hiccups about three times a day.

Woe is Georgie - Watercolour ATC

She slept through us using the hoover in the same room.

She is my pride and joy and can't believe after only nine days her little personality is shining through.

Sunflowers!

So over at Watercolour Wednesday the theme is Sunflowers - (be sure to check their page out for other awesome sunflowers. Over on the ATC trading website there's a swap for sunflowers, so two projects complete using the same theme, how awesome. So here I submit my four sunflower ATCs which are intended for the ATC Swap. They were just going to be normal sunflowers, but I couldn't resist putting cute little smiles on them all.

Content Sunflower - Watercolour ATC

Marching to the Sun - Watercolour ATC

Sunflower gets a Tan - Watercolour ATC

Two Happy Chappys - Watercolour ATC

A very quick update - I have now given birth! YAY to the most beautiful baby girl - Georgie Atkin - 7lbs 10oz and about 18 inches long. She is very cute and in my next blog entry I have been working on a set of 4 ATCs of just her! Stay tuned.

I welcome any and all comments.

Illustration Friday - Wild

This week's theme over at Illustration Friday is "Wild" which ties in very well with just about all the artwork I've been doing recently. So here's my take on it this week. They've obviously spotted something -- cookies? Foxes like cookies right??

Wily Foxes - Watercolour ATC

Yawn, still no baby - 10 days over due... at least I'm booked in for Wednesday for an induction, being pregnant will NOT last forever!!!

Creative Tuesday - Stripes (and I snuck in some Spots too)!

Over on Creative Tuesday is the new theme stripes. Well I've spent a lot of my time painting giraffes who don't have stripes. So out comes the zebra! Never painted a zebra before but really they're just short stripy giraffes - right?? Anyhow I decided to try my hand at my first ever "inchies" For those who don't know, an inchie is literally 1 inch by 1 inch squares of card that you paint on. You can either paint miniscule art on them or do what I've done which is to create a mosaic/jigsaw. I drew them before I cut them down but painted them as individual squares, mainly because I didn't want the paint to run into the others. Although this might have made for an interesting effect.

 

Ok maybe I got a giraffe mixed in there somewhere - since my zebra is half stripy and half spotty...!

Spotty and Stripy Zebra - 6 x Watercolour Inchies

Then I got a tad carried away, rather than repaint the whole thing I decided to digitally alter it to see what each inchie looked like with different shadings. Turns out to look pretty awesome:

Digitally Altered Spotty and Stripy Zebra Inchies

And then for giggles:

Funky!

Head on over to Creative Tuesday to see what other people have worked on this fortnight :)

Playing with "Fruit" - Artist's Play Room

So today I'm 8 days overdue, feeling rather fed up and needed a bit of a morale boost. I didn't really feel like painting to be honest but I also decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and just do it anyway.

 

Over at Artis'ts Play Room (A new co op I've found) the theme for this week is fruit. So I went downstairs hoping we had some! After eating about half the grapes I then positioned them and drew them. Ah so glad we had fruit in, I don't really know what a banana looks like unless it's right there! Mainly because I have cookies burned in the mind!

 

Pop on over to Artist's Play Room to see other "Fruit" inspired art, although be quick, as usual I'm a late submitter.

Fruit - Watercolour ATC

Elephant and Giraffe - The Adventurous Couple

OK I knew it when I started painting those red giraffes I would be hooked. Over on the ATC trading site I joined a swap called "Giraffes and Elephants Galore" - it got me thinking, wouldn't they make an awesome albeit strange couple! I needed to come up with 4 ATCs for the swap and came up with these 4 funny scenes!



Giraffe and Elephant take a trip to Space - Watercolour ATC

Giraffe and Elephant enjoy a Sundae - Watercolour ATC

Draw me like those French Girls - Watercolour ATC

Let Down your Hair - Watercolour ATC

These are the most fun I've ever had with ATCs and there are so many more I can do, going to start compiling a list of memorable TV/Movie moments and other funny situations.

 

Feel free to comment some suggestions, love to hear what you think!

Giraffes Travel around the World and Moon!

After I did the Urban Giraffe - I was further inspired:

Giraffes Where they Should be - Watercolour ATC

The two giraffes are where they would normally belong, but then I took them on a trip...

Giraffes in Australia - Watercolour ATC

They go to Australia! Don't they look cute in their little hats - and Ayers Rock looks very un - red!

Giraffe on the Moon - Watercolour ATC

And then a GREAT leap forward to space - yippee for independent giraffe!!!!


Oh my god these ATCs were the most fun I've ever had, I am thinking of a giraffe and elephant collection next - sitting in a diner both drinking a sundae... they could both go to space, although would have to think about a modified space helmet for elephant...

Any suggestions - I'd love to hear them!

Illustration Friday - Urban

So this week's Illustration Friday's topic is Urban - hmmm, now something I've done a lot lately is painting buildings and I've been painting African animals. Could I combine the two? Why not - I'm the artist! I'm in the process of painting a set of these but thought I'd base one of them around this theme.

So here is a curious giraffe feeling somewhat out of place in this heavily built up area. He has been meandering around wondering where the lush trees are? Maybe he can reach a potted plant or two!



Urban Giraffe ATC - Watercolour

Head on over to Illustration Friday to see an enormous amount of amazing Urban themed work!

A Handy Challenge

Hmmm, so baby is still not here and I'm a day overdue, yawn, she'll get here eventually! In the meantime I am still itching to do artwork. I told myself I'd stop agreeing to anymore ATC trades but what did I do - yup I agreed to a swap. Except these are different slightly. I am sending 3 of my cards out to a host in America - once the deadline has been and gone that host will take all the cards that everyone has submitted, mix them up a bit and send them back out so that I get 3 cards from 3 different artists. It's fun and you never know what you'll get.

"Interpretation of the Hand" ATC Swap - Watercolour

The theme was "Interpretations of the Hand". I wasn't too sure how to colour these, normally I'd have 3 elements on the card to colour orange, blue and green. This time however I only had 2, the hand and the background. So with my fiancé's input we settled on a black and white hand and colourful wash of complimentary colours. It came out far far better than imagined!

The extra card is for the host by the way :)

Check back in a couple of weeks to see what hand cards I get, can't wait!

Inspiration Avenue – April

It’s all about the rain and flowers in April… and yet where is the rain? All we seem to have are frosty days of snow, and more snow… hmmm.

 

Well here is my first ever entry into the new world of Inspiration Avenue, the theme is anything to do with April, so I submit the flowers that are in fact struggling to be seen at the moment.

 

These are tulips:

Spring Flowers - Tulips - Watercolour ACEO

 

And of course can’t miss the daffodils!

 

 

Both of these ACEO cards can be found on my ebay.

Creative Tuesday - "Newborn" Mugzey Bears??

I think this is a highly appropriate topic for me this fortnight given that I'm due to give birth tomorrow!!! The entries have to be in by the 9th, initially I was going to wait until I had my very own newborn that I could paint/draw.

 

 

 

But then look what I found in her moses basket...

 

 

Mugzey's Infiltrate Georgie's Bed - 3.5" x 5" Watercolour on Card

 

...dear oh dear, the Mugzey Bears are at it again...

 

 

...last week I caught them trying on her clothes and sitting on her sofa...

 

 

...I think they're just as excited about the new arrival as I am...

 

 

This is my contribution to Creative Tuesday (go check out for other great artwork) - yet another blog I've found that hosts theme weeks, I can see me getting addicted to these as well - but what a great idea, makes you think outside the box and come up with new art frequently.

Traded ATC Bunnies from Down Under

Ooooh how exciting to look forward to the postman every morning again like the good old days of pen palling! Now it's all about the trades. This morning I got my much anticipated trade from Lyndell McCubbin who custom made me 3 bunny ATCs in return for 3 custom made elephants. That's where the elephant craze started! If you refer back to this thread: Acrylic vs Watercolour, I traded the first three images. She is very happy with them since they also arrived for her yesterday.

 

And here they are:

Amongst the Flowers Custom ATC - by Lyndell McCubbin



Blending in Custom ATC - by Lyndell McCubbin

Enjoying the Scenery Custom ATC - by Lyndell McCubbin

This one at the bottom is my favourite, I love the textures created and I am in love with that adorable cotton tail!!!

 

I am addicted to trading, even when I've told myself to stop - only 2 days from giving birth (theoretically) and I still want more!

My First Illustration Friday

Last Friday I popped on over to Illustration Friday which is a blog that encourages you to do artwork based on the theme of the week. When I was there the theme was "Swim" which was perfect because I had literally just painted a turtle. So I was ready, wrote my blog up and uploaded my pictures, then I refreshed the IF blog.... They had changed the subject, oops. I obviously caught the very end of the last one. Haha, not to worry the new theme is "Egg" which I thought was good. I've only tried out zentangle a few times and I'll admit I've not been too happy with my results. So throughout all the trades I've had recently I studied some of the patterns and why they looked good, certain shading techniques etc.

 

For my entry I covered the ATC in water and dabbed blotches of blue and green which has a nice ripple effect. Card warped horribly so had to press it back into submission! Then I made an egg - in this case it's an Easter Egg. I actually did three at once, but given that I could only send one image to the theme I've chosen my favourite one. The one I did last, perhaps by this point I'd learnt what worked. I am proud to say this is one of my better zentangles. Once my baby is born I'll probably trade these!

 

Tangled Easter Egg ACEO - Watercolour and Pen

 

Go on over to Illustration Friday, they have lots of neat artwork on display, very inspirational :)