My trip to Barcelona and Copenhagen

I went on a trip with my husband to Barcelona and Copenhagen. It was such fun! The two places sound random but we were piggy backing off of his business trip. So we only had to buy flight tickets for me. It was amazing to explore the streets of Barcelona. The Museums were awesome- there was a chocolate museum! The tickets were chocolate bars! (note the gift bag in the above picture: it's full of chocolate) Both Barcelona and Copenhagen had a lot of bikes but Copenhagen had more, hands down. Copenhagen was covered in bronze statues. I particularly loved the Assistens Kirkegard in Copenhagen, it was a park and a cemetery rolled into one (I love cemeteries, more particularly old ones). Hans Christian Andersen's grave was there. By the way, I was happy in both places in spite of the fact that I am not smiling in the first picture!

I could go on, of course, but I really just want to share my sketchbook pages. 

Click on the pictures to view them larger.

Barcelona.

I like bottles…

Near the Arc de Triomphe

 View from the room we were staying in while in Barcelona.

Just a pretty street with a place to sit.

Copenhagen

Direct painting (drawing with my brush)

I love this one. The colors are nice

I flew home a week before my husband  (business trip, remember), so I had a long flight home with no one to talk to. So I drew! And they are all done with just a Bic Pen. I was pretty pleased with myself for skipping the pencil.

I was listening to a audio book so I could draw.
I really like the first dragon, he's cute. (Iron Hearted Violet is a book not his name!)

the mermaid and the deep sea diver

So I have finished my little watercolor studies. Ideally they would be super simplified but I wanted to flesh them out. I think I will probably stick with the first one for Reality Not Included 2 but I want to take some of the others to finish for myself. 

 This one is the most interesting one to me.

 I like the mermaids face and hair in this one. Other parts need work.

 I want to take this one to finish as well.

The original watercolor of this didn't turn out so good so I digitally reworked it to make it feel better.

watercolor study

I'm working out some ideas for a piece I want to submit for Reality Not Included 2. I've done a study from one of the thumbnails. It has some anatomy/foreshortening problems to work out. I think I want to play with some of the others too. I should probably do more thumbnails too...

The Dragonologist

I made this for the ArtOrder Challenge- dragon world. I thought that in a world with dragons, what are some of the ways you could study dragons? This image shows a glimpse into the perilous life of the professional dragonologist. 

I picked my favorite composition out of the 20+ tumbnails I made. Then I refined it on the iPad, then printed it out so I could transfer it to watercolor paper. I made the watercolor below first. (I did a Vine while I was at it!) Then took it into Photoshop and  simplified the background and darkened the cliffs. I decided to make the dragon green and digitally painted more lights/shadows and refined certain parts on the dragon and the glider/man. The results of the contest will be up next week. I'm kinda excited! I bet there is going to be a lot of cool art!

IF- haunt

I bet ghosts really like to haunt; but I don't think the ones haunted like it very much... 

This is also a self portrait (bet you didn't know I was a ghost!). Happy Halloween!

IF- water

Even though I have several works that are related to water, this is one of my favorite pieces. I would still like to do an original work for the IF prompt (we'll see if I get to it!), but for now I will use this.

IF- Mirror

I thought I would post this for Illustration Friday.

swing a giraffe

I'm sure it's been thought of, but hasn't everything? I think it would be nice to have a purple giraffe to play on. 

I drew this eye while watching a video demo and then decided to paint it. I think it turned out nicely.

I think the guy has a lot of very good and entertaining tutorials. He bases several of them on Andrew Loomis' drawing methods. Here is the video I was watching:

knight

I have been making art, I just haven't been uploading it! I had a lot of fun with this one. I have more that I'll post in a little bit...

This one is super tiny, like two inches tall. I like the original drawing better though...

Spectrum 18

I noticed in my original post for this selkie painting I mentioned that I had entered it in contests and had not gotten in. Well it wasn't true, though at the time I thought it was. My selkie was chosen to be included in Spectrum 18 magazine! I was very excited. There are so many amazing artists included in their magazine, I feel like it is a huge honor just to make it in! I didn't share this right when I found out because I wanted to wait until it was available for purchase. They send all the artists a free copy, I was so excited to get mine. It's actually been a month or two since I received it. I just got distracted with life and forgot about posting it.

self portraits

So I was short on ideas of what to draw thursday so I picked the old standby (myself). Instead of using a mirror, I used my computer's camera to get an interesting angle to draw my self from. It was also nice because my eyes could be looking an other direction besides straight out of the picture. The top one is more of a caricature and is painted with watercolors. I know, I know, I was feeling like being strangely obvious or something and chose to label myself "ME". 

Sea Dwarf

Hooray, I finally scanned my work from last semester!

This was for one of my classes I got to pick my assignments, which was cool. This one goes along with my selkie painting. I was reading Scandinavian Folktales and really enjoyed reading a story about a man's experience with a sea dwarf. I guess a sea dwarf is like a leprechaun of the sea, he is human on top and seal on bottom (almost like a mermaid). He's very mischievous and very tricky. Things didn't end well for the man who caught him, but then I'm not sure if it was the sea dwarfs fault or his own. I read it in a book or else I would post the link.

This is a color study I did by coloring my thumbnail in Photoshop. Even though it's just a thumbnail, I really like it. It has nice texture.

Oh and here are some fun watercolor studies I did while watching Disney's Oceans.

selkie girl

Here is a painting I did not too long ago that I am very happy with. I entered it into to competitions in hope of getting in, but alas, it was for all for not... Nevertheless, I am still pleased with it. Watercolor on 190lb. Arches watercolor paper. She is a selkie, a seal that turns into a human. Some one has stolen her sealskin so she can't turn back into a seal.

fairy cookery

I made this for my favorite cousin (I have more than one...) Katie, who was just married yesterday. I didn't have a lot of time so this took 2-3 hours, if I had more time I might have done a little more with it. But as it is, I like how it turned out. It has strawberry hair just like my cousin's, I thought it would be a nice match. It is watercolor with inked outlines. I did washes and splatters on the paper so it would look like an aged and faded cookbook.

little red

This is watercolor outlined with a fine pen. About 4 or 5 years ago I took some pictures of my little sisters in costume to use for art. So I've been wanting to use them forever and I finally used one and I was able to do it for a class! I have found more success with my watercolors by working out my reference ahead of time in photoshop so that I have a very clear idea of where I'm going, a necessity since watercolors are not very forgiving. I really like how the forest in the background turned out.

Here is the original photo I took. I didn't like the trees, they were too small so I found a better forest and created the reference I wanted in photoshop. As you can see, she also is not wearing a beautiful red cape. I looked at a lot of cloaked individuals to make up my own. And then of course I needed a wolf to stalk my little girl. My final photoshop reference is below. I don't worry about it looking perfect (she's not perfectly cut out and the cape isn't painted photo real) but it needs to show me that my final piece will be convincing.

Bestiary

I am pretty happy with how this piece turned out. I painted it in acrylic and applied gold leaf. I wanted to capture the unique and distorted views of animals in medieval bestiaries. This is a whale. They believed that the whale would rest on the surface of the water so long that plants would grow on their backs. Sailors would then mistake them for islands and land on the whale. When they built a fire, the whale would get hot and dive back under the water much to the sailors' misfortune.

Down here is a study of a different design I did in watercolor. I donated it to the vending machine show at BYU.