Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!!

I still cannot believe that 2015 has come and gone. It just flew by soooooo fast! I am looking forward to what 2016 has in store for me. 2015 was a banner year–I feel that both my digital and fine art skills have grown to a new level and I have been getting such great response from friends and family when I post images of the projects that I have done. Things are lining up nicely and I recently just finished up designing my resume. Now I can start sending it out with my inquiry about an internship to a few design firms that I have found and would be interested in working for them.

I do want to show to you guys two pieces of art that I made as Christmas gifts.

The first piece I did was a still life of my brother-in-law's cat Duke, who passed away earlier in 2015 due to kidney failure. It is heartbreaking when a pet passes on because they become a part of your family. Seeing how much Dave loved Duke, I knew that I wanted to do a drawing or painting of him as a present for Christmas. My sister sent me a bunch of images she had taken on her camera phone, immediately I was saddened that I had never taken photos of Duke with my Nikon because the quality of the image for the projection would have been a lot crisper than what I had to work with, but I was able to block in the colors nicely.

I found the image that I felt captured the essence of Duke and wanted to do it in color. The next decision that I needed to make was to pick a medium, and I was torn between color pencils and oil paints. I went rummaging through my color pencils and realized that I did not have enough of a variety of color pencils to be able to the drawing justice whereas I still have a lot of oil paints left over from my painting class.Oil paints it is then! Here is a photo of the painting being gifted to Dave on Christmas day:

It was received well. Dave sat there speechless and I saw tears begin to well up in his eyes. He gave me a big hug and said he was going to hang it up near Duke's ashes (I had failed to mention that they had Duke cremated and have his ashes displayed on a shelf above their fire place). I was happy that I was able to finish this in time. I was a little nervous that I would not be able to be and even my sister thought I would not get it done, but I made sure to get up around 8 a.m. every day and would work on it for about 10-12 hours, with breaks in between to feed myself. Seeing his reaction was worth all of it and I am happy that Duke will always be there watching over him.

The second piece that I did was another cat drawing. This time it was my boyfriend Jamie's best friend Tim. He too lost his cat, named Mozart, earlier in 2015 to kidney failure, and was completely devastated by it. It hurt me so much to see just how much it affected Tim. There were a few times while we were hanging out with Tim and his girlfriend that he'd look over to the sliding door because the wind stirred the curtains just right, as if a Mozart was walking in from the patio, and would just breakdown. He loved that kittie with all his heart and soul and it still brings tears to my eyes when I think of Mozart and Tim. They were basically a single entity. Mozart was Tim's partner-in-crime to me. Wherever Tim was, Mozart was close by.

So I asked his girlfriend for images of Mozart, and again I was mad at myself for not taking photos of Mozart with my own camera. Luckily, I had rememere that I had taken a few on my camera phone one day because Mozart was in such a cute mood and was modeling for me. I went through the images that I had and found one that I felt captured Mozart perfectly. I sent it to Tim's girlfriend to get her opinion on it and she said it was perfect.

Like with Duke, I took sometime to decide on what medium would be best for this piece. Mozart was a tuxedo kitty (like my Zoe) so I was leaning towards pen and ink, but I did want to add some splash of color to his eyes because he had such gorgeous eyes. I had recently bought myself a nice kit of Derwent Inktense color pencils. They work the same way as watercolor pencils but are so much more vibrant in color.

So I did a few test runs on getting the color just right for Mozarts eyes and found the right layering of colors that made them come to life. I then projected the image onto a piece of heavy watercolor paper (for the texture as well as being able to handle the inktense pencils). I then went through and did a base layer of hatch marks with a mixture of 5mm and 8mm micorn pens, and I made sure to space out the marks in areas were there would be highlights on Mozart's fur. When it came to shading around Mozart's chin and the inside of his ears, I changed over to stippling because I feel it is easier to get a nice light shading that way versus hatch marks, because my hand tends to shake a little too much for my liking to get nice light delicate line shading.

I added more layers of hatch marks, moving down to smaller sized micorn pens (1mm and 2mm) to fill in the white spaces but still conveying the feeling of cat hair. Once I had all of Mozart's body done, I stood back from it to see how it looked without the eyes being colored in yet. He looked great, but there was something missing. It didn't feel like Mozart was staring out at me. The eyes NEEDED to have color in them.

I did a series of layers consisting of a mixture of yellow-green (the highlights), dark green (to add some shadow value), and an olive green (to add the shadow of the lid over the eye). Then I wet a small water color brush and brushed over the colors. Once the colors were dried I took a white inktense pencil and went over the yellow-green to neutralize how bright it was. Once both eyes were done, I again got up and stood back from it to see if the drawing was complete. It was nearly there, but there was something that was still missing...The nose! Mozart had such a cute pink nose that stood bout just as much as his eyes. I took the shiraz color inktense pencil and did a light wash over his nose, and once that was dried I added another dry layer near the base of his nose to add a small shadow to it and BAM! That was the final piece that was needed to make Mozart come to life in the drawing. And here he is ladies and gentlemen, the Mr. Kittly himself: Mozart

This was well received by both Tim and his girlfriend. It also invoked tears from them both, as well as myself because I saw how happy Tim was when he saw it was Mozart.