Hello Jello!

March has been Jello month at bootcamp…jiggly, wiggly, colorful, and sometimes a bit gross (yes at some point in time it was all the rage to throw those left-overs into a jello mold….spaghetti, veggies, Spam?? I think my own dear mother may have snuck some mystery meat into the jello in the mid 70's…I'm dating myself here!) But my memories of Jello are mainly good and sweet….I even make a  yummy fruity jello salad for the holidays, so this was familiar and fun subject matter to draw.

I had a good time with the mini assignment, making a page of sweet treats with black pen and copic markers. I even got brave and played around in photoshop with my jello icons.

The main assignment was to create a jello-inspired design for the bolt fabric market. I went back to the drawing board and drew a gazillion fancy cake stands topped with all sorts of sugary confections. Lilla gave us her Monday surprise which was the "nougat palette" and some tips on using neutrals in our work. I was immediately inspired by the dusty and pastel pinks, soft blues and purples, and pops of acid yellow & lime green and envisioned a sweet little circus world in these colors. In my final piece I ended up going with a little brighter versions of the colors. Here are some of my initial sketches.

and my palette

painting the icons

I had a couple more spots planned, but time ran out, so off to the computer I went. 

I found some tutorials on making patterns in PS, but just didn't have enough time to practice, so I did what I could.

I submitted this one to the gallery.

I am looking forward to trying to make a true repeat pattern with some coordinates when I have some extra time, but for now its off to catch up on Etsy shop orders and prepare for MATS part A which starts next week…bootcamp has been the perfect warm-up!

Weekend Santas

squeezed in a few extra minutes this weeekend to do these 2:

Santa # 14 ~ acrylics, pencil, pastels on canvas board

 Santa # 15 ~copics, pastels, micron on paper

Santas 11, 12 &13

#11 ~copics & pastels

#12 ~copics, pastels & micron

# 13 ~ polymer clay

Have a wonderful weekend!

Santas 8 & 9

It was a busy weekend! On top of everything else going on, we decided to move all of my art stuff, which has been slowly taking over the living space in our family room. While it is a good size room, it feels tiny with all of us plus the dogs and all my junk packed in it.....so we spent the entire sunday moving and setting up a studio in a spare room....which housed most of my supplies anyways...more on this later, with pictures!

And today was a snow day.....a full house! Here are my santas from the past 2 days....both dobe in my new studio YAY!!

#8 ~ acrylics on paper

#9 ~ copics, pastel pencils

Santa catch-up

Only the first week and I am already playing catch-up! So here are a few from the past 3 days.
All done with copics, pastel pencils, 7 black micron.

Santa # 5

Santa #6

Santa # 7

Thanks for looking!

Santa #4 and company

I sketched the icons quickly on graph paper and photocopied them, colored with copics, cut them out and glued them down....voila! Quick and fun. I like the rough pencil lines and grid lines peaking through here and there. Then I played around with the background color in photoshop. The white background is the original.

Slowly acquiring some ps skills!! Taking a course in January, watching lots of tutorials right now.

In clay news....2 more days of free shipping in my shop! Stop in and grab some stocking stuffers : )