Smile!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing!

And we went to the woods. It's a very rare occasion when I get to take my big flump of a pup to the woods which is awful given how much he loves it. No matter how bad you feel, seeing your dog light up with pure joy is one of the best feelings! 

So we took to the road and found his favorite woods and had a good long walk surrounded by nature and laughs. Trust me, when you spend time with my dog you realise that life is for laughing at!

So after the most refreshing walk and flumps splash around in a pond it was time for home and work!

Well, at least work for me... the flump got to be lazy and sunbathe for the rest of the day when he wasn't clambering on to my lap for hugs and kisses. I love it when he comes to distract me :P Who could resist the huge teddy bear! 

Anyway! 

I had the idea for a sunny summer idea for a set of three designs. I had the first idea of a bear as I seem to be having a bit of a bear moment lately and then added a wolf to the mix... the OH then convinced me that a mountain lion would be an amusing addition to the mix!

So of course, I wanted to draw these guys wearing sun glasses... cos who wouldn't want a grinning wolf in sunnies?

The original plan was to have the three linearts completed by Friday... what happened was I sat down at my desk for a good few productive hours and now as the picture below explains have all three linearts completed!

This is obviously a huge bonus to me and means that I can have them digitised and coloured by the end of the week instead which then in turn lightens my mega work load!

Seriously the to-do list is constantly growing and never shrinking (I secretly love this)

I'm also very glad that I was convinced to do the mountain lion, she may be my favorite of the bunch... although the grinning wolf is close...

I just had to do something cheerful and bright, the constellation series is of course colourful but lacks the brightness I'm after so this is an extra addition.

Once these are scanned and coloured they will have a whole new life and I can't wait, it's taking all of my will power not to pull an all nighter to do it! 

Just have to remember, sleep is good... Family will also kill me if I burn out :P

The sunnies designs will be available through my redbubble shop by the end of the week and during May something big will be happening.

I'm going to be expanding and if all goes to plan will be offering signed prints of my work so if you're interested keep an eye out!

I am also considering some limited addition prints with something extra... all shall be revealed soon!

So if you want to get your paws on my designs keep a look out in May when shiny sparkly things will be happening!

Have a beautiful week and make your own happy! :)

You didn't save!?

I love using Photoshop for my work, working in both traditional and digital media together has become one of my favourite styles to work in and adds an awesome variety to my working day, I can spend the morning sketching in a pad and the afternoon sat at my laptop, pen and tablet in hand.

That's always nice and freeing. It's always wonderful when you also have many projects on the go as you can just swap files and play around, mistakes are easily fixed with the press of ctrl + z (undo) and layers can be deleted if they're just that little bit too much.

But... and this is a big but... when your laptop decides to mess about and incorrectly save the piece you were working on, losing most of your hard work... you then want to ditch digital and go back to good old fashioned pen and paper!

I had been working on a raptor design for myself (and the OH, he jumped in too) and had put so many hours in... we're talking over 24 hours of work! So you can understand the sheer horror I experienced this morning as I started up Photoshop and tried to open the file that should have been saved as a .psd file... Instead I'm facing a .2 file that will do nothing.

I'm sure my laptop is sniggering to itself right now as I flap about in frustration knowing there's nothing I can actually do to get the file back.

Instead... It's time to start over.

Sure that sounds simple... except I'm currently staying with the OH and left my tablet at home... I'd have to do the painful mouse painting which is possible, after all I learnt to paint in photoshop with a mouse in the first place and am quite confident with the technique but it takes a lot longer to work on, at times doubling work time if not more.

So I need to decide what I'm going to do here, I must stop myself from glaring and growling at the laptop... it was having a fit when I was trying to save the file so I should've known really... not to mention I should have been saving a lot more frequently than I was!

There's a lesson to anybody who wants to get in to digital art! SAVE!! just repeatedly save until you're saving more than working! 

Well not that dramatic but you get what I mean.

Never underestimate the power of that save button. It's a very nice button. It keeps your sanity.

In more cheerful news I've been inspired by looking at bird paintings... Sounds strange but that's me. It's got me craving more traditional work (not brought on by the PS incident...) I haven't done an acrylic painting for quite some time.

The majority of my recent work is graphite on bristol board before being scanned and put in to Photoshop where it goes more digital. As I mentioned earlier this is something I enjoy but I do miss the mess and freedom you can have with good old traditional mediums.

The last real fun I had where I could just be free and do anything was the corvid speed paint challenge I gave myself last year (pictured above).

This challenge was done by giving myself 30 minutes and a very restricted paint palette. For most of these birds I have white and black with a small amount of blue apart from the chough which obviously had red and the jay which had an extra colour of brown.

It was lots of fun and I got messy which is always a good thing!

So seeing this new art work online and then going back over these guys has inspired me to give painting another go. I have colourful and wacky ideas filling my mind and I'm left with this strong urge to splat paint all over the place!

So lots of frustration mixed with fun plotting going on here! 

Really can't complain ;)

It's also my big fluffy dudes 6th Birthday today!!

He's changed in looks so much over the years but oh he's still the puppy he came home as... just a little less psychotic! 

My amazing boy who made me realise I'm a dog person and changed my life in so many ways. I got him for my 20th birthday (Not on a whim! took over a year of prep and thinking before we got him) and we're growing together... I'm 26 in exactly two weeks time! Oh golly gosh...

Time to get working!

Smile and be amazing :)