Illustration Day One

Slow in the market as expected. I decided to start on the illustration project for my story books instead of sitting there moaning. It's really COLD.
Pencil first - as I didn't know what I'll do eventually - acrylic? oil? water color? Or even collage? I thought I leave that decision to a later date. I should find out first what this woman (me, of course) could do first before I assign her more specific task. So, yes, the harmless pencil first.

Drawing seemed not overly difficult to her - of course with a lot of eraser work, two images came out before too long. One is the swirl before the mirror - I like to know if she could do the swirl. One is flying high up - the perspective was a little challenge.

My design is to make the main object(s) - where the eye should go - with stronger and more realistic and to leave the rest in kind of sketchy and cartoon style. Still, this is only in an experiment stage.

Let's see what tomorrow will bring.

Skyline WA

I went online and searched under "paper painting" - an artist came up. Elizabeth Nelson. I was amazed by the way she uses acrylics first before putting paper pieces on. I was very very tempted to follow suit and planned to do my next piece her way. But then, when I started this piece, my "task mode" kicked in again (logically, I still think it's harder to use paper to deliver the shades in the background, although my painting skill is not as good as my collage making), so I chose the long way this time again. After I made the background, I thought it would be much easiers if I painted the thin branches, I was this close to start painting.... Now I have done it, I'm glad I did it with paper only. 

Painting? Next time. I promised.

Puzzle D'Arte

How fun now I have a kindergarden sign in the market. I think this will bring fun to my booth. My neighbor Sue is so excited about this business, she constantly calls me and shares more puzzle ideas with me. I hope my business will take off and one day I can hire her to work for me.

I can see my hand was kind of shaking when writing the sign, but I tried many times to "improve" it, failed. Still the first time writing is the best. So I decided to leave the shaking hand as is. Just so it is more "real" and "personal" - I think.

I also will give my magnets a cute name "Magnettos" - and besides art images, I will try to print some "fun mottos" - (but where to find fun mottos??? Hmmmm... maybe I could find some Chinese words??? Ideas, ideas, ideas.

This is such a hard business - I made between $0 to $45 in the last 6 days in the market. Plus it's freezing cold. But I somehow can start seeing the light, and start enjoying the fun of building my little booth in this little corner of the universe.