Trading with Belinda

I traded some prints with Belinda and I finally have them framed and on a wall...although this is just in my studio and I'm still planning where to hang them permanently. I love them so much! Belinda's work is so gorgeous and I'm absolutely delighted to have these on the wall to enjoy every day. Thanks again!

An experiment

A few days ago I decided to try placing an ad on a blog to see what would happen. I've loved being featured on blogs but blog posts seem to disappear so quickly under all the new posts. So I happened to see a mention of ad space available on Where the Lovely Things Are just as I was thinking about advertising anyway and I thought "why not?"

I know my way around Photoshop pretty well but I never tried to make anything animated before. The only hard part was picking out my images - it's ridiculously easy to make them rotate. Anyway, here's what it looks like (although I guess it won't show it animating here):

And here's a shot of it on the blog:

I'm watching the stats and I'll let you all know how it goes! Head over to Mallory's lovely blog to see the fancy animated version.

Thanksgiving

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US, and I'm not a huge fan. I always hated turkey (even before I stopped eating meat) and I don't care for mashed potatoes or gravy. Oh, and I don't watch football. But I do like giving thanks. Here's a few things I'm thankful for this year:

-getting my art career started

-finishing my degree

-living in a place where I can keep my horse and have miles of trails and back roads to ride on

-making new friends online (hi guys!)

-planting a new garden in a milder climate - some of my pot marigolds are still blooming and it's almost December!

-being close enough to a large city that I have a lot of art opportunities but I can still live out in the woods

And plenty more. Speaking of art opportunities, I went into Seattle yesterday to talk to a jewelry store owner about exhibiting in March as part of the Fremont art walk and I'm now officially booked in. Should be fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Learning to love fall.

I've always disliked fall because it means that winter is coming and winter means snow. Snow is pretty but only if you can stay indoors and not have to drive in it or push a wheelbarrow full of horse poo through it. But now we live somewhere else, and winter is going to mean rain, not snow. And it's cold, but it's never going to get down to 20 below zero (as it occasionally does where we used to live). I even went riding a couple weeks ago on a nice day. So I'm finding my irritation and anger towards the leaves for changing color and the days for getting shorter is gradually going away. I still like summer, but this year I'm actually enjoying looking at all the leaves that are falling.

Second art walk

The November Ballard art walk was last night and I think it went really well. I gave out a lot of business cards once I hit on the idea of telling people there was a tiny piece of art on the back :) The turnout was a little on the modest side, so I'm thinking about trying to get in on one during summer because I think more people are willing to wander the streets when it's warm rather than 40 degrees and drizzly. But mainly I'm just happy at this stage to be adding things to my resume and it feels like I'm making some progress.

They just keep falling...

Another leaf. There's so many interesting ones I can't seem to help myself. This is 11x14" on Yupo.

I'm also sketching and researching and figuring out what my next project is going to be. Once I've finished with these leaves, I think I have one more interesting plant to draw (seed pods on a witch hazel bush) and then I'm going to be shifting gears. This part of the process is always frustrating at the time but it's important that I have a good idea of where I'm going and have enough ideas to keep me working for a while.

Leaf

I'm still very keen on these leaves with the holes in them...I keep finding more that I like under the trees. This is 5x7" on Yupo.