Pet fish sketches

In between projects today, I thought I'd sketch our new pets. We have two betta fish (kept in separate tanks, of course). They are fun to watch and sketch!  The white one's name is Thunder, and the blue one's name is Daydream.  My 5-year-old named them both.

New project, coming soon!

Hi you guys!

Are we having an awesome rockin' creative spring so far?  I sure hope so!  March was interesting for me..  Lots of emailing with potential clients, negotiation, and paperwork.  I am always amazed at just how much office work is involved in my job - when I first started, I thought it would be 80% painting, 20% paperwork..  It's more like 70/30, or some days 60/40!  But I love it all, and I especially love my clients!

In between the busy-ness stuff, I went on a vacation to Maui with my hubby and came back super inspired.  I've been painting away as much as I can, in preparation for something brand new!  I hope for it to launch in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here is a sneak peek:

Talk to you soon, folks!  Have a great day.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope all of you are having a wonderful February!

Live Sketches

I was the parent volunteer helper in my child's kindergarten class today.  As luck would have it, their gym time was rescheduled to happen while I was there, and I was allowed to come along and sketch during their special gymnastics session!  What a treat.  Balance beams, swinging ropes, bar apparatuses.. Too bad (for me) that they only had half an hour.

..Those kids move FAST!  I wished for a slow motion button, because they all had perfect poses in all their movements, but my sketching was nowhere near quick enough.

Sketch for IF: Haunt

Here is my sketch for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "Haunt".   I hope you all had a Happy Halloween! Welcome, November! 

Breezy

Staying afloat, keeping drawings loose, & putting pencil to paper as often as possible!

 (I just finished a big, left-brained, "paying the bills" job and am feeling happy, feathery, and right-brained again.)

Upload Guilt!

Hellooo out there!  It has been a while!  ...Since June, it says?!  OMG. 
I hope everyone has been well and living happy, creative lives.  <3 br="br">

I can come up with hundreds of excuses for not blogging, but I'll only mention three here.  First, I've noticed a huge challenge when it comes to updating stuff online.  Many (most) contracts say I can't show my work online until a given project is publicly revealed.  Even if I'm drawing all the time, it takes a while before my artwork comes to the surface, and by then it's already "old work" to me and though I haven't forgotten about it, I am likely excited and preoccupied about whatever secret project I'm working on next, creating this difficult cycle which, coupled with laziness, results in the blog going stale.  My sincere apologies.  

Speaking of laziness, even when I draw sketches for fun, many of them don't even make it to the scanner.  Those little guys I do forget about.  But I really hope to break this bad habit.  The sketch above did make it to the scanner, so I thought I'd post it in the meantime while I get my ducks in a row for the fall.

Lastly, the summer really, really, kicked my butt as a work-at-home mom.  My 4 year old wanted to try out several different summer activity camps, and my 1 year old was napping less, and we went out of town every other weekend.  Any time for my own needs, including work AND drawing for fun, (not to mention exercise, etc.), diminished down into maybe 5 hours a week, total.  Needless to say, I had an incredibly understanding client over the summer, possibly the world's best, and I had to let go of any personal projects for the time being.

So there are my excuses, but I have learned from them and am moving on!  The delightful world of illustration is always a learning process.