Behind the Scenes: Constance

I've had a sketch in my sketchbook for quite some time (I called her "Constance") but have been stumped as to how to finish the dress.

As I was playing with some textures yesterday, I ran across one that is the scan of the outside of a beautiful antique botanical print portfolio. I named the texture "Library Paisley". Then I started playing with it to see if I could get it to change colors, and my experiments worked! I got a great red version that I called "Library Paisley--Red" (along with some other cool color versions like peacock, violet blue, and kelly green.


Today, it dawned on me that it was the perfect pattern I had been waiting for to use as the dress for my "Constance". I cleaned up the line drawing and elongated her legs in the process. Then I used the "linear burn" method that I wrote about in the "Downward Dog" post.

To apply the pattern to her dress, I used the masking technique in Photoshop straight from my copy of Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book (I couldn't have done it without my book because for some reason I have a mental block when using masks and it isn't intuitive for me). The cool thing about using a mask layer is that I can change the dress to be any other pattern I want with just a few clicks.

Then I set my brush on "Watercolor Heavy Pigments" and went to work adding color to the drawing that would coordinate with the dress.

Finally, I put the fully colored "Constance" onto a background of a scanned piece of old sheet music with the opacity dialed way down. I added type with the font Jellyka Saint Andrew's Queen (free at dafont.com) and skewed it to make it look like an autographed "photo".

Here is the final art (click on the image to view larger):

Bellhop

Click on image to view larger

I felt like "playing" today with one of my sketches that I've had in my sketchbook for quite some time. I brought the bellhop pencil sketch into Photoshop for the digital coloring using the same technique I did for "Downward Dog". Once the bellhop was done, I put him into a composition using one of my own photographs, a couple of my textures, and a fun new font I found at dafont.com.

Font: Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly
Textures: Autumn Haze and an old paper texture I scanned in (if you want it ask me)
Photo: Vintage Sierra Motel Sign

Uncharted waters ahead

Because the summer heat around here is so oppressive, I spend the summer months indoors staying cool with the air conditioner. It isn't until sometime in October that I venture back out into the garden for the next 8-9 months until the heat drives me back inside again. So during the summer months, I do an awful lot of soul-searching and pondering. I do a lot of pondering while I garden the rest of the year, but it is often a different kind of pondering that is more spiritual in nature. My summer pondering is that of a woman in "hibernation" and often has a "cocoon effect" on me so that by the end of summer I'm ready to burst forth like a butterfly ready to take wing.

This summer, I've done a great deal of soul-searching and self-evaluation during my months of hibernation. And in counsel with my best friend (who is also my sweet spouse), I felt brave enough to take a step into uncharted waters in my creative journey. So I applied to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to the Master of Fine Arts program in Illustration. A large part of me expected to not get in, but I knew I needed to at least go through the process of taking the risk.



My creative journey has been a circuitous one. I've been creating with a pencil in my hand since I was old enough to hold one (my mom has the home movies to prove it). Through some wonderful serendipitous circumstances, I was able to attend a public school in first grade that had an art program with a dedicated art teacher who taught her students (me included) how to draw still life at age 7! Now that I reflect back on it, I realize was an amazing and rare experience that was. As I got older, I plugged along through various public schools (we moved frequently during my childhood). By junior high and high school I was choosing to take art as an elective no matter what. I learned sculpture, pottery, drawing, painting, and just about every other medium you can imagine.

After high school, I dabbled in a few college majors before settling on Commercial Art and earned my Associates of Arts degree at a community college. I walked out of that program with the training to be a graphic artist and the portfolio to prove it. I went to interview after interview for creative positions. But no jobs materialized. My dream had been to work for Disney, so I even trekked down to L.A. for a couple of months trying to get a job there. It didn't happen. It seemed I was not destined to be a professional graphic artist. I ended up working in secretarial and data entry capacities in order to earn money (good thing my mom had strongly encouraged me to take typing and 10-key in high school).

After a few unfulfilling years working in administrative jobs, I decided to go back to school and earn my Bachelor's degree. I was drawn to Mills College and ended up in their Art History program. My two years there were an awakening for me as a 26-28 year old woman. I gained a lot of confidence and self-assurance there. I did a lot of writing for Art History and enjoyed it immensely. My professors said I showed promise and hoped that I would go on to get my graduate degrees in Art History as well. But I didn't. I had to go back into the workforce and earn money again.



"Corporate America" was a bit kinder to me after I had my Bachelor's degree. I was able to get work in project administration capacities. I tried to carve out "creative" niches in my work as a technical writer and computer trainer. I was always the one that got to do the office newsletters and flyers.

But my "real" art still remained in a portfolio and in a secret place in my heart. My creativity found outlets in the privacy of my own home. I never earned a living creating art. And it always seemed like a very sad disappointment that I felt I needed to hide. Sometimes I'd get brave and send a set of slides to a greeting card publisher. I even invested in having some cards printed up professionally but couldn't sell them to retailers. I let my inner artist slowly go to sleep in a place deep inside me.

I got married when I was 31 years old. Within months of getting married, my physical health deteriorated rapidly. I had been burdened with chronic pain since I was 15 years old, but no doctor was able to diagnose anything other than PMS. By the time I was 31, I became completely incapacitated. So my husband became the soul breadwinner in our home. I stayed home and thought it was a good opportunity to try to get creative again. I tried my hand at cross-stitching. Once (at the prompting of my brother when he gave me a beautiful wooden easel as a gift) I brought out my paints and a canvas and painted one painting. I gave away most of my art supplies to my brother who was in art classes at the time. I figured I was passing the torch on for good. All my creative pursuits were limited and very "safe" like embroidery and sewing. I couldn't venture to the place where I had taken risks a decade before. That was too scary.

A couple of years after I got married, we bought our house and I delved into the adventures of remodeling and renovation. My creativity found an outlet in home construction as I tiled, sheet-rocked, taped, textured, laid hardwood floors, and installed trim. It also found an outlet in the garden as I took our dried up lot and made it bloom into a drought-tolerant cottage-style garden.

After a few years of working on the house despite my chronic pain, I finally found a doctor that listened. A month after my 39th birthday, I underwent the surgery that revealed I had been plagued with a crippling case of endometriosis for over 20 years. I was given my life back. For me, life really did begin at 40. I spent the next 1-2 years healing my physical body. But my inner artist was still fast asleep.

It wasn't until the spring of 2007 on a vacation, when I started shooting photos on the beach that I realized there was a creative artist in me that, like Sleeping Beauty, was ready to wake up. However, because I have to allow myself to be slightly vulnerable when I create, I had to take things slowly and ease into it again. The more involved the creative method is (like painting), the more vulnerable I have to be to create. I had to take baby steps. I couldn't just jump back in with both feet. It was too scary.

First, I ventured into photography again because that was the safest place to start. I could shoot what I saw. With a digital camera, I didn't even have to worry about wasting film. If a shot didn't turn out, I hadn't taken a huge creative risk. I could just delete the image. I started dabbling in some post-processing techniques using Photoshop to get a little more creative with the photographs. But things still remained pretty safe. And it helped that I shot a lot of my images in my gardens and places that I loved.

Then after about a year of that, I started playing with some digitally produced art. I doodled using my computer and a newly acquired digital tablet. Creating that way was pretty safe too, because I could always hit "undo" or erase something. Nothing was really permanent.

I did that for a while, until I felt safe enough to get my sketchbooks back out and started sketching in them. One sketchbook hadn't been touched in over 10 years. This step was pretty hard. I found myself wanting to make every sketch be perfect. Sometimes, I would find myself paralyzed and unable to sketch anything because of the fear of sketching something wrong and not creating a "masterpiece" every time. It was very hard to make myself take risks in that sketchbook (it still is).

I also invested in a new set of watercolors (my original tubes from 20 years ago had dried up). I brought out my unused watercolor paper from 15 years before and started painting in watercolors again. I successfully took that step into a more vulnerable place.

Then my father-in-law passed away in April 2009. In his spare time, Dad was a very talented painter in acrylics and oils. After the funeral, my mother-in-law gave me all Dad's blank canvases, his vast collection of exquisite brushes, and his entire set of paints. I drove home with a mini art supply store in the back of our vehicle. I let the canvases sit for a couple of days, but they kept "calling out to me". In the midst of my grief, I knew Dad wanted me to paint something with everything I'd been given. I brushed the dust off that wooden easel my brother had given me 10 years before (it still looked brand new), and I made myself put a paint-laden brush to canvas. That was really hard. I couldn't hit the "undo" command when I was painting. It was just me, the brush, the acrylic paint and the canvas... and Dad, who I could feel quietly prodding me on. But once I got into the groove, boy, did it feel good.


Every step of the way, I felt myself getting closer to my artistic core--the place where I had to be willing to be vulnerable in order to create.

At the same time as I was taking up painting again, I also started taking floral design classes at our local adult education center. I am an introvert with some social anxiety, so going back into a classroom setting again with strangers was a huge step for me in my creative journey. I had to learn all over again how to allow my creative work to be critiqued; how to create in the midst of others observing my creative process; and how to make mistakes in front of an instructor and classmates. It was hard at first. But I persevered and can honestly say that I welcome those aspects of the creative process now. I actually thrive off of it.

It seemed inevitable that my next step would be to revisit the idea of pursuing my graduate degree after I had put that goal on hold for 15 years. I chose the Academy of Art University in San Francisco mainly because of it's online degree programs. Only a few years ago, the idea of being able to get an MFA in Illustration completely online was unheard of, and now the Academy of Art University is the pioneer in making it happen so an artist can earn an art degree and live anywhere in the world.

After I sent in my application, I braced myself for rejection, because rejection is what I've known when it came to the art that came from my core.

To my pleasant surprise, I received my acceptance letter to the Master of Fine Arts in Illustration last week! I will start the program the Summer semester of 2010 (just after I've completed my floral design certification program). This past week has been a week of letting it really sink in that this is real. The artist in me is finally fully awake again.

And now I'm taking a maiden voyage on uncharted waters. I hope you'll join me as I do. I'll continue to chronicle my artistic journey here at the Dusting in Pearls blog. And I hope that somehow as I share, my experiences will benefit someone that needs to awake their inner Sleeping Beauty as I did.

Pink layer cake with black bow ties

I was watching the film "Nanny McPhee" a while back and was so intrigued by the cakes in one of the scenes later in the movie. Luckily, I had my sketchbook in hand and sketched a cake inspired by that scene. Then I went and inked it so I had a clean and crisp ink line-art version. Once I had that done, I scanned it into the computer and used Photoshop to color it digitally.

This hi-resolution non-watermarked digital clip art file is available to download for FREE by clicking here. I've also made the drawing available without color (ink line only) so you can color it yourself if you wish (and that's FREE too!).

Little Elsie and Baby Jack

While browsing through old family photo albums, I came across photos taken at a my Grammy's birthday party when she was probably about 6 or 7 years old in 1919-1920. She and all the little girls at the party were dressed in pretty starched and pressed white dresses with huge bows in their hair. There was only one little boy at the party--little baby Jack with his head of blond curls. My mixed media drawing "Little Elsie & Baby Jack" (above) was inspired by those photographs.

First, I sketched the drawing by hand with a pencil on 60 lb Strathmore sketchbook paper. Then I scanned the pencil drawing into the computer. Finally, using Photoshop, I added the texture layer of old waterstained paper that I got from a Flickr friend, playingwithbrushes, and I added the color using my Wacom digital tablet and pen.

Giclee prints of this drawing on fine art paper
are now available at
the Dusting in Pearls online store
by clicking here.

Brigette B.

I am completely smitten by a recent discovery... the artwork of Brigette Barrager. Brigette is a graduate of CalArts with a BFA in Character Animation. That fact alone could have easily won my heart, because way-back-when I dreamed of going to CalArts and becoming an Imagineer artist for Disney. Ah well... anyway...

Brigette's work is enchanting. She updates her blog, The Brigette Brigade, regularly with sketches and finished work (including a link to a wonderful animated ad for Swarovski crystal). Click on the title of her blog above to go over and snoop around.

Brigette has a leaning toward Audrey Hepburn and the Hollywood of yesteryear (which you know I love), as well as a wonderful way of rendering that makes characters come to life. I am so be smitten with this print, Librarian Bookended, that I'm seeing it in my head as I fall asleep at night.

Click the image to see it larger

Here are some more of my favorites among her cadre of characters. It was so hard to pick just a few to feature. Click on any of the images to see them larger.

Foxy Music

Shangri-la's

Click here to visit Brigette B.'s Etsy shop
Click here to visit The Brigette Brigade
Click here to visit Brigette's flickr portfolio

Club Shangri-la

While going through an old family photo album to scan in the photos, I came across a vintage souvenir photo folder from "Club Shangri-la" in Oakland. My grandmother had saved it as a momento of a glamorous evening out. I made a digital print of the high-res scan of this folder and it is the foundation of this new collage art painting.

The dancing couple is an original watercolor painting based on the illustrations of that time period. The couple IS NOT a reproduction, but is the original watercolor sealed onto the canvas with a water-resistant protective glaze. The woman's ball gown is hand-embellished with silver paint sparkles that glimmer as if the ballroom lights are glinting off silver sequins. Her belt is adorned with black German glass glitter.

The hand-embellished giclee canvas has been painted with warm red, gold and brown tones. Gold and silver metallic elements have been added, as well as a light dusting of a fine ruby glitter that makes it shimmer.

To give the "Club Shangri-la" the look of a marquee, a string of small iridescent ruby beads have been attached to the edges.

Click here to read more...

Cupcake Baker Extraordinaire

I've been wanting to venture into creating original art canvases for quite some time, but I've had a hard time finding the inspiration for what I wanted to create. Then last week, I was going through my "vintage graphics" file where I put any piece of vintage paper ephemera I come across that intrigues me. In it, I found that I had stashed some wonderful travel and hospitality brochures from the 1950s. I finally had my inspiration!

I painted and inked the baker and his yummy treats, his baking table, and his baking flour. The painted illustrations became a part of a collage along with a harlequin design that I created for the canvas and some reproductions of recipes I found in my Grammy's recipe box (couldn't use the original family heirlooms!). I hand-wrapped the canvas "gallery style" so there are no visible staples and made it ready-to-hang with a gorgeous milk chocolate colored satin hanging ribbon.

Click here to see more photographs of this latest creation...

Everyday is a Holiday at Jenny's Bake Shop

I have to admit right off the bat that I've been a fan of Everyday is a Holiday for over a year now. So you can imagine how thrilled I am to be able to introduce them to all my pearly friends.

Jenny and Aaron are a couple with a passion for the wonderful illustrations of the past. In their own words:

"Our love of old fashioned bakeries, sweet shops, ice cream parlors, and vintage holiday & party decorations all come together in our newest collection! All of the imagery is based on our 100% original paintings and every piece is handmade by us!"

Their work is amazing! I'll let their art speak for itself. And I'll let Jenny and Aaron's descriptions do the talking as well...

Retro Baking Gal

"Needless to say...we are crazy for anything vintage kitchen. But our favorite thing of all is vintage recipe books. Many of them are nothing more than pamphlets, but the ones with imagery inside are to die for. Sometimes we'll come across illustrations like this Retro Gal and we think 'wouldn't it be amazing to have a painting like that?' And that's what we did here. We referenced a bunch of very old black and white photos and chose the ultimate vintage kitchen color palette...LOVE the pink stove!!"

Chocolate Triple Layer Cake

"This piece is the ultimate in Cottage Bakery! An old fashioned, chocolate frosted, 3 layer cake, on a backdrop of our signature hand painted sweet & chic floral print. The background color is the perfect shade of vintage pink. The delicate floral pattern is reminiscent of vintage aprons, ticking fabric, and wallpaper. We adore the British cottage look and this piece definitely channels that love. The combination of the chocolate frosted cake and super sweet vintage floral mini print will truly cheer up your cottage inspired kitchen, dining area, little girl's room, cafe, sweet shop, coffee house, bed and breakfast, etc."

Retro Sifter Christmas Ornament

Retro Stand-Mixer Christmas Ornament

"Our ornies are all 100% handmade from prints of our 100% original artwork. They're excellent quality... made from very study artist mat board... they feel totally substantial and they're sealed with a protective clear coat. The backs are covered in various colorful patterned papers and vintage ephemera such as recipe book clippings. They hang by a length of classic bakery twine and each and every one is adorned with super fine glitter highlights."

Okay, have I tempted you enough? Head on over to their Etsy store by clicking here and see what else they have in store.

Frisco in the Fifties

Click on the above image to view larger

I've got some wonderful vintage advertising hanging on my "idea board" behind my computer. Everyday, I would look at one of the models and think about an idea for an art piece.

A while back I finally ventured forth to create what I was seeing in my head. I sketched my Frisco 50's lady and then hand watercolored her. Then I scanned her into the computer again so I could "play" in Photoshop. I scanned a real vintage pearl necklace clasp and faux pearls to make her jewelry. The vintage photograph in the background is a real snapshot from the fifties that came out of an aunt's photo album.

The woman reminds me of Maureen O'Hara (I always loved her in the original "Parent Trap"). I sure wish people still "dressed" to go shopping like they used to.

Plum Blossom Spring

For half of the world, it's spring! And even if you don't live in the southern hemisphere, you can still love pink year-round. That's why I've made the above photographic art piece entitled "Plum Blossom Spring" available for free download to all my pearly readers. And if you know someone that loves pink and would love this, send them over here too! The more the merrier.

This piece is a digital art composition by me using my photography. These beautiful plum blossoms were on my tree last February and will be again in only a few months.

Click on the image above to go directly to the download site.

Breakfast at Tiffany's from Artistic Flair

I think I'm like most domestic divas when I say that I have a love for Audrey Hepburn's style and the designs of Edith Head that made a lot of Audrey's style a reality. So when I happened upon this beautiful piece of fused glass art at Artistic Flair, I was smitten.

Isn't it divine in how it captures the grace and essence of Audrey in the film?
The "diamond" necklace is made of Swarovski crystals.

If you want to see the details, click on the above images to enlarge them.
Breakfast at Tiffany's Artistic Flair

Deb DiSalvo at Artistic Flair is the creator of this gorgeous piece and details her process at her site (click the link above to go there). Deb says, "My Audrey is my absolute favorite piece I've made!" I can definitely see why. I highly recommend that you also click on the links below to see some others lovely pieces by Deb.

Pretty Kitty
I DO
Shopping Diva
Betty Boop
Ballerina Girl

Diva Designs from Lady Denise

If you haven't already discovered the art and designs of Lady Denise then you must head over to her online store... well, finish reading this post first, of course. Her diva art has a great retro flair to it that I absolutely love! Her designs are available at her online store on a number of products including stationery, mugs, mousepads, stickers... cool stuff! And I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that she releases a 2009 calender like her 2008 calender with 12 of her diva designs compiled together (that's a big hint Lady Denise).

Stylish and Yummy Pin Toppers

Gigi Minor at Pinks & Needles creates gorgeous and playful pin toppers. What is a "pin topper", you ask?

Gigi says:

"...as far as I know I coined the phrase 'pin topper'... Remember the good ole' days when your Grandmother's thimble or spoon collection was so fun to look at? Well, I can see that same trend happening with these little babies! Some of you may be wondering 'What in the world is a pin topper?' It's basically a sewing pin but with a surprise on the top like a cupcake or mushroom, maybe even a piece of fruit! Think of it as a little bling for your pin cushion!"

The great thing that I can see about the pin toppers is that they're each a piece of art; so pretty; inexpensive (always a plus!); the good-enough-to-eat treats are calorie-free; and they're so small that they don't take up a lot of room! It's the best of all worlds.