On this day three years, we adopted our kitty Smudge from the Atlanta Humane Society. Full of energy and personality, she is one fun fur kid. I have lots of interesting photos of Smudge, but here is one of my favorites from a few months ago. Happy Smudge Day!
I took a break from client work today and played. I pulled the bird art from a coloring page I drew several years ago. Then I “colored” it in by using Photoshop and photos of spring flowers I’ve taken with my iPhone 7 over the last few days.
I copied segments from the flowers and pasted them into the various areas of the bird art. I duplicated the dogwood photo in the background and silhouetted three of the larger flowers in the front so they could overlap the bird. The entire piece was quite time intensive and I really love the finished art.
The bird coloring page was hand drawn using a black Sharpie and black fine tip markers — probably Microns. Photos were taken in my neighborhood and at the local botanical garden. I was inspired by today’s bird prompt in the Daily Creating Facebook Group.
Here are the individual images I combined together.
Spring is my favorite season and purple is my favorite color!
Want a copy of this purple poster?
Get it here: http://bit.ly/PurpleSpringBlooms
I took these photos during walks in our neighborhood and at the nearby botanical garden.
For the past few years, I’ve been using the camera on my iPhone to notice and snag beauty that catches my eye. Looking through the camera lens helps narrow my focus. I enjoy playing with the composition to accentuate light, color, and shapes I find appealing. Here are three recent photos that I love even more every time I look at them. I’m thankful for those smart folks at Apple who designed a cool camera into my phone and grateful to live where beauty is easy on the eye and all around me.
The morning light with shadows from the shrub outside really amped up the beauty of the butterfly art on my office wall. The mixed media piece was created by my artist friend Kimberly McGuiness. The three-dimensional lavender butterflies came from Wayfair.
Here is a video of my completed entry for the Volume 14 Sketchbook Project. Shortly after making the video, I shipped this labor of love off to the Brooklyn Art Library to added to their permanent exhibit. I got a confirmation email from the library that my sketchbook, Vanessa’s Book of Fantastical Butterflies, can be found on the shelves of the physical library with call number 360.16-4. Soon, it will be digitized and available in their online library.
Click here to see the full video:
The art tools I used to create my sketchbook are Micron black pens and Sharpie highlighters.
Over 43,000 sketchbooks are included on display at the Brooklyn Art Library — one of the largest collections of sketchbooks in the world. Find out how you can participate in this global art project.
Until this popped up on my Facebook memories from this day last year, I forgot all about it. The art is compiled from a photo I took on a walk down a wooded road. It might have been a hornet’s nest that had fallen on the ground. I printed the photo and created a doodle on tracing paper, following the lines on the pic. Then I scanned the art and overplayed it in Photoshop. I converted most of the lines to white, added a drop shadow, and pasted in some glittering gold for the letters.
WaHoo for me! What have you created that makes you “wahoo” when it comes to mind?
Here are the individual pieces I used to create this art.
Love the pink blossoms on the tree in our neighbor’s yard. Mid-February is a bit early for spring blooms — even in Georgia — but they sure make me happy! It was a foggy day and the background looks a bit ethereal. The green lichen on the bark is a lovely accent to the pink blooms.
The blossoms are equally as pretty when they blanket the ground. The day after I took the photo, I got the daily email from Seth Godin and added his quote to my photo. Here is the full blog post if you are interested in the context of the quote.
I’ve always found that looking at the art of others gives me ideas and points me in a new direction. While working on my entry for the Sketchbook Project, I found that by spread 13, I needed a bit of inspiration.
When checking out the hashtags that folks are using to tag their art — #thesketchbookproject and #sbpprocess — I came across this intriguing spread by Creations of Entropy.
I love the curves and movement so I decided to do a quick sketch in my style.
Then I used my sketch as the precursor of my next spread in my entry for the Sketchbook Project. You can see some similarities and see where I changed things up a bit. A fun evolution! I even got a bit of inspiration from the flower symbol on the Micron pens I was using. I thought it appropriate to tip my hat to Micron since I’m using their black pens throughout the book.
I decided this year to complete an entry for the Sketchbook Project. It began in 2006 in Atlanta, GA and moved to New York City in 2009. It is a crowd-sourced library that currently features 41,349 artists’ books contributed by creative people from 135+ countries. The collection of sketchbooks is on view to the public at the Brooklyn Art Library, the project’s storefront exhibition space in Brooklyn, NY.
I’ve been working on it since September and the deadline for submission is the end of March. Here is my cool new lamp I purchased to use when I doodle.
Participants of the project order blank sketchbooks, choose a theme, fill them up and connect their books online with search terms, an artist bio, and other unique content.
Since my name Vanessa means butterfly, I decided to doodle a fanciful butterfly on every page of my entry. While you have the option of rebinding your book with different paper, I opted for using the supplied sketchbook as it cam
e. I limited my palette to Micron pens and one highlighter color per spread to keep bleed through to a minimum.
Here is the title page I created which uses ALL the highlighter colors I’m using throughout the book.
Did you know a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope??
vanessalowry.com 