Pleasant News and Pattern Sneak Peeks

Good afternoon, evening, or morning!

Alright, so today I want to start off by sharing some delightful news I have received on the weekend. (Sorry if you already know and are reading about this for the 3rd or 4th time)
What happened was that I had been accepted into our 52nd  Illustration West Competition held by the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles. Seems that my elite and endangered hummingbirds charmed the judges into deciding to include them in the upcoming web exhibition on the Illustration West website on SI-LA.org.
Congratulations to all the other entrants who got accepted, and thank you to everyone who's supported my work. I hope this small victory will be the stepping stone to many great things to come. :)

The Endangered Elite

In other news, a few days ago I created a Facebook page - Mariya Olshevska Illustration - for my illustration work/news. Please follow it for more frequent updates. Thank you in advance!

And now back to sneak peeks of that secretive project I keep mentioning. Being a huge lover of patterns, I couldn't help but create some of my own patterns which I could imagine the characters from the story wearing. I used the patterns found in Japanese wood block prints as my inspirations but I also tried to give them a little bit of a personal flair.

 ©Mariya Olshevska

If you haven't seen too many Japanese prints, I strongly encourage you to get acquainted. They're fantastic! Here's one of my latest favorites:

Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825) Double portrait of the actors Nakayama Tomisaburo and Ichikawa Ichizo, c.1800. Oban

If you're in Vancouver, Canada - I recommend to check out the Ukiyoe Spectacular Japanese Woodblock Prints from the 1800s. It's a two part exhibition on from Jan 10th to March 23rd. Follow {this link} for all the details.

That's it for now!

Patterned Pottery II

Well, there was a second plate from that ceramics workshop I mentioned in my previous post. We used the mold method to create plates in shapes of flowers, picture frames, or as in my case - a seashell. Unfortunately, when I got this plate back, it wasn't as nice and smooth as when I left it in the shop to be fired in the kiln...It had small bumps and scratches, especially on the bottom side. After being melodramatically grief-stricken (just kidding!) I realized that pattern ornamentation just happened to be the best solution for disguising these imperfections. Just a happy coincidence, which has nothing to do with my detail addiction, of course.

Originally I was going to paint this seashell using red, black, or blue. However I ended up being seduced by some of the promises my craft paints displayed on their packaging. A bottle of Gallery Glass paint proclaimed it would give me a crackled effect if I applied it to another Gallery Glass color. The only other bottle of this brand I had was green - so voila - I ended up with green. Sadly, when I applied the crackle medium, it didn't fulfill it's duty, even though I followed all the directions on the bottle. What a shame! Oh well, you win some, you lose some I guess.=)

Here's what I ended up with though:

My patterned bowl now has a friend!

Patterned Pottery

So, a long time ago a couple of my friends and I went to a ceramics workshop to make and paint plates. Due to my scheduling difficulties I was only able to go and make my pieces, but was unable to paint them. In turn, when I finally had the time recently I painted them at home. Since I don't have a kiln at my disposal, I just decided to use regular acrylic paints and varnishes to decorate. I decided to let my pattern-crazed tendencies to take over the design of this piece, and I'm pretty content with the result.

I'll have to scout out some ceramic acrylic paints later though - because I can absolutely see ceramic plate painting becoming a new hobby!

inside

I wish we didn't have to carve out our names when making our bowls...but oh well

And that's what the bowl is supposed to be used for - as a hat, clearly

One plate piece down, one more to go!