Happy Holidays & Season's Greetings

Happy December!

Today, I present to you my 2019 holiday art designs.

I was inspired by folk art and cut-out paper snowflakes that I often see around the holidays.

I completed most of the design work in Adobe Illustrator and then added the finishing touches of digital foil effects in Photoshop.

I ended up printing my postcards with Moo and using their gold foil customization option. I printed 5 different colour versions and was very happy with the results!

(In the version I sent in for print, I did not have the digital foil effect on the tree)

If you'd like to try printing with Moo, you can get 20% off your first order with this {referral link}.

Prints are merchandise are available through my online shops below:

RedBubble

Society6

TeePublic

Happy Holidays!

Resource Credits

Typeface: "Amazinga": https://creativemarket.com/ianmikraz/66045-Amazinga-Typeface
Textures:
Foil & Glitter Texture: https://creativemarket.com/Imagearea/1662530-Foil-Glitter-Texture
Gold Foil Textures, Gold Backgrounds: https://creativemarket.com/PaperElement/194964-Gold-Foil-Textures-Gold-Backgrounds

Freebie Friday - Hand Drawn Patterns

Happy Friday!

Today I've got some geometric, hand drawn patterns that I've made using sparkly gel pens. Enjoy!

As always, feel free to use these resources for personal or professional projects but please:

Do not claim the original resource images as your own,
Do not redistribute commercially. Basically, don't save and sell the resources as your own, but by all means do share the link to this page with others. :)
Do not use these textures as a base to create your own stock art/resources.

And, as always, please feel free to share anything you've made with these resources with me. I'd love to have a look! =)

Previous Freebie Friday posts:

Black & White Textile Textures 4
Cross-Stitch Cloth
Holiday Inspired Paper Textures
Speckled & Stamped Paper
Animal Print Textiles
Sweater Season Textures
Subtle Fabric Textures
Paper Textures 1
Paper Textures 2
Stained Coffee Textures
Layered Lace Textile Textures
Colourful + Abstract Textile Textures
Branches, Berries and Blossoms
Blue Pattern Textile Textures
Black and White Textiles (part 3)
Black and White Textiles (part 2)
Black and White Textiles (part 1)
Coffee Stained Paper
Fanciful Florals
Fanciful Florals 2
Fanciful Florals 3 
Vintage Inspired
Green Textiles
Red Textiles
Denim Textile Textures

Have a great weekend!

Freebie Friday - Holiday Inspired Paper Textures

Happy Friday!

Today's textures were inspired by the holiday season that is upon us and were made with gift wrap paper, stationary paper, and some gold and silver spray paint. Hope you enjoy!

(The bottom three textures are all the same design, but different colours. I added all three, cause 'why not?' )

As always, feel free to use these resources for personal or professional projects but please:

Do not claim the original resource images as your own,
Do not redistribute commercially. Basically, don't save and sell the resources as your own, but by all means do share the link to this page with others. :)
Do not use these textures as a base to create your own stock art/resources.

And, as always, please feel free to share anything you've made with these resources with me. I'd love to have a look! =)

Previous Freebie Friday posts:

Speckled & Stamped Paper
Animal Print Textiles
Sweater Season Textures
Subtle Fabric Textures
Paper Textures 1
Paper Textures 2
Stained Coffee Textures
Layered Lace Textile Textures
Colourful + Abstract Textile Textures
Branches, Berries and Blossoms
Blue Pattern Textile Textures
Black and White Textiles (part 3)
Black and White Textiles (part 2)
Black and White Textiles (part 1)
Coffee Stained Paper
Fanciful Florals
Fanciful Florals 2
Fanciful Florals 3 
Vintage Inspired
Green Textiles
Red Textiles
Denim Textile Textures

Have a great weekend!

Freebie Friday - Paper Textures

Hello!

I've got a mix of wrinkled and more sophisticated looking papers available for you this week. Hope you enjoy!

(* Colours are more vibrant once you save the files. Blogger is making the preview images more grey again...)


Feel free to use these resources for personal or professional projects but please:

Do not claim the original resource images as your own,
Do not redistribute commercially. Basically, don't save and sell the resources as your own, but by all means do share the link to this page with others. :)
Do not use these textures as a base to create your own stock art/resources.

And, as always, please feel free to share anything you've made with these resources with me. I'd love to have a look! =)

Previous Freebie Friday posts:

Stained Coffee Textures
Layered Lace Textile Textures
Colourful + Abstract Textile Textures
Branches, Berries and Blossoms
Blue Pattern Textile Textures
Black and White Textiles (part 3)
Black and White Textiles (part 2)
Black and White Textiles (part 1)
Coffee Stained Paper
Fanciful Florals
Fanciful Florals 2
Fanciful Florals 3 
Vintage Inspired
Green
Red
Denim

Have a great weekend!!

The Nessie Award

Hi! Oh look - something not on paper!

Today I'll share my feeble attempt at making a 3D toy for a recent assignment. We were given 3 wooden parts - a rectangle, a rod, and a ball and we had to come up with a character and make a toy. We could change the parts and add to them as we saw fit. Imagination and skills were the limit. And Amanda Visell an Michelle Valigura were our class mentors, if the project wasn't daunting enough.

The way I went about this project though is by staying faithful to the given parts and letting them help dictate my character. (I'm also not that great with using my hands, and I'm quite weary of power tools. But I honestly did like the approach of keeping my original shapes somewhat candid)

At first I came with with some creatures like an ornately patterned giraffe, a fancy ostrich, a Loch Ness monster and a 'dragon-fly'.

Then I decided to go with the Loch Ness monster idea and sketched out some variations of what it could look like:

I picked the Celic Nessie. Surprise, surprise, as I have a deep fascination with the Celtic and Nordic cultures and art.

I also thought that by going with this option I could make up with painting knot-work that which I lacked with carving and molding. And if there were flaws they would actually work with the theme. You know -- if something was hand-made a long time ago, it's bound to have some bumps and scratches right?

So in the end I ended up with this, as I've posted at the beginning:

I give you my interpretation of the Celtic depiction of the fierce Loch Ness Monster, immortalized as the "Nessie Award".  Each year all the Celtic clans would gather for a great feast and award the Nessie Award to the clan who has sunk the most enemy ships at sea. Although the mystic Nessie was most frequently seen at Loch Ness, it was also rumored to be spotted roaming the salty ocean realms.

I created the general shape of character by trimming, sawing and sanding the provided parts. I then molded the muzzle, horns, tongue, scales, legs, and tail out of air drying clay. I also created some ships as accessories. I painted all the parts with acrylic paints and then super-glued them together.

And look - I made some tiny ships to go with it:

I'll see if I can fix it up some more later (for my own sake of mind) and take some photos with it outside.

*Now I'm off to relax and celebrate my birthday. I'm 22 today! I like the sound of being 21 better, but maybe this will be a better year nonetheless!

Happy Sunday to everyone!

Munny Doll - Darling Dragonete

The year of the Dragon approaches!

front view
Photo courtesy of my instructor: Jaime Anderson

back view
Photo courtesy of my instructor: Jaime Anderson

And in lieu of this festive time - I present to you my final Surface Illustration class project=)
Our goal was to take a 4'' blank Munny Doll and turn it it into a character that we'd enjoy and reflect our artistic styles, and potentially be part of a toy series.

Materials Used:
+Acrylic paints
+Staedler Black F series felt pen
+Glitter glue
+ some art clay to model the horns and scales