Elvish Trees

Hello again,

Tonight, I am pleased to share with you my latest personal project - "Elvish Trees", in which I was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth Elf culture. For stylistic reference I looked at the illustrations in The Lord of The Rings novels but created my own original designs which I could imagine to be on things like banners of the different elvish families.

I started out, as usual, with pencil sketches.

Then, I finessed each sketch in Adobe Illustrator and established my colour palettes. After which, I brought the rendered trees into Photoshop to add some texture effects.

Alda
“Alda”, in Quenya meaning "tree"

Ornë Ornë in Quenya meaning 'slender tree'

Lûth Galadh
“Lûth Galadh”, in Sindarin meaning "Spell-Tree"

Prints can be found on my Society6 and RedBubble shops. More merchandise will be made available in the following weeks. 

That's it for now. :)

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!

August Sneak Peeks

Over land, by the sea

He walks silently

Through the ancient forests green

He navigates unseen

Hi!

Today, after scanning some new paintings and removing absolutely all the dust specks from them, I've decided to share a few sneak peeks. They're of a magical, ghostly lynx character. I've decided to go with green colour palettes for these illustrations because I've missed painting with green so much. I've spent most of the year working with blues, whites and purples depicting winter. And now that the warm weather might soon be over - I thought I better get some summery imagery into my projects. Anyway, have a look:

As you might be able to tell - I've used the same pose of the lynx walking. I was playing around with scale and different environments. I painted the lynx in the green and white forest setting first, and then I had an urge to paint him again but TINIER! So, I ended up making a miniature painting that is 2.5 x 4.5 inches. I get a certain kick out of drawing as small as I can. This isn't the smallest I can do, but for I'll save that miniature mindset for another time.

Here is a work-in-progress photo of it for scale. (I have small hands, for the record.)

Media: coloured waterproof inks + watercolour paints + gouache + microns

That's all for now! Thanks for visiting!


All images are ©Mariya Olshevska and may not be used or re-purposed without the artist's consent.

Freebie Friday - Layered Lace Textile Textures

It's Freebie Friday again! So, I've got some lace textures to share today. Only four so far, but hopefully there will be more to add to the collection later, when more lace shirts are on sale in lieu of warmer weather :)

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, 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:

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
Vintage Inspired
Green
Red
Denim

Have a great weekend!

Freebie Friday - Green Dream Textile Textures

Yes, more textile resource week:)

Today I'm contrasting last week's theme by putting up some green patterned textile textures. Enjoy!

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

*In quick other news - I'm almost done a new little illustration. Lots of process documentation for that one. Stay tuned=)

Happy Friday!

Pattern Craze

Well, actually it's not craze for me, it's more of a form of meditation. Drawing patterns is extremely soothing for me and a great way to do something with my hands while planning my next illustration in my head.
Anyways, a little bit each day last week I've started cataloging and digitizing some of the pattern designs I use in my work.

It started by brainstorming with my microns right here:

Now I'm moving on to making them into vectors.
I've decided to sort them by geometrical shapes. Here are the triangular ones:

And I think they pretty neat on iPhone cases and such:

found in my Society6 shop

Update: August 1st, 2012

Square patterns!

Circular Patterns!

Add caption

Merchandise on:

Society 6 
RedBubble

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!

Green Retreat

Yay! Time for some recreational nature photography!
Location: Deer Lake, BC, Canada

In the Water

Photos taken last Friday and previous Sunday:)

 Happy Friday!