Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone!
Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate!

Here's a silly little poem I wrote for this holiday season. Hope it makes you smile!

Thank you to everyone who visited my sites, read my blogs, and bought my merchandise! =)
Best wishes to you all!

Mariya

News from November

Oh wow, it's been quite a while since I've last posted. November has been a busy month, however. Along with the secret, collaborative project that I've been working on (and still am, which is why I haven't posted much new art), I've also had to produce work for a local gallery show and art sale.

On November 14-16, 2013 I took part in The Postcard Show, Volume III at the Hot Art Wet City Gallery, Vancouver. I contributed five 4x6" artworks which went up for a silent auction. When I stopped by I saw that a few of my pieces had bids on them, but I'm not sure as to what happened later - if they all went to happy homes. I'm sure the details will be available shortly thought. 

Here are the scans of them however:

"Northern Knot Trees"

"Silver and Ivory"

"Tea Tag Time"

"Duali-Tea"

"Walnut Tree" (not a new piece, but it was the right size, so I included it)

And here's a photo of them hanging at the show, right next to Seth Rutledge's work. (Thanks Seth for telling me about show!)

P.S. Prints and products from my postcards are available at my Society6 shop. =)

Then from Nov. 22 to 24th I took part in the annual Emily Carr Student Art Sale. I mostly had postcards and unframed prints for sale, but there were also a number of framed prints, a couple of acrylic paintings, and three patterned boxes up for grabs. I'm happy to report that most of this merchandise got sold, with only a few pieces left for me to take home. I'll be making an illustration-based Etsy shop soon - so stay tuned!

Here are a couple of photos from the sale where some of my works can be spotted:

And now I'm off to work on all sorts of things, both secret and not. I hope to post again soon!

Freebie Friday - Black & White Textile Textures 3

Afternoon! So now the black and white segment comes to close (until more B&W textures are collected) with this third installment. Enjoy!

As usual, 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! =)

Some previous Freebie Friday posts:

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!

Losing Altitude - Northern Spotted Owls

 

Hi there,

Today I'm going to do a quick process post about my latest painting - "Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina)" It was a piece I did for Losing Altitude - an upcoming book about threatened/endangered birds. This collaborative art book will feature over 50 artists and well over 100 pages of beautiful, full-color art of endangered birds from the world over.

Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/LosingAltitude

And now for the process.

1. As usual, I sketched out some thumbnails. to see what layout I wanted to work with.

As you can see from the finished product, the image ended being a combination of all 4 of these.

2. After getting my references together I went on to penciling. I like use the double penciling approach - where I first get the shapes and elements down more loosely with my blue pencil and then go over ad add more details with a graphite pencil.

Close up of the adult owl.

3. Then came my favourite part- the inking, using my black microns.

Adding even more detail during this stage.

After inking the whole image, I erase the pencil marks.

4. For this piece I decided to do a grey-scale values under-layer. It seemed like a logical idea since the owlets were mostly grey.

Almost fully rendered under-layer. I ended up darkening the adult owl some more later.

5. Then I got my coloured, waterproof inks out and finished up the painting, sprinkling some table salt on the background for hazy effect. Oh, and of course - for the final touch I used white gouache to add some shine and detail to the birds' feathers.

Here are some close ups:

 

-Original size: 11 x 17.7"
-Materials: Waterproof coloured inks, microns, white gouache, and salt on 300 series Strathmore Vellum Bristol paper

Prints available at my Society6 shop =)

Cheers for now!

Freebie Friday - Black & White Textile Textures 2

Hi again!

This week there are six more black and white patterned textiles for your artistic endeavors. And I've got enough left for a third segment of black and white textures next Friday. :)

As usual, 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! =)

Some previous Freebie Friday posts:

Black and White Textiles (part 1)
Coffee Stained Paper
Fanciful Florals
Vintage Inspired
Green
Red
Denim

Have a great weekend!