My Winter Painting is Done!

I'm happy to announce that my Four Seasons series is FINALLY finished!! The final piece for this series is 'Winter' in all her icy glory.

 

'Winter'

acrylics on panel

                                                
                                                   detail of 'Winter'

This series has been ' in the works' for over four years! The final designs and paintings were started about a year and a half ago. Needless to say, I'm relieved to have them completed.

        

Poster design for 'The Four Season'

available at http://society6.com/phoenixartstudio/Four-Seasons-c79_Print

Do you have a favorite season? What are some of the things about that season that draws you to it?

Latest Painting and Hooray for Summer!

Summer is here and that means that I can FINALLY start to focus much more on my art! Every year for about six months our "season" is in full swing. This means that I am working full-time at my day job and am usually so exhausted that I rarely have enough energy to work full-time on my art. My creative energy is usually spent working on commissioned pieces for Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc..  During the summer months things slow down, shifts are cut and I begin to work on my art full-time instead of my day job. This season was particularly hard as I spent a lot  of my time working with a physical therapist on my neck after my accident this past December.
The first order of business? To finally finish my painting of Autumn in my Four Seasons series!

This was the color study that I did for her early on...

And here she is finished....

Autumn

acrylic on panel

6 x 6

        She's surrounded by mums, chinese lantern flowers and a colorful bounty of fall leaves.
              I love all of the colors and textures in this one!
                                   

I have the sketch done for Winter so I should be completing her pretty soon as well.

If you would like to see Summer from this series, click here.

If you would like to see Spring from this series, click here.

Art Prints of Autumn are available here.

Stay tuned to see Winter and have a wonderful week everyone!!

                                 

The Easter Bunny is On It's Way!

In preparation for Easter I have created a couple of whimsical Easter Bunny illustrations. For these illustrations I spent a lot of time reminescing about how I used to feel about Easter when I was a child and what my the Easter Bunny used to look like in my head. In the end, I came up with these.

I feel pretty happy with the end result and think that they were pretty successful because I get a small jolt of recognition when I look at these illustrations. Certainly nothing as big as when I was a child though. Oh if only we could have that ability to believe unfalteringly and to get so excited about things! When we're a child we can't wait till we grow up, but once we're an adult we wish that we could be a child again. Ah the ironies of life!

My Easter Bunny illustrations are available on a variety of merchandise including postage stamps, notecards, stickers and grocery totes at zazzle.com

Check it out and put a smile on someone else's face this Easter season!

Painting a Butterfly

For the past week, I've been hard at work painting a portrait of a butterfly fairy. She loves to lay down and let the butterflies fly about her and land in her long, beautiful hair. They have such wonderful stories to tell!

I have always loved butterflies. They seem to live two lives. One as a caterpillar and one as a beautiful, free and majestic butterfly. I always associate them with rebirth, much like a phoenix.

Each of the five butterfly families (papilionidae, pieridae, nymphalidae, lycaenidae and riodindae) have been represented in this piece. There is still quite a bit of work to do on this painting before it will be complete, but I wanted to share what I have done so far. I also wanted to share my latest video installment on youtube, "Painting a Butterfly". I still have some work to do on my video skills, but I'm not too terribly disappointed with this one. :)



Enjoy and have a wonderful day!!!

Painting in Progress

I leave tomorrow to go to France with my family. I have never been and am excited to immerse myself completely in all that art and culture! I'm also grateful that I've been given this amazing opportunity to be with my family. It will be wonderful to be able to share all of this with them.

I am hoping to be able to keep up with this blog while I'm gone,but as I'm not sure about the internet/computer situation over there, I felt that it would be smart to post something now before I leave. This is the current painting that I am working on. Perhaps it is because of my little sister having a little girl of her own, but I've definitely been finding myself drawn towards the pure, beautiful love that a mother has for her child. Either that or my "biological clock" is finally ticking.... yeah, right! Hahahaha! Anyway, I've been doing a lot of mother/child related sketches in my sketchbook and have finally taken one of them and am bringing it to fruition. I have always wanted to work on wood, but never really gave it a chance. This is my first time working on it and I'm really loving it! It feels so much more natural to me than painting on canvas.

Here are some quick mother/daughter sketches that I have done in my sketchbook.

Here are some images from the painting I am currently working on.

 I'm having a lot of fun with this one and am sort of sad to be going on my trip right now, only because it's inevitably going to effect the momentum that I've worked up with this piece. C'est la vie!

I wish everyone the very best and hope that you have a wonderful June! See you again in two weeks! (sooner if I can.... )

New Etsy Shop is Open!

I am excited to announce that my new etsy shop, Jewels of Enchantment, is finally open! 
Almost all of my current jewelry will be moved to this shop.

Within the next month or so,  Phoenix Art Studio will begin to only carry fantasy related jewelry and art.

Please visit my new shop! I would love to hear opinions, suggestions, comments, etc.
Have a wonderful week everyone!

Through the Looking Glass

 In the past I have been writing about artwork by deceased masters. Now I want to begin incorporating artists who are currently creating and producing amazing works of art. As some of you know, I took my first mosaics class earlier this year and loved it. It was such an exciting new way to create! I took one of my illustrations and simplified it for my first mosaic. It was extremely time consuming, but also very rewarding. It was a lot of fun to create an illustration using such a permanent and sturdy medium.

I would now like to share the work of an amazing mosaic artist that I have recently stumbled across. Her name is Doreen Adams and she is currently working on some AMAZING mosaics that she hopes to have completed for Lewis Carroll's 150th anniversary of 'Alice and Wonderland'.

Her work perfectly combines my love of children's book illustration with my love of mosaics. This is such a time consuming medium to use and is also quite difficult. The amount of detail incorporated in these pieces astounds me. She is a definite kindred spirit and shares my love of illustration, children's books and mosaics. So much so, that she has also written and illustrated a book entitled 'Skinny Malinky Long Legs, Big Banana Feet'. I have only shared two of my favorite Alice in Wonderland mosaics. For the rest, as well as more information about this artist, please visit her website. www.creativemosaics.com
Spread the word, share the love and put a smile on someone's face!

Illustration vs Painting

During his lifetime, N.C.Wyeth created over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books!





Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."





This is an interesting idea and I'm curious to hear what people think about it. I have to agree that my paintings and my illustrations usually have two different styles as well as different intentions behind them. However I don't always see such a separation in other artist's work. Are illustration and painting truly two different things? I certainly see the pre-raphaelites as illustrators and painters both. I'm just not sure if I fully agree with this statement. Do you?