Still no wacom, but new website design?

Happy New Year's Eve!

Still no news on the wacom front. I have managed to keep myself occupied with other projects, but I can feel a slight twitch coming on.

I was hoping to redesign my website soon, so I threw myself into that this weekend and actually managed to finish it. I wanted something much simpler and easy to update - hopefully this will be both.

I hope everyone has a warm, safe and memorable New Year's Eve! Bring on 2012!

Cintiq needs a timeout...

Earlier this evening my Cintiq decided to take a time out. I was 2 glasses of wine into a new Skyrim-related piece when the monitor went kaput. (My Nord and her favorite companion Farkas are actively seeking out a dragon to slay)

I scrambled to adjust the settings, un-plug/replug every cord to ever grace my desk area and swap power supplies... but to no avail. It seems my trusty cintiq decided it was naptime.

I'll call Wacom in the morning and see what my options are, fingers crossed that it is something simple. It's just incredible to see how fast I've come to rely on this piece of technology and how utterly weird it feels to see it turned off.

It's not like I don't have a heaping list of other non-computer works to attend to, so I'll just switch gears for a little bit. In the spirit of staying creative, I printed out this list of 33 ways to stay creative to help in my non-cintiq guided pursuits. It's a pretty great list to keep in a sketchbook in times of need :)

Update! Finished!!

Finish your present wrapping with free gift tags!

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone has a restful holiday filled with many delicious cookies, much eggnog and the warmth of loved ones!

I am preparing to head to Michigan for a few days, but still have a long list of things to accomplish before I leave. One of these things is the dreaded wrapping of presents.
I still sadly possess the wrapping skills of an 8 year old and I tend to leave the wrapping of presents until the day (or a few hours) before I give them out. This combination generally results in some fairly laughable packages. This year, I decided to snazzify my wrapped gifts with some custom gift tags, in attempts to make up for the saggy corners and uneven tape that will undoubtedly be featured in all of my presents.

I added them to my site as well, so that anyone can download the tags and print them off. Simply download the .pdf (its pretty large) and print on any thick paper you like. I tried my Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper as it has a nice warm glow, but any cardstock will do just fine. Just cut around the dashes (or keep them if you like the way it looks) and voila! A set of custom illustrated gift tags.

The watercolor animal illustrations are also featured on my 2012 calendar from my Etsy shop :)

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Oh Skyrim....

Skyrim is fantastic. AND, eating up the majority of my free time.

The other night my Nord ran into giant mourning his dead mammoth. It was really rather sad, so I walked over (slowly, to avoid space-flight.) Knowing that there was really nothing I could do to help, I dropped a flower before continuing on.

From the Sea!

I've been on a sealife kick for a bit now. I suppose living down the block from the bay and being an avid aquarium fan will do that.

With the opening of my Etsy store, I've been trying to create more physical paintings that I might be able to offer for sale.

The painting on the left (Tentacles) sold recently, so I was hoping to make a few prints of it. Unfortunately, my love affair with gloss gel seems to have made this task rather difficult. The glossy brush strokes scan *terribly*. They look like little white hairs all over the image, and ruin the feeling of the painting. While it looks nice in real life, I may need to abandon the gloss texture I've come to adore if I want to reliably scan any new work.

The painting on the right (Octopus) is a work-in-progress shot, which will NOT have the thick coat of gloss gel. I had a professor at MSU who abhorred the use of gloss medium, and I may need to channel her hatred for it if I want to leave it out!

In other news, I am still working on The Sketchbook Project sketchbook. It is still in pieces scattered by my desk, easel and work table. The due date is quickly approaching, so I am going to need to spend some serious time finishing it relatively soon. I'd like to create a time-lapse video of the project too, but that will probably fall by the wayside as the holidays approach.

And speaking of the holidays, I printed my Christmas cards with moo.com again this year!

I love, love, love their paper stock. The outside has such a soft velvety sheen to it --- perfect for Christmas cards! I've got them up on Etsy in packs of 10 (with matching envelopes of course!).

With so many things to work on, I have been running around a bit crazy. In the words of my favorite Companion, "Eyes on the prey, not the horizon".

...and yes, Skyrim is amazing :)