What I've Been Thinking About Lately

I know. I know. It's been over a month since I last blogged. I have been lost in thought about my art, my blog and the state of my career. August 4th everything changes. Both of my children will be in school from about 8:30am to 4:00pm Monday thru Friday. It will be time to buckle down and really get serious. It's exciting and scary at the same time. I've mostly been thinking about my art and my style. I really want it well defined. I don't want to look at my art and just see the techniques I learned from an online class I've taken. I want to look at it and see "me". It's very difficult to bring that into the computer for licensing. You don't need to have computer skills to be licensed but if you have them, you will have more opportunities. I follow a lot of different licensed illustrators and one of my favorites is Helen Dardik. Her work is colorful, whimsical and lush. Most importantly her traditional and computer art are very similar.

Here is a piece Helen Dardik did in Illustrator.

And here is one of Helen's watercolors.

Even though she used a computer for one piece and traditional materials for the other, you know it's Helen Dardik's art. This is where I want my art to be. I want people to look at it and know it's Lynda M. Metcalf's art whether I used my computer or my paintbrush.

I still have a lot of work ahead of me. I think I'm close to having "my style" but I'm not quite there. I also need to treat the computer as another art supply. It's amazing what can be accomplished with Illustrator and Photoshop but it's a lot to learn. Soon I'll have more time. I better come up with a plan to use my time wisely so I can accomplish all I want to!

Here are links to Helen Dardik's work if you want to get lost for a little while.

Illustration

Watercolors

Patterns

 

Thanks so much for stopping by. And don't forget to click the links above to check out Helen's work.

 

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Diary of a "Make Art That Sells" Student: Week 2 of Part B

Well, it was another long, fun and hard working week for MATS!  Week 2 was all about Children's Apparel.  I have been shopping in the baby and children's departments for about 6 years now so, I was very excited for this week.  The theme was camping.  I really, really wanted to nail this one with a beautiful presentation.  That didn't happen.  I like my icons, especially the animal ones but I just can't get the arranging down to make it super pretty.  Getting the icons right is the most important thing though.  If those aren't strong I won't have a strong piece in the end.  Here is what I came up with.

This is the collections of icons I created.  I had to do woodland critters of course!  I drew the line work and the painting separately and put them together using Photoshop and Illustrator.  I used Illustrator for the line work then pasted it into Photoshop.

Coming up with arrangements was difficult.  I decided to create a scene with my icons and then I attempted a repeat like pattern with the critters.  It wasn't the success I hoped.  I also created a repeat with a painted mushroom which I think came out cute.

I am happy with the items I have to work with.  I really enjoyed this assignment and want to play more and more with it.  Here is the presentation sheet that I posted for review.

I'm going to get this eventually.  It's a big learning curve.  I am confident I can do this though! 

Week 3 is Scrapbooking!  I hope to continue improving!

Thanks for stopping by!