Oil Pastels

Are marvelous! Now for sale in my Etsy and Storenvy as 8x10 and 16x20 Prints, Moonshine!

Click here for Etsy: (Moonshine)
Click here for Storenvy: (Moonshine)

Wow

I went to check in with my Storenvy shop before heading to bed and found a message plastered to my screen about recent changes to their shopping experience and whatnot. I stumbled upon Storenvy not that long ago and decided go with them too with being able to list things for free, custom store page, being able to link it to facebook so people can shop directly from there, and other nifty things that etsy doesn't do with only having to deal with profits being taken from Paypal for using their services. Then today, BOOM! Hey, they want 10% commission (and this includes from your shipping) if people shop from their marketplace to get to your store, on TOP of what Paypal and now Stripe (whatever the customer chooses during checkout) take from whatever you make.

Now, I understand it's a business. And the previous things I've mentioned are pretty neat, but hotdog dudes, I'm just a tiny business person! I won't be shutting my store down and I won't be changing prices to accommodate this commission thing, so don't worry. Just another price I have to pay to try to get more exposure on this world wide web. And I still don't have to pay anything until "I" get paid, so still not that big of an issue. I kinda feel like doing a pros and cons type of deal between Etsy and Storenvy but I'm too tired for that right now. I like a lot of aspects of both, but it may prove a little more expensive for me to use Storenvy now.

I just wanted to let you guys know, in case any of you mess with either of my stores, that things will remain unchanged for you if you heard this news elsewhere. No panicking on your end, you hear?

Okay, NOW I'm going to bed. Geez.

Rawr!

Another sleepless night for this Narcoleptic. We had a long day of Christmas shopping and it wore my kiddo out so much that he wound up sleeping all the way home (between 7-8pm), therefore keeping him up to this point. He's in bed, but he's restless. At least he's not upset about going to bed when he feels he just woke up. Hopefully by the end of this post he'll be asleep. My old man gave up hours ago on staying up. He has a massive sleep debt like you wouldn't believe.

Great news that I meant to mention the other day, ETSY APPROVED my printing service. Now I'm selling prints instead of downloads in my Etsy shop! Same prices as the storenvy shop. Hopefully I'll see some business soon. Click here for Etsy.

When I went out shopping earlier I picked up a 12 piece set of oil pastels. Nothing fancy since I don't know how I feel about them yet but I'm going to have fun experimenting, especially since I love to mix mediums. As soon as I awake from the dead tomorrow that's what I'll be doing. Not sure how good of an idea it'll be to put them in my scanner when I'm finished with whatever project I wind up doing. Meh.

I'm so jealous! Tyler's Art Shack channel on youtube. Oil Pastels.



Well, I think the boy is asleep so ciao my lovely peoples.

Agnes Cecile's watercolor painting. Beautiful.

On to today's P.I.K:
Barbara Allen's Crystal Moon shop on Ebay!
She makes beautiful quality handmade wire jewelry. I personally have a piece of hers that I wear quite often. So check her out! Natural Emerald Pendant.

Venturing Further Into Color

I pulled an abstract on myself the other night whilst being kept up 'til 3am by SOMEONE'S CHILD... oh yeah, mine. It was fun, though, my eyeballs swirling and closing into near sleep while my brush moved across the paper. The first layer of paint, yeah I was nearly snoozing but while I was getting into the second layer, I perked up and started experimenting with my brush strokes... and stabs. I was nearly maniacal in my movement, to the point where my 3 year old stopped coloring with his crayolas to raise his eyebrow at me in puzzlement. Maybe it was more like concern.

Anyway, so here's what came about when my subconscious took over:

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I've already put it up in my storenvy shop. I'm calling it "Abstracted Green". Well, goodnight all. I'm going to work on something else now.

Whimsy!

Available now on my Storenvy site is "Blue Flowers", a watered down acrylic painting on watercolor paper.

Sorry I've been gone for a few days, but I do like to socialize in person from time to time! Wouldn't want to stagnate staying at home all the time. I had a great time with some friends playing music, singing, and drawing while our kids played together. And I've now been commissioned to do a tattoo for one of those friends after she saw all of my work so far. Ego booster!

Here's what I started drawing at said social event:

I had this song stuck in my head while drawing her:



Oh, and THIS!

I'm official! I've already taken my business cards to a couple of local locations. One of ladies at my friend's house the other day mentioned a few places that sells local art, so I'm going to check those out next. See if they'll sell my prints or just my originals. Maybe even both! So excited!

Things that make me wanna

PAINT! Tim Gagnon. I love the colors he uses.




I spent a lot of time with my kiddo today painting and drawing with watercolor pencils. He had a blast but all I achieved was frustration. I really want watercolors to work for me. Partly because I love what Amy Brown and Kelly McKernan can do with them. I'll just have to keep at it, though probably without watercolor pencils. Time to look into tubes of it or something.

Le sigh. On another note, here's a "Person I Know (PIK)"! Check her out:
Allison Wilson Photography

And so, here it is...

BADUM! Awesomeness! For free for your printing pleasure, just click on the image to enlarge and right-click to save image! Use it as desktop wallpaper even! However, do NOT sell this image in any way. I will be putting this up for sale as a print on matboard later tonight on my storenvy site if you're interested in having a physical copy.

"Muse" 2014, 4x6 Image, 300 DPI, Unaltered from Original

My inspiration? Well, it's a mixture really. I started out with her face then I started drawing branches... BUT THEN this whole brain thing came to me out of nowhere. Right around the bottom of the drawing with the eyes, before there were eyes, I thought that it was starting to form this strange half of some crazy skull. BOOM! Muse. She's at the core (I'm not a neuroscientist, forgive me) and has given her inspiring eyes to the being she inhabits. Sorry that I'm late getting this on here. It took longer than expected to finish. 

Oh, back to the tidbits of inspiration. Alex Grey has been a long time favorite artist of mine. I like how visceral everything is without being in-your-face gory about it. The spirals are based on my interest in pantheism and the rest I'll keep to myself and let you ponder.

On to other things. My dad and stepmom have been incredibly supportive and gracious during this business of getting my art out to the masses. In fact, just this evening I received in the mail from Blick Studios (link here) each type of Prismacolor Turquoise graphite lead they had to offer, from my dad! It's an amazing feeling to have such confidence placed in my abilities! And of course I have others equally supportive though I don't think they'd like me typing out all of their names on here. I used my new graphite for the drawing I've posted here. Love!

I also have the non-photo blue, but I've never used it before so it'll be interesting to research in the next few days on it's use.

Well, that's all for tonight. I've gotta get back to drawing something else. Thanks for looking in!

Quick Update

I have added the custom portrait option to my Etsy store as well. Same pricing as the other on my Storenvy site. I also added the "Liv" pastel drawing as a download for $1.99.

If you're curious as to what I tend to listen to when I'm drawing or writing, check out these links to my youtube lists:

                                          For Drawing


                                        For Writing


My tastes run a bit towards the dark and kind of depressing side, just so you are warned. Some of it might even make you sleepy as I tend to like things that give a kind of trance-like quality to my sound experience. I alternate between these two lists depending on my mood.

I am going to take this opportunity and shamelessly advertise for my friend who is in the photography business. Fantastic crisp images of nature. I personally have the "Billious" photo as a wallpaper on my desktop. Check her out here:
Elaona Pack Photography

As I'm nearing 1000 views on my site in the month it's been up, tomorrow I thought I would post a small drawing for you to download and keep for free. What will it be?

Project Inside the Pain

I'm working on another drawing.  Hoping to finish it today.

I simply cannot use the blogger app for posting on here. It is not easy at all to place or size photos on it and there's no dealing with the HTML so I can remove the right click and save image capability. It would be nice to find a good blogging app on my tablet since I've pretty much figured out how to get everything else on there that I need to post copies for sale in my store. Do you know of any good blogging apps for android?

Couldn't Sleep

So I made this:

I've named her Liv and she's available in the storenvy store. She was originally supposed to be all tearful because she was only supposed to be a test for drawing water, then she just evolved into this.

Well, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. Check you later. Aimes out! (Head thump)

Custom Portraits!

Now you can order custom portraits from me! I'm so excited!

And soon I'll have business cards to hand out to people and local stores to spread the word. I thought about getting a t-shirt made too with one of my drawings on it. That way I'm a walking advertisement for myself. I have a few more ideas for products but for now I must take a break and enjoy the rest of the evening with my little dude. He wants to sit down and draw with me for a bit while we listen to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Soundtrack.

As always, thanks for stopping by.