BEEN BUSY!

So, due to making banners and icons for Marauder Ex, an indie game developer contacted me to so some artwork for his game "Eternal Dragon"! It's a 16-bit culturally rich turn-based RPG with 18 playable characters. There's crafting of weapons and armor so you're not restricted to buying the best in the shops (this includes crafting of items as well), a plethora of sidequests, open environments and much more. Just check out Game-Zone Recreation's "Eternal Dragon" for yourself. Their website has a 10 + hour demo!

Eternal Dragon Website

Eternal Dragon Facebook

Speaking of websites, I've thought about making my own. Something a little bit more pleasing on the eye than this blog. This commission has definitely made me think about trying to amp up my tiny career here. I'll let you know!

Here's the first two of the four the developer commissioned me for:

                         A Marketplace in Diheru, "Eternal Dragon" Game-Zone Recreation LLC

                                Overlooking Multia, "Eternal Dragon" Game-Zone Recreation LLC

Both pieces were done digitally with Gimp 2.8 (Multia was a mix between Gimp for PC and Infinite Painter for android). I'm actually becoming really comfortable with digital art! All I have is a 6-7 year old Bamboo Fun CTE-450 graphics tablet with only 512 pressure, but it works great until I can get the money for something better. There's a bit of tweaking once you install wacom's drivers before painting in Gimp, though. I kept getting this terrible "brush lag" when I turned on the pressure sensitivity. I don't have money to fork over nearly 500 for the latest Corel, or the money to purchase a laptop that uses something other than XP or Ubuntu. SO! I googled away and found this extremely helpful forum on GIMPusers. I had to disable color management AND uncheck some things in the View menu of the taskbar before my pen would work as I expected it to. 

In the future I do plan to sink some money into better equipment and software but it'll be after quite a few commissions. 

Here's another piece I did today after fixing the pressure sensitivity in Gimp:

 "The Sentinels". Morbid and weird? Check and check. I have this up for sale as a poster and an 8x10 print. In my Etsy and Storenvy shops.

I'll be researching website builders tonight. Wooo! Fun. Well, goodnight and hopefully my golden Sentinels won't keep you awake! Try this song out if I haven't damaged your psyche enough:

Cernunnos! Or Billy.

Now available in my shops: "Billy"! I lufs him!

Coming off the holiday haze (and 3 major sewing projects), I was itching to use my pastel pencil again. This one was fast, I could just see this dude so clearly. So wild and smirky! Even slightly androgynous! I just want to WRITE about him endlessly now! Of course, now that I look him all over, I see bits of David Bowie when he was in the "Labyrinth", Alucard from the anime/manga "Hellsing", the ram horns typical of a Pan type god, a deer, and a goat. And he's wreathed in pine needles for the season! That's as close to holiday art as you're going to get from me. I thought about sprinkling pastel dust and slightly smearing it for snow, but I didn't want to chance messing any bit of him up.

I made a new copyright/logo as you can see on his left horn. Strangely proud of that.

I was listening to this song whilst drawing, over and over:



And this one:



"Never knew daylight could be so violent..." I imagine Billy, untamed, unpredictable, his smirk turning into a vicious smile full of bloodlust for the hunt. AH! Does he have an animal's incisors? (Chills)

Welp, I have more stuffins artwise to do, so I'll post again soon.

Sale!

Featuring my first Promotional Sale! My After Black Friday 15% off special! Dec 3rd through the 25th. Use discount code afterblackfri at checkout in either my storenvy or etsy!

Prints

I ordered a copy of both sized prints I have available through my stores of Moonshine. My brother suggested that I try to sell poster sized prints instead of the 8x10 (shown next to the 16x20 print here). I'm thinking that perhaps I will with the others. Warning, I'm not a professional photographer and I was too excited to post these once I got them despite how dark my house is right now.

Would you like to have poster sizes of the others? All of my prints come housed in a transparent sleeve to protect the image, then are laid upon a sheet of cardboard or inside a sturdy folder to prevent bending.

I have slowed down with new art for the moment due to holidays, but I will be paying attention to my shops for orders. As always, thanks for stopping by!

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.

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?

Storenvy!

Last night I discovered Storenvy! I set up a store there because I was tired of waiting on my manufacturer to be approved by Etsy. So for now, anyone who wants to just download my images can do so at the etsy shop. If you want prints, you can order now from my shop on Storenvy. Click here for the link to my Storenvy shop.

Screenshot of the store:

They even had an app that I could install into my facebook page. That's pretty nifty.

That's all for now. I have artsy things to do and cleaning around the house.

Finished

Now in the shop for digital download is "Shade".

I finished her this evening while my old man took the kiddo out to do some grocery shopping. When he came home he surprised me with black cardstock! Little dude got huffy when I squeezed his daddy. He pushed a box of granola bars at me and said, "I got this for you too, MOM!" I kissed that cute little grumpy face and told him I appreciated it. Then he hugged me before running off to wreak havoc in his bedroom. Toys were just everywhere, as is per usual.

We had some friends over later in the day. Much fun was had with Key Lime cake and Diablo 3 while their kid and mine played. But now it's time for bed. Goodnight and interesting dreams!

Updated My Shop

Original drawings of my owls are now available for instant download in my etsy store, along with updated versions of my digitally altered owls. Each altered owl (Night, Black, and Vivid Red) has files for sizes 4x5 inch and 8x10 inch for printing. Each original owl (Stout, Machine, and Masked) has the same sizes but also comes with slightly darker versions. All are 300 DPI. Prices have been lowered to $1.99 for all digital images including Druantia.

These owls were drawn for a friend for tattoo ideas. I wound up drawing 3 with Machine being the last and that was the one she picked! I may eventually sell the physical originals but I have such a hard time letting go of things like that. Do you?

DRUANTIA!

Druantia is available in my store for instant download!

My printer came in today and I was able to scan a few images, which includes my original drawn owls. When I get some packaging supplies I will be printing these babies out! I'll put up digital downloads for the original owls tomorrow. I mean, it's already past 3 am here. I'm just a wee obsessive about getting things done. Zombie me is taking over... noooommmm. Well, goodnight people and have interesting dreams!

Howdy!

I'm starting this blog so you can see behind the scenes while I'm constructing my artwork. Whatever frustrates me, or inspires me, it will be posted here.

Now to introduce myself:
I am Aimee Workman. I've been an artist all my life. I don't consider myself the highest caliber, and often you'll find that I'm totally lacking in self-confidence. However, it has been repeatedly brought to my attention that I'm good and that I should do something with my talent (thank you, kind peoples). So, here I am shamelessly advertising myself to all of you good people who happen upon this blog or any of the my other sites.

I write, I draw, I dabble in sculpting and jewelry work, knit, crochet, and I even sing from time to time with some good friends. You might even find me plucking on a mandolin here and there. I'm a stay-at-home mama with 1 little dude and an old goat for a husband (not literally, although he does eat everything he sees because of his crazy metabolism, and his facial hair kind of resembles one, not to mention his stubborness!). There's also a lovely dog that now inhabits my front porch; a recent addition to our family who we've named Rikku. A stray she was when I found her at my gate. I said hello and off she went to plant herself on my porch. Despite my allergies, we had to keep her. It seemed destined. Ha.

Now about my shop:
All I have for now are some digital images for instant downloading. You can put them on transfer paper, or print them out to frame (I try to size things for typical frames), or whatever you like as long as you do not resell my images in any form. In the near future, I will be putting up pieces of homemade jewelry, physical drawings, or prints, possibly paintings, knitted items, patterns for knits, and more. It's going to take some time to get the proper materials needed for packaging and whatnot. But for now, take a look. Tell me what you think! And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

You can find links to my shop and facebook page under the "About Me" section of my blog. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Powder Blue Owl" 2014 by me, Aimee S. Workman. Originally a pencil and paper drawing, but then I ran it through an art program on my computer to alter it to how you see it now. One version of the final product. Digital Art Instant Download in my Etsy shop.