After about two hours of running around from office to office in downtown Durham and paying some crazy fees I am now the proud owner of a business license. :)

All this really means is that the state of NC recognizes that I can do business under my design firm name, I can legally work out of my home, and I am able to open a bank account under my business name. These are all steps to transform my “freelance adventure” into officially being in business for myself.

I am working on a new website… to be unveiled by the end of the month!

On the inside it says: n: having more creative ability while drinking tea.

This time it’s a latte… at night it’s tea.

Hi there. I’ve made quite a bit of progress on pup’s sweater, but haven’t done much else in terms of painting over the last few weeks. Happily, I’ve had some paying work to keep me busy as well as a lot of Christmas shopping and preparing for our trip up to New York tomorrow. I asked Santa for some new art supplies this Christmas, so I should have some new work soon. :)

The newest issue of Fido Friendly is on the newsstands and the ad I co-created with Elizabeth is on the back cover!

How exciting!

Here’s what the original ad copy looked like:

We were given less than two days to come up with a campaign and ad design. They are reportedly thrilled with our efforts and we will have more SPCA work coming our way.

This was due partially to being tired from traveling for Thanksgiving and partially because I just didn’t get around to it. Bleh, sorry to my NaBloPoMo readers, I promise something more interesting tomorrow.

I have a few paintings sitting around my small studio that are about 60-75% done. I’d like to complete the Utah landscape and Lucky before I get started on another flower painting. More tomorrow!

Because we forgot the USB cord for our camera, I have no way of posting my recent moleskine entry to my blog. So instead, check out this post about the Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism exhibit that we attended at the North Carolina Museum of Art on Monday.

I contribute to several art groups on Flickr and in honor of Thanksgiving, here are a few other artists who inspire me.

• mrana
• sonyaseattle
• rightside
• Cynthia Padilla

I’ve been tagged for this meme by Girlrobot through NaBloPoMo, so I’ll do my best to make it art related!

1) I can’t draw trees. At all. They wind up looking like giant sticks with green cottonballs on top. I have a beautiful photo picked out of some birch trees from our trip to Utah, however, so I’m hoping I can get over this problem.

2) Also teeth. I discovered this recently when I was working on a pastel portrait of the three of us for our holiday cards, but alas, the teeth were not good.

3) I work exclusively on dark colored paper, specifically black. I don’t even own any white pastel paper.

4) I sing out loud to songs on my iPod when I’m painting. My dog probably thinks I’m nuts, but I hold back when Eric’s home.

5) I still have a whole bunch of bought-on-clearance art supplies from when a store in St. Petersburg went out of business my senior year of college. Including paper. I guess you could say that I “collect” art supplies.

6) I am an obsessive blender and I only blend pastels with my fingers—usually all of them. I admire artists that manage to create beautiful pieces without blending a single stroke but I don’t work that way.

7) Even though I am a professional artist/designer, I only have a minor in fine arts from college. My major was biology. I’ve learned graphic and web design through 14 years of practice.

I found seven folks to tag that haven’t done this yet. Feel free to play along or not, but at the very least, it’s a blog post topic!

French Toast Girl | Evolving Revolver | Sunspotting | Jill Althouse-Wood | Diahn’s Art Blog | Uncommon Blonde | Violet’s Ink

Guidelines:

• Link to the person that tagged you and post these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I am working on our Christmas card for this year, and I decided to use an illustration I drew a few months back of the three of us. I wanted to add an embellishment to my drawing but after searching the web for a simple holly Photoshop brush and coming up empty, I just made my own. If you like it… feel free to help yourself.

To use this brush, simply download the file and place it into your Photoshop Brushes folder: Adobe > Adobe Photoshop > Presets > Brushes. Open Photoshop and select Edit > Preset Manager… and make sure Brushes is selected in the Preset Type window. Click the Load… button and select the abr file you wish to use, click Load. Now the brush will be available in your brushes palette. Enjoy!

Download HollyBrush.abr