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 decided to erase the black outlines and go for a more realistic look as opposed to a stylized illustration. I added more white, pink, and magenta to each of the individual petals until all were rendered to my liking.

I am very happy with the finished product…

To continue on my flower kick, I pulled out this photo of a tulip magnolia Eric took at Duke Gardens back in the spring. I asked him to take a few different shots of this branch specifically so I could paint it at a later date.

Because I am using blue paper and not black, I am much more careful in the vine charcoal sketching stage… especially since I plan to leave the background alone. Most of the charcoal can be erased, but it’s hard to get rid of a huge area if I mess up.

So far I’ve added the white and pink shades and colored in the branch, but I still have quite a bit of the black outline showing. I need to decide if I want to erase the black edges or emphasize them, depending on the direction I want to go with this painting.

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 perhaps a little ahead of myself with painting tulips in late fall, but I like them. Maybe a crocus is next?

As always, feel free to check out my other moleskine drawings in my flickr set.

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

I almost always listen to my iPod while I’m painting and since my studio is right next to Eric’s office, this way we can both listen to the music we want without disturbing each other.

I have a specific playlist that helps me get into a painting mood—a mix of energizing and thoughtful songs, here are ten of my favorites…

Dig - Incubus
Run - Snow Patrol
Call and Answer - Barenaked Ladies
Glycerine - Bush
The Scientist - Coldplay
Soul Meets Body - Death Cab for Cutie
Other Side of the World - KT Tunstall
Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
Independent Love Song - Scarlet
Read My Mind - The Killers

(I’ve linked above to the YouTube video for each song, if you’re interested!)

After I added all the white patches, I filled in the rest of the body and head with a reddish-brown pastel.

As the face is the most important component of a portrait, I started adding detail there first. The original nose placement made the face too long, so I moved it up some. I had the right eye in the correct place, but needed to move the the left eye down.

I’ve got a good bit of detail done in the face, but after looking at my reference photo I can see that I need to extend his body in the back a little bit. I also want to work on making his tucked front leg a little more convincing before I start adding the final details.

For my next dog portrait, I am working on our friend’s adorable chihuahua, Lucky. He’s about seven pounds of pure love.

Eric took this photo of him on the arm of their couch the first time we went to visit them after they moved to Jacksonville.

Once I have the correct outline using soft vine charcoal, I started adding white. At this point, I am just trying to get the placement of his head, legs and tail correct.

To paint large areas like this I lightly fill in the area with pastel and then blend (with my fingers) into the paper. For spots of pure white I may have to go over the area a few times, especially since I am using black paper. I’ve tried other methods of blending (brushes, tortillons, etc) but nothing seems to work as well as my hands.

He’s already starting to look pretty realistic! Tomorrow I will continue painting with brown pastels and start working on his face and ears.

I started out my painting session today by further refining the flowers, adding more shading to the leaves, and more detail to the colorful centers. Unfortunately I only have two shades of purple, so I had to layer pink and white in areas to give the painting enough color variation.

I ultimately decided to add a stem because the flowers looked a little strange just floating in space. The finished product…