It's Not Always Pretty & Perfect

I have a love hate relationship with large time consuming projects, like the one above! You get this incredible vision in your mind of a drawing or painting and you're so caught up in the idea of it all. But once you start it you realize how much work you're going to actually put yourself through and you think you're insane for tackling such a thing! But in the end it's worth it! This was one of those projects. The idea was fairly simple, take the world map, cover it in roses and add a gold accent. First, I wanted to do the roses because I love the old vintage floral design and I needed practice with my flower painting skills. The flowers were the easiest part! Basically slap different colours of paint together, which gives them an abstract sort of look as well. The most difficult part of this painting was the gold outline around the map. I have a very steady hand but this was a challenge. I became very frustrated when I had to do the outline over again! I thought it would look alright if I sponged the edges of the painting in gold... It looked terrible! I had to repaint the beige background color and then the gold. Using tape for a straight clean edge didn't work for me. I have no idea why, it must have been the tape, it just bled through and left me with even more touch ups. But, challenges, bad visions, and a little bit of frustration is all part of the art. It's a beautiful ending with a mess of a process. The first thing someone said about this painting was that the world isn't all flowers...  Well of course not! The message in this piece is that the world we live in isn't always pretty and perfect, but we need to remember the good in it.

Paint What You Love

Well, here's what I've been working on lately... I've been putting in a lot of hours into this painting! I'm about half way done now, so still lots to finish! I'm very proud of this piece since it's one of the very few landscape paintings I've done plus all the stories and memories that go along with this painting. Cypress Hills is where my family and I go for our summer vacations every year, and we absolutely love it there! The area is so beautiful and so different from the usual boring flat fielded prairies where we are from. This past summer I took this panoramic photo of the lake and i knew I had to paint it! I thought I'd have troubles finding a canvas the right size but luckily I had no troubles and 12" x 36" worked perfectly! 

3 Drawings in 1 Day!

Here's three drawings I accomplished yesterday with my time at the studio! This is the first of the three I did and it's probably my favourite out of them. This is a Spectacled Owl and you can obviously tell how it got its name from the white feathers around his eyes. For these fine lined feathers I coloured around the white areas as best I could and then added detail with a white gel pen. It's always a little difficult working with white and black colored pencils because you tend the smear the black into the white and you get a lot of grey where you need white! The gel pen is a good fix for that! 

I saw a photo of this colorful little guy online and I had to draw him! I couldn't find the name of this bird anywhere! So if anyone knows what this little bird is let me know! I loved experimenting with different colours in this piece. I've been working with a lot of neutral colours lately so this drawing was fun to do. One thing I need to practice is working with different colours and learn how to blend them properly and to use the right colours together. 

This piece was a learning experience as well. The photo above isn't even the finished product; I decided I'd color in the background a dark green. It made the bird pop out a little more but I had troubles blending the background so it looks a little scribbly. I now know it's best for me not to color in the background, depending on the piece of course! Sometimes less is more, in this case it definitely was. 

WIP- Work In Progress

Here's a little something I've been working on today. Loving how this critter is coming along so far, easily and quickly! I'm hoping to finish this off tomorrow or the day after and start up another drawing right after! I'm planning on doing a three day arts and craft sale at the end of the year and I'm going to need lots of originals and prints! So right now I'm really focusing on making my art and working hard to get it out there!
Anyway, just wanted to share what I'm working on next. If there's any requests leave a comment! Will post the finished product soon! (:

Art Prints Everywhere!

"An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision" -James Whistler

They're finally done! Oh I love picking up my art prints and admiring them all, they make me feel so professional, hah! Most of these are either for myself (because I like to have a copy just in case) and a bunch of these are going to a nature centre where I'll be displaying the originals in their "Artist of The Month" feature and selling prints. So excited for that!
A little while ago I posted a few art prints on etsy (NicoleJanzenArt) and have had no orders yet. It's not a disappointment or surprise since there's a ton of artwork on there! And I haven't quite found the right crowd of people that would be interested in my art yet. So I hope this show I'm doing at the nature centre will help me with getting an idea about how and where I'm better off trying to sell my prints and/or originals. This is all a new learning process for me so if anyone has any tips or good websites for selling art let me know!

A Couple Techniques I Use...

"You don't know how much artists go through to make it look easy. It's all in the practice" -Lauryn Hill

This was the first owl I did for displaying at a local art store which I talked about in my last post. It's going to be so hard to let these owls go but I need to start selling my work instead of keeping it all for myself! Haha!
I was asked today what my technique for fur and feathers was. It really isn't hard it's just time consuming. Fur is simple; it's basically a million little lines, strokes and curves. But start with your lighter colours and add in the dark. If you start with a dark color you'll never bring out the highlights. Unless! You use a white gel pen! This is a little trick I learned not too long ago. It's always hard and nearly impossible to color around small details that are meant to be white. A gel pen works wonders for tiny highlights. But don't over use it! It's not a gel pen drawing so use it wisely. So feathers are a bit more difficult and I haven't quite found the right technique for them yet either. So once I play around a bit more with more owl drawings I'll be sure to post!

Grey Horned Owl Prismacolor Drawing

"Life isn't about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself!" -unknown author

Here's my latest piece! Well, I'm quite the owl lover and I've drawn many of them over the past couple of years but this one is definitely in my top three. This piece is 8x10 inches on Strathmore drawing paper, and done in Prismacolor colored pencils. This drawing took me roughly eight hours to do which isn't too bad considering all that detail!
I posted the finished drawing on my Instagram last night and I was lucky enough to get it featured on a popular art sharing account which has 60 thousand followers! I've been tagging my work to get featured on a bunch of different art sharing accounts and this piece was finally picked to get featured on one of the biggest art accounts on Instagram! My picture has nearly 2000 likes on their page...WOW! I can't believe that that many people liked my drawing, it's crazy!!
Anyway, as much as I want to keep this guy I'm going to be displaying this owl and another at a local art supply store and selling them. I'm a little new to the other side of the art world; the commissions, selling originals and/or prints, art gallery's and getting my work noticed, but I've got the talent part of it down, I think! Now it's time to get my work and name out there! (: