Victoria

Here is my entry for the Popovy Sisters contest. You know that I have a weak spot for art dolls. Last year I discovered these Russian artists, whose production is very interesting and captivating. This year they launched an illustration contest I thought to give it a try. 

This has been inspired from their latest line, called Royals, which is based on the game of chess. Here is victorious white queen, regal and ferocious, beautiful and deadly. You can also look at it as the price of power or the horrors of war...I know, it's unusually gruesome for me, but every once in a while it's fun to change tone.

Back to my regular children works, now.

Portrait of Bella in progress

Hei there! How are you guys? After my summer vacation, I came back to a ton of work, daycare-born weekly colds, and unavoidable evening exhaustion. The most stressful times are gone, though, so I have a measure of tranquility that allows me to draw again. In fact, I have picked up the portrait I started in June  and am finishing it.

Here is a glimpse to the work in progress:

I got stuck on the inks, because the lamp in the living room that I normally use to work broke and we needed to get a new one. That and the fact that after dinner I just wanted to curl up doze off while watching TV...

Once the inks were finished, the fun part began and coloring has been relatively fast.I enjoyed a lot coloring the dragon!

So, after coloring everything, I started working on the face, which is unusual. Usually, the face gets colored first, because I usually have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do and it's a lot of fun, plus I tell myself that if I make a mess I can start over by transferring everything and giving it another try without too much grief. Instead, this time I was so happy with the lineart that, modestly speaking, I had no doubt, the coloring of the face would be very easy. I started with the skin, with which I was pretty happy. Then I proceeded to the mouth and the eyes...which turned out way too dark...now she looked like a not-so-pretty vampire.  Plus, with colors, all the irregularities and symmetry issues that I could not see in the inks became very clear. Why do I always miss these flaws until the very last moment? Looking at it in the mirror (I know I should have done this ages ago!) showed all the problems even more obviously...how to fix them?

Work in progress: Two Cherries

I am making a gift for my mother in law and of course it's all about her beloved grandchildren.
This is my first approach to the project.

I started this when she came to visit us last month but came to a stop because of different problems:

1) The eyes of Bella are a bit off center and uneven.
2) The shape of the cherries, albeit rather consistent with their natural appearance, looks wrong.
3) When I started coloring the cherries, I got carried away by the dark red tones. The drawing was loosing the dreamy quality I was hoping to convey in it.

Painful as it was (I rather liked the leaf, although it's too small compared to the fruits), I opted to start over.

I think that, in the long run, this choice is paying off. Today I am finishing the new drawing and will show it to you tomorrow.

Be well everybody!

After the archery lesson

I mentioned the other day that I almost participated to a third contest.

That was the Lara Croft Reborn contest on deviantArt.  used to play Tomb Raider a  few years ago and I loved it. When the new game came out and the contest announcement appear I was busy with other stuff and did not pay too much attention to it. A week before the deadline, I remembered about the challenge and came up with a quick idea, as you see on the post-its below.

My idea was to depict Lara in a rather unconventional way, picking on the description found in the "assets package". She was said to be naturally beautiful, studious, not a social butterfly, wealthy, but not ostentatious, etc. All these characteristics are not typically represented in LC art, where she usually is in a combactive stance, covered in dust and sometimes blood. Instead, I wanted to show a young innocent girl with an interesting background and a hidden strength.

When my husband saw the drawing half way through the inking, he first could not identify her, then reminded me that the contest was supposed to promote an action game and that composed and calming views of the main hero were not going to appeal to the panel of judges, the company, or the target audience. As a former player of the game, I begged to disagree on the last point. However, I recognized he might be correct on the rest. Because I was also extremely tight on time and very busy with work and the baby,  I decided to relax and finish the piece for my own pleasure. Here is the result.

Carnevale a Venezia

"Carnevale a Venezia" is my entry for the Enchanted Doll Birthday Contest 2013 (by the way, I have seen some entries from the forum people and they look absolutely gorgeous...so the competition is hard!).

I chose Venice as my ideal destination, because I am enamored with its elegance, ancient history, and innate fragility. It's a dream of gold and lace floating on the water always on the brink of disappearing under the waves. I have traveled a bit and seen lovely places, more exotic and adventurous than Venice, but my heart is in my country and because I live far away I the desire to go back burns particularly strong. Most of all I wish to visit with my little Bella and share with her the pleasure of visiting this jewel of a city.

As for the Carnevale, the costumes and masks are so inventive, opulent, and mysterious that I've always been fashinated and maybe also a bit intimidated by them. So, to me it would be great to return to Venice during the Carnevale.

I wanted to really stick with the traditional postcard design and feel, yet personalize it. 

One issue was that postcards are rather small (4x6, as per the rules of the contest) and this poses a challenge to me, because I like to draw tons of little details, but on such a small canvas this was going to be impossible. My solution was to draw on a regular 9x12 sheet, take a picture of it, send it to Shutterfly or some other printing service and turn it into a pretty neat postcard.

The plan was pretty straight forward. The implementation... not so much. 

Here is the pencil sketch, which I started mid January...I had a lot of fun drawing San Marco's Cathedral.

 

 ...but it was a lot of work inking it!

Here I am at the end of January with still most of the difficult parts still to tackle.

 

In order to give the impression of distance, instead of using my usual black Copic Multiliner (0.03), I switched to one of the newer Multiliners in grey (with a 0.05) to ink the church. I think it worked well, especially when I added the colors.

Coloring was quick and fun...so here is the final drawing:

At this point (around Valentine's Day), I took a nice picture of the drawing and tried to send it to print...too bad I did not account for the fact that it takes at least a week for the actual printing job to be completed and then a couple of days to get it back home for the finishing touches. The contest deadline was February 28th! Bottom line, with this course of action, I would never have made the deadline...How could I have neglected these details!!!

In the end, I sent the picture to be printed at the local Walgreen's...where they actually butchered the color depth, in my opinion, but I had no time to be picky, so I settled for it.

I then attached the drawing to a same size piece of watercolor paper, and decorated the back of the card to make it look like an actual Italian postcard.

 

This is actually a reproduction of an actual stamp issued in 1973 that in turn used a painting by the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio (1465 – 1525/1526)...see below:

I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Well, I got it out just on time! For a while it was stuck at the post office in Vancouver (oh nooo!), but the ED team picked it up a few days ago and Marina also gave an extension to the contest deadline (March 3) so all is well.

Ritratto di Bimbo (Portrait of a Child) Finished

This is the finished piece:

In case you were wondering about the symbolism of the border...here it goes:
Gardenias: Joy Daisy: Innocence and beauty.
Stephanotis:...well, my initial research told me it meant good luck...but of course after finishing coloring the whole thing, I found out it means desire for marriage and travel...the first meaning clearly not appropriate to the theme...ooops! But the desire to travel to meet the family that lives in Italy of course applies...so, in a sense, I am saved! ;).
Tooth fairy: Pit like Bella grew his teeth late...the tooth fairy will wait a bit, meanwhile I put her here as a propitious figure and...because I like drawing little fairies so much! ;).
Baby animals: they are so cute and so is he! In addition, his lovey is a super cute little rabbit, Gigi. Grandma brought one over for Bella as well. His name is Bunny Boo...
Tiger: Pit was born in the year of the tiger.
Pacifier: another thing Pit and Bella have in common is their undying passion for the pacifier, hence the pacifier club emblem in the right hand corner. We all need to work on growing out of the habit!

What about the necklace? There is a belief among the grandmothers in my family (although from the web it looks likes it pretty main stream...) that wearing an amber necklace helps dentition. So of course both babies got one. Interestingly enough, it looks like this tradition goes back centuries. Here is Rubens' son wearing one!

As always, thanks for reading!

After almost a year of silence...

...and sleep deprivation, here I am again!

Baby Bella. is growing beautifully and she is the delight of my life.

A moment ago, while reading an old post in which I stated that I was getting my act together I laughed! I surely believed that at the time, but it was before I went back to my full time job! In reality, nowadays I have little time for anything non-family related, but I took advantage of the Christmas holidays to draw something for Bella's new bedroom (we also moved to a bigger house...what a year!).

It's a portrait of her little cousin, Pit, who is two year older than her. He is an adorable child and we can't wait for the two little ones to finally meet (he lives in Italy, we in the USA and unfortunately we haven't had a chance to visit yet...). Meanwhile, I thought  this would help to remind little I. of her family overseas.

Here is the process...in the next days, I'll try to take a picture of the finished piece.

New paper doll: Renee

I made another paper doll. This time I tried to balance better the body features...I was not so happy with the way my previous two girls, Guenevere and Gigi, turned out. Their heads seemed quite too big compared to their shoulder and torso, not to mention the fact that also the legs were too tiny to be possibly able to carry around their owners.

I think the chest area now looks a bit too small, but I am sure I'll do better next time...;)
Enjoy!

Message in a bottle

And this is my latest mermaid...in a big trouble. Was it chance or the will of a cruel entity that put her in such a desperate situation? Who will help her? Will she grant three wishes to her savior?

Poor thing...it might take a while for somebody to find her tiny island. They might not even notice her bottle, as the treasure chest might prove a more obvious point of interest.

Skin Tones in Prismacolor Part 2: Cold hues

...And this is the second set of floating faces, with  more strange and unearthly colorings. I like some of these very much. Others came out a bit too over the top for my taste, but there might be occasion when these combinations could work.

Which ones are your favorites among these ones?
Mine are C1, C2, and D2. :)

Skin tones in Prismacolor Part 1: Neutrals

Here is the first part of my experiments with my new Prismacolors. I selected two groups of colors that could be suitable for skin tones, neutrals-warms and colds. I began with combining the warm colors and I have obtained 6 possible outcomes, that you can see below:

Which ones are your favorites?
Mine are A3 and B1. :)

Next, the 6 combination of cool colors.

The new banner is up!

Hello again! So, "At the stroke of 5" is finally ready and, with my husband's kind contribution,  it now welcomes visitors at the top of the blog page. So glad this time things worked out properly. ;)

Here is the drawing without the writings on it. As always, I used Copic markers with some Prismacolor markers for the background and I worked on precious Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper, which has a lovely texture and helps a lot with color blending.

At the stroke of 5, the young Duke invited his fiance to have tea at his family's residence.  Needless to say, his parents were surprised.                          

 What do you think?
            

Another mermaid...and Arrivederci!

Mermaid in the leaving room Banner: second take...this time I think I am closer to the right dimensions...So, while in "Tea with the Mermaid" the living room went to the sea, this time the mermaid actually did go to an actual living room in the home of a well-to-do family "At the stroke of five"...quite a surprise for the guests! I still have quite a lot of work to do on her, but i am leaving for Italy tomorrow and I am pretty sure I will not progress much (so many places to see, so many people to visit). Here is the very preliminary sketch. To be continued...
Talk to you all in October!

Tea with the mermaid-finished

It's done. Sorry, I was too lazy to make a WIP progression on this one...
Ok, I don't think this will fit, unless somehow I change the size of my banner here (or, to be precise, I ask my husband to try and do it for me) or I cut mercilessly the picture. Oh well, I think I'll have to make another attempt, paying more attention to the spatial contrains...

Meanwhile enjoy the freshness of tea under the sea with this kind and hospitable lady.

Little Flat Butterfly-Io Galatea

Little Flat Butterfly-Io Galatea, a photo by Astera T on Flickr.

This is a little flat doll I made for a friend. She owns one of Marina Bychkova's amazing Enchanted Dolls. You should know that I am a fanatic admirer of the beautiful works of this artist. So I was thrilled when Gita (or should I say Tiggy) asked to make a 2D portrait of Butterfly-Io. It took me quite a long time...in part because I am rather slow, in part because I painted the character on two sides. (wings included).  For this piece, I used Copic Markers and pencils on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press watercolor paper.

Coming soon, a post dedicated to Marina's work, which you should go and check out on her website http://www.enchanteddoll.com/