The 2013 Enchanted Doll Contest

Hello, dolls lovers out there! I am sure you are more than familiar with Marina Bychkova's spectacular works! If not, take a look at her website: you'll fall in love! Enchanted dolls are collector's dream and pretty hard to come by, but every year Marina gives a chance to all her fans to win one of them by participating to her Birthday contest!

This year the prize is one of her resin dolls fully painted and customed. Yummy, no?

The 2013's theme is travel. People were asked to send in a postcard of a favorite destination...
Postacards can be new, old, bought, home-made, of real places or fantastic places...
Recently, Marina posted that she has already received more than 100 postcards and they keep coming!

Looking forward to seeing everybody's entry. I made my own (and it was a rather complicated business, because I didn't plan ahead very smartly...usual me...) and sent it yesterday afternoon. It will make it to Canada barely on time.

I am also very curious to see which mold she'll pick to be the prize and how she will dress her up...

Good luck to all the participants!

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.

The Diva, the Icon, and the Rebel in Copics

These are the floating faces I used for trying out my Prismacolor markers. I decided to see how they would look with Copics. I like them much better this way...

The puppy and the cardinal

After almost two months of hiatus, I am back! What happened? I had a baby! I am finally getting my act together and finding time for myself again (every once in a while... ;)).
So, the other day I finished this small drawing of the young lady with a puppy and a cardinal that I started at the end of January, right before I gave birth. Somehow I also managed to take WIP pictures for this one...Hope you'll like it.

 You probably remember this line-art...Right before entering the hospital, I started coloring the dress but after a couple of layers I had to take a long break, as more important matters became priorities...;)

 As always I started with the face. I was trying to give it a lot of light, like in the 18th century paintings that inspired me in coloring this. Later I figured out it was too flat this way and I decided to add deeper shadows.

For the dress, I wanted a happy blue color, so I started with B01, I think, and then added a bright B24 and B28 for shadows/depth. I also a combination of violets for the ribbons.
Immediately, I disliked the effect: too bright...my old bad habit, which I have tried hard to avoid for a while now. I wanted happy blue, not headache electric blue!

Well, at this point I stopped drawing for a while, but I was still bugged by the bad turn this little piece was taking. I had planned to hang it in my baby's bedroom and was sorry I could not make it nice for her...

After a month from my little one's birth, I picked it up again and started tinkering with it to see if I could fix it.
A generous addition of grey (a combination of C2, C4, and C6) started improving (in my eyes at least).
As you can see, to prevent a super-saturated red effect on the cardinal, I started putting down my shadows in grey on it too (I learned my lesson...;)).

Here I kept going deep with blue-ish and grey shadows for the face and the hair (I was having fun again!).

Here the hair is completed, and so is the cardinal. I was not sure what color the hair should be. I wanted this young lady to have my daughter's colors. Would be nice to have guessed right. Mommy has brown hair, dad blond and the eyes colors in our families range from black to grey, green, blue, golden hazelnut, and chestnut brown...so baby could be almost anything...I decided for blond with grey eyes. We will see if I was right in a few months (right now she is light brown with grey eyes, but she will most likely change).

More depth was also added to the face with more greyish and lavender blues.

Now to the background and frame. I had fun with light tones of beige and light greens and blues.
You probably can't tell from the picture, but there are a gazilion layers there, as I experimented with different markers: a little more green, no too much...a little more beige..better, hmm, what about some blue here? etc...I would not be able to tell you exactly what I did here!

Getting close to the end, I used my Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils to refine things here and there.

And this is how it looks now!

Coming soon, the three faces I tested the Prismacolor marker's skin tones colored with copic markers...