Painting Doors

This project has left me pondering why most doors are painted white? It seems we are missing an opportunity to decorate our lives. Painting murals on walls is reasonably common but doors, for whatever reason are not common mural locations.
We got tired of looking at an ugly door. Most of the walls are filled with art but amidst the paintings is a sad looking dilapidated door. This door was never painted properly and was missing large chunks of what used to be white paint. It was also duct tapped together since the front panel decided one day to separate from the rest of the door. It was a sad situation. So I suggested that it should be painted....with something cool! After a little discussion I bought some paint and we started. Sebastian was really excited about this project and when I returned from teaching one Saturday he had painted more doors and had drawn out his designs for them.
The first door I completed was the one on the inside of the room. The hook is real so I painted a hanger and the shirt (with our initials logo) and the weird alien guy with loooong arms. Haha
The next one is based of the newly discovered prehistoric bird: Llallawavis scagliai. Painting bones is fun so even though this took me many hours I enjoyed the process. 
The third door took me much longer to finish. I don't really know what to say about it. It's fun and interesting even though I'm not quite sure what is going on! lol

Entwined

I have finally completed this painting. I sketched this image in the first page of my new sketchbook at the beginning of the year and started the painting sometime in February, and now three months later it is finally complete!!! I worked slowly and carefully on this painting but was constantly interrupted with other projects which was the main reason it took me so many weeks to complete it. 
Dancing en pointe is not easy. It hurts ans requires a ton of hardwork and dedication. Some days you dance till your toes bleed, leaving blood in your shoes to remind you of the effort you put into each and every class. Dancing en pointe is not easy, but is should look effortless. That`s the real art of it. Duisguising the work and pain behind the motion, leaving the audience in awe of those carefully rehearsed steps, elegantly effortless in their presentation. 

Entwined is 11" by 14" painted on watercolour board mounted to a cradled wood board. I used ink for the background and feet and then watercolours for the snake.
Originally I wanted the snake to be based off a real species but the coloured ones I liked weren't pythons and therefore are not prone to wrap themselves around trees and things. In the end I made up my own mythological snake because I wanted the bright colours to contrast with the black and white feet and background.
Entwined can currently be found in my Etsy Shop!

Custom Pink Journal

This past week I had the honor of creating a custom book destined to be used as a wedding album/scrapbook. I enjoy custom work although there is always a little bit of extra stress involved in getting it completed on time.

I had to work a few late nights and early mornings but I got it completed and into the postal system within a week! It took me about three hours to paint the gold on the covers and approximately 2 hours of cutting, folding and gluing papers for the ten signatures. Sewing it together and gluing end papers took another hour. It probably took me a total of 6 hours to make....not including drying time etc. I used thicker paper because it will be used to glue photos and memorabilia and stitched it together slightly looser than usual to make room in the binding for the paper that will be added to it.
I am quite pleased with this particular journal and will be making more like it as soon as dance ends for the year!