My Favorite Wheel of Time Character

If you haven't read the series yet, beware...there are some spoilers below!

One of my favorite things to listen to while I paint and work on my artwork is the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan on Audible. I am midway through the 4th book and am thoroughly enjoying the series. My favorite thing about the series is that there are so many characters in the book and they each have such unique powers and abilities.

While I think the male characters are all very interesting, I am of course drawn to the female characters. I really love the whole idea of Aes Sedai. In the stories, Aes Sedai are women with magical powers. Aes Sedai train in the White Tower and eventually choose an Ajah color. There are different Ajah colors and an Aes Sedai's Ajah color dictates their specialty. For instance, the brown Ajah are historians, yellow Ajah are healers and so on.

Moraine is the first Aes Sedai that we meet in the book and she is of the blue Ajah. The blue Ajah like to go abroad and become involved in political affairs and justice. I like that you can never fully trust Moraine's character. She seems like she is a good person, but is she really looking out for every one's best interests? It's hard to tell! But I think my favorite character so far is Nynaeve.

Nynaeve is a very stubborn, quick to anger type of person. But more than anything she cares about the well-being of everyone from her small village. She has the strongest potential out of any Aes Sedai in thousands of years, but she cannot yet wield her power consciously. She has to become angered to fully embrace her powers. She oftentimes makes herself angry on purpose so that she can channel her power. But when she is able to channel her power, she is unmatched in her abilities.

She is also interesting because she has been using her powers for almost her entire life as a wisdom in her village. A wisdom is like a village's wise-woman, adept at healing and can sometimes listen to the wind or predict the weather. Most women who use their powers without training end up killing or hurting themselves, but she has been able to use her powers unknowingly for years without being harmed. I am really looking forward to seeing how Nynaeve's character develops throughout the series. Will she ever be able to wield her power without becoming angry?

I am also at the part of the book where Nynaeve and Lan first start up their relationship. Lan is Moraine's warder which means he swore to protect Moraine until her death. Aes Sedai usually have one warder who is adept at sword fighting and can sense all evil spawned creatures. Lan is bound to protect Moraine even if his heart belongs to Nynaeve. Nynaeve has always hated Moraine since they first met, so the interplay between the three of them is quite intriguing. It's almost like a love triangle. It's hard to tell how Moraine feels about everything so far, but I can't wait to see how that situation develops as well.

Do you like the Wheel of Time series? If so, what is your favorite character? If you haven't yet read the Wheel of Time series and like fantasy books, I definitely suggest you give them a try!

What Are Tubes?

Creative Design Outlet is one of the companies that license my artwork. They sell my artwork in tube packages. One question I get asked frequently is, "What is a tube?" Well, I will try my best to explain it to you! I have to admit, that I didn't know what tubes were until I was approached by a company who sold them. But I did some research and soon found out that there is a lovely tube/tagger community and tubes are widely popular with people who work with computer graphics.

A tube is sort of like clip art. When you purchase a tube from Creative Design Outlet, you will receive a digital file of my artwork. The file is separated into different layers. They take one of my witches, fairies or mermaids and remove the background creating a cut out type image. This way, you can use my fantasy girls to create your own custom computer graphics.

The cut out image is perfect to create your own computer art, because you can overlay fonts, borders and other graphic elements. Usually a finished piece of art made using tubes is called a tag. You can use tags in a variety of places like Facebook, Myspace, forums and more. They are also really fun to create for friends to give as gifts...sort of like a digital e-card! You can make "Happy Birthday," "Thank you" and other holiday related tags.

Make sure to read all of Creative Design Outlet's rules here. There are certain places you can post tags and other places you can't. Also, there is information you have to put on everything that you make using tubes, like a license number and artist name, etc... It's best to get that information right off their website, because they're much better at explaining that part of the process than I am!

Tubes are priced very reasonably. They are only $1.85 each or $5.00 for a set of three. You can also purchase a set of 10 tube packs at a reduced rate.

Here are pictures of some of my tube packages that are available:

Here are some beautiful tags created with my tubes by talented artists:

Telsa Tag by Jacqui Healy

Karmina Tag by Claire Mullins

Telsa Tag by Claire Mullins

Have any further questions about tubes? Let me know! I will gladly try and answer any questions that I can or point you in the right direction.

5 Years from Now

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? It's one of those questions that is asked on almost every job interview. I started thinking about that question today in terms of my artwork and my art business. Where do I see myself in 5 years? How will my business have changed in 5 years? Of course I have lots of goals and hopes for the future, but there are two things that stood out to me: being able to paint more frequently and being able to travel more with my artwork.

It may sound weird, but painting is a luxury to me! If you made a pie chart looking at the amount of time I spend on various aspects of my art business, painting would definitely be one of the smallest pieces of the pie. So much time is spent on other tasks like maintaining my Etsy store, making inventory, fulfilling orders, email correspondence, bookkeeping, etc... I'm definitely not complaining, because I feel very fortunate to be able to make money at something that I love doing. But in the future, I would love to see painting become the biggest piece of the pie.

So as I think about where I will be in 5 years, I hope that I will be in a position to have an assistant to help me with various business aspects so that I can concentrate most of my time on creating artwork. I know that is probably a huge dream of a lot of us artists. What artist wouldn't want to be able to paint all the time and have an assistant to handle everything else? That would be fantastic! A girl can dream right? Actually, I enjoy all the various aspects of my art business, so I would be happy if my "painting pie piece" was simply larger in 5 years than it is now.

The other thing I see myself doing more of in 5 years is traveling more with my artwork. I would love to go to all the big sci-fi/fantasy conventions and fairy festivals around the country and sell my artwork. I have done a few shows local to my area and I met fantastic artists who travel all the time! They have at least a couple conventions lined up every month and they live almost a gypsy lifestyle traveling from one show to the next. I couldn't see myself traveling all the time, but I think it would be so fun to have at least a few that I would go to every year. I love the whole convention/fair atmosphere and getting to interact with all of my fans and artist friends that I know online would be fantastic!

I think it's important to keep looking forward in life to set goals for yourself. I am a big goal-orientated person. I always have to have something to reach or strive for. If I'm not working towards something, I am not content. I always want to be bettering myself, my artwork and my business. I try not to become complacent with where I am at right now. So, it was interesting to think about this 5 year question in terms of my art business. It helped me to set some new goals to work towards.

Come See Me on Thursday!

Come see me this Thursday, July 28th at Suwanee Town Center! On the 4th Thursday of every month, Suwanee Town Center hosts the Toast at Town Center. They have many fun events like concerts, games and more for all ages to enjoy. The Art Walk, hosted by the North Gwinnett Arts Association, is also part of the Toast at Town Center. During the Art Walk, local artists come to present and sell their work for everyone to enjoy.

I will be there this Thursday selling all of my goodies! I even have a couple new things to debut that I haven't shown before. Set up begins at 5:30 pm and we will be there until around 8:00 pm. I would love for you to come and see me! I will be selling prints of all sizes, stickers, magnets, necklaces, buttons, pocket mirrors, coloring page packs and a lot more. I also plan on bringing a painting and will be working on it in my spare time. We will be set up right in front of City Hall, so you can't miss us. I can't wait to see you!

Some Exciting News!

I thought I would share a bit of exciting news with you all today! I decided to start doing more shows and conventions this fall. I have been selling my artwork for awhile now, but mostly in an online capacity. I have done a few shows here or there, but nothing consistent. I really enjoy showing my artwork out in the "real world." It is so fun to interact with customers and receive instant feedback on my artwork. Not to mention I've always loved arts & crafts shows, sci-fi conventions and other similar events! Not a year goes by that I don't go to at least a couple.

So I decided to apply to two different juried arts shows (non-fantasy) in my area (around Atlanta, Georgia). In our little world of fantasy art online, which is a fantastic community of talented fantasy artists and wonderful fantasy art lovers, I feel pretty comfortable! I feel like my art is well received and feel very fortunate to have fans all over the world. But, I have to be honest; I was a little nervous applying to these non-fantasy art shows. The world of art, outside the fantasy niche, just seems like such a big scary place to me! I wasn't sure what the outcome of applying to these shows was going to be, but I knew that to continue to build my art business, I also need to continue to grow and expand where I sell my work.

Well, I got notice a month ago that I was accepted to the first show I applied to and just received notice last week that I also got into the second juried show that I applied to! I feel very grateful that my artwork was well received by the panel of jurors who oversaw the application process. I cannot wait to showcase my artwork and I hope that some of you will come out and see me! I will be sure to make a blog post with my complete fall show lineup (with dates, locations and times) as soon as I know all the details! =)

How to Improve Your Drawing Skills

One question that I get asked a lot is "How did you learn to draw?" I also get a lot of aspiring artists who contact me asking them how they can improve their skills and ask for tips and tricks. So I thought I would take some time to give you a little insight into how I improved my drawing skills over the years and also how I continue to improve my drawing skills. I feel that I'm always a work in progress striving to get better and better!

I think some people are under the impression that there's some magic involved with drawing. They think that artists are born with some fantastic talent and just sit down and draw masterpieces. So, when people who want to draw, sit down and try and don't automatically get it, they may become frustrated.They may think that they weren't born with that certain something and they just can't draw!

What those people don't know or don't yet realize is that many artists that they admire started out just like them, frustrated at their drawing table, feeling like they weren't good enough and perhaps thought they should give up their hopes of being able to draw well. But those artists they admire worked through their frustrations and developed their skills over time. They worked tirelessly, read books, studied anatomy and produced many, many, many sketches to get to where they are today.

I firmly believe that anyone can draw if they are dedicated and work at it. Having the desire is the most important part. Will some people take longer to develop their skills than others? Of course! Are some people born with more talent than others? Of course! But drawing is like any other skill. If you practice, practice, practice, you will improve your skills....guaranteed.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

So where to start? Well, I have one book that I highly recommend if you want to learn how to draw. I really love Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards because it takes a different approach to drawing than most other books out there. Most books will tell you what tools you need, teach you about perspective, lighting, value, etc...That's all fine and good, but they don't teach you how to actually draw. The author of this book understands the process and knows how to communicate it to the reader by showing them how to -see- things differently. Sometimes I feel like drawing is getting the logical side of your brain to shut up and allowing the other side of your brain (the more creative side) to do what it knows how to do.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain teaches you how to stop thinking about "how to draw an eye", for instance, but to instead think about the shape and it's proportion to things around it. Most people think that an eye is oval shaped with points on either end, but if you actually study an eye, you will find that it is definitely not shaped like that. There are so many great exercises in the book that will help you to change the way you think and see things.

One of my most favorite exercises is where the author has you draw a line drawing of a horse with a rider upside down. This really forces your logical side of the brain to be quiet, because you can't even really tell what you're drawing when it's upside down. Your brain can't tell you what a horse is supposed to look like because you're not looking at a horse. You're looking at a group of different shapes. This, in my opinion, is what drawing is all about...drawing what you -actually- see, not what you -think- you see.

The drawing process is very hard to put into words, but this author does such a great job. I definitely suggest you check it out! They may even have it at your local library.

Figure Drawing

If you plan on drawing any humanoid figures in your artwork, you must learn how to draw the human figure. Even if you plan on drawing stylized figures with body parts in different proportions to the normal human being (like fairies with elongated legs or arms), you still must learn how to draw the human figure. I truly believe that you have to first know what the human figure is supposed to look like before you can exaggerate certain parts and draw your own stylized humanoid creations. If you try to skip the figure drawing step, I think your creations will run a high risk of looking "off." Perhaps their balance will be wrong or their proportion...something about it just won't look quite right. So I strongly suggest you perfect drawing the human form first.

Anatomy

One good place to start is to learn about anatomy. I went to art school and even though my degree was not in Fine Arts, I was required to take an anatomy class. I feel that this class, more than any other, helped to really improve my figure drawing skills. We had to study many different muscle and bone structures of the body. It helped to teach me what was under the skin and explain why the human body looks the way that it does.

I drew more drawings for this class than any other. Each week we concentrated on a different body part. We had to draw the muscle and bone structure of that body part and complete several finished figure drawings that focused on that body part. For instance, one week we would focus on the hand. We would draw the bones in the hand, the muscles in the hand and do several life drawings of hands in different positions.

While I don't feel it's absolutely necessary for everyone to create extensive anatomy drawings to become good at figure drawing, I do think it helps to have a basic understand about anatomy and the various muscle and bone structures.

Here are some of the drawings I completed for that class:

Fantastic Stock for Figure Drawing

Next, I suggest that you practice drawing actual figures. Many people in the art world think it's super important to draw from life. If this is how you want to go about it, many local colleges have life drawing model sessions occasionally that you may be able to sit in on for a small fee. Personally, I prefer to draw from photos. I can take my time and I don't have to worry about the model moving.

There are many great stock artists on deviantart.com that take pictures with the sole purpose of having artists create their own artwork from them. Make sure to read each individual stock artist's rules, because they are all different. One stock artist that I just love is SenshiStock. I really love this stock because all of the photos are taken with the models in minimal, form fitting clothing. It really allows you to see the human form without elaborate costumes hiding legs, arms, feet, etc...

If you want to improve your figure drawing, why not set a goal to create "x" amount of sketches a day or week? Pick out some of your favorite poses and start drawing! Try to switch it up and spend a smaller amount of time, maybe just a gesture drawing, on some while creating a finished drawing on others. This will help with the burn out factor. Do this for a month and then compare your first drawings with your most recent drawings. I guarantee you will see improvement! Even if it's small, there will definitely be improvement there.

In the end, the best way to get better at drawing is to draw ALL the time. If you struggle with a certain body part, like hands, set a goal to draw 20 pairs of hands in different positions. The more you draw, the better you will get....I promise! =)

My Blogging Journey So Far

I set a goal for myself at the beginning of July to blog about my artwork and products more frequently. I felt like I was working so hard at creating new artwork and products, but I just wasn't taking the time to tell everyone about it. What good is doing all that work if no one actually knows about it?

Artists that sell their own art and products fill many different roles: painter, product developer, accountant, inventory controller, shipper, customer service rep and the list goes on and on. When you run your own business and you are the sole employer, you do everything that any other company would do, except one person, you, fulfills every single duty. One role that we need to fill is the dreaded P word...promoter...blah!

The majority of the time, myself included, I find that most artists would prefer to not have to promote their art. We don't really like talking about how great we are and how much you're going to LOVE our art. And sure, in a perfect world, we can hide away in our corners and paint while the promotion fairies find new people to buy our art and products. But the reality of the situation is that if we don't promote our art, no one else surely is. So we have to come out of our comfort zone and talk about our art and show you all the new, cool things we have going on.

So yes, first and foremost I created this blog to tell you more about me and my artwork in hopes that some new people may discover my art and to keep my current fans up to date about what's going on in my world.

That is the primary objective, but I've found that I really like sharing tips and tricks with you all and letting you know a little bit more about me, the person behind the art as well. I've gotten such great feedback about some of the articles I've written so far that I'm going to try my best to keep coming out with new, informative material that may help you in some way.

Have you been enjoying my blog so far? Do you have a certain question about me, my artwork, my products, my techniques or my methods? If so, I'd love to hear it so I can make a list and feature them on upcoming blog posts! =)