Acrylicana

THIS BLOG MOVED! UPDATE YOUR LINKS!

2011-06-16T18:52:00.000-04:00

On the off-chance you've still got an RSS feed subscription to this defunct blogger, I anted to let you know the Acrylicana blog is housed at Tumblr these days. It's easier to reach the world that way, and is redirected from my Wordpress/website to it. YAY

FOLLOW ON TUMBLR

Now I don't have to update 20 places each time something new and exciting happens.

Website Launched -- Moving blog to domain (update links)

2011-02-12T15:22:00.001-05:00

Ahoy hoy, darlings!
At long last, my website is up and running.
Acrylicana.com

As such, I won't be posting on this blog anymore. Instead, I'll be posting at the new blog:
Acrylicana.com/blog

I've got a whole schedule I'm working on for the week of the 21st and beyond. :)
In the meanwhile, let me know what you think of the website, go listen to the first episode of the Inspired podcast (check the blog), and I will catch you all later after my business trip to Las Vegas (flying out tomorrow evening).

please update bookmarks and RSS feeds to get updates delivered to your RSS readers :)
I'll make sure updates come through twitter and facebook as well. ;)

LIKE on Facebook:
Acrylicana Official

Promote Your Page Too

And the winner is...

2011-02-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

You can watch the half hour (includes a preview of my website and confusion about numbers) at my livestream channel, if you're curious about how the person was chosen (random.org helped).

Counting comments from the TOP #116 on the last entry was the WINNER!
That's you, Odelia! :D I'm a bit extra excited, b/c I know she's followed Acrylicana for 4-5 years (crazy).

Three numbers were also randomized for mini prizes (keychains and postcards):
#54 Francesca
#105 karabekianesque
#144 Evil Cat Arts

Yay! e-mailing all 4 right away to get address information :) I will send your prizes out this week (along with this week's shop orders).
Huzzah, everyone!

Thank you SO much for playing :) I want to do something like this at least once a month (with bookmarks, postcards, miniprints..whatever..maybe mini paintings or doodles-- I think that'd be fun).

In the meantime, you can subscribe to the new blog: www.acrylicana.com/blog
It's not completely functional just yet, but will be this week (along with the rest of the website).

Yum Yum Fabulous Prize Giveaway!

2011-02-03T20:38:00.002-05:00

Winner has been chosen. Thanks for playing! :D

Read on for how to enter and win these fabulous prizes!

Promo fun! I'm giving away some scented stickers, reusable vinyl stickers, and a cute light blue totebag to one lucky Acrylicana fan! :)

How to enter: Leave a comment on this journal entry (make sure to name yourself, enter your e-mail address, or log in if you have an account -- the only way I can get your prize to you is if your entry identifies you with some website/email address).

On Monday, February 7th, I will announce the winner, chosen at random (thanks to the same random list generator used the last time I did one of these giveaways).

You can enter once daily through Sunday. Once it hits Monday morning 12:00 (am) EST (-5 GMT), the contest is over and the winner will be announced later that day (likely via a livestream session).

In case you're wondering, neither the scented stickers nor the totebag have been available from me before and are promotional materials for an upcoming event.

Acrylicana Fabulous Giveaway! (tmw)

2011-02-02T19:24:00.001-05:00

It's fabulous! It's a prize giveaway!

I'm a bit behind today, on account of the snow. Shipments are delayed getting to me. Post is delayed getting out to customers (packing up parcels tomorrow for Friday pick-up -- everyone will be emailed -- technically it's all right on time, but I was hoping to be early).

Lots of LET'S SHOVEL SNOW! today and LET'S WORK WORK WORK! andLET'S FORGET ABOUT THAT LIVESTREAM! (it's ok, I made it -- and went longer than planned).

anywho! TOMORROW I'll get those giveaway details to you all, dear readers :)
apologies, and enjoy the snow!
(for those w/o copious amounts of snow, tell me what it's like).

This is what today's livestream turned into. We had a jam hot time. :) Join me Friday ok? 11am - 1pm (or longer -- I might stream ALL DAY if I've got myself in order).

LIVE Painting Session today :)

2011-02-02T11:37:00.003-05:00

edit: livestream over. You can watch it in the on demand section of my channel :) I talked about nonsense quit bit, but it'll be missing the chat window that I was conversing with (sorry, dear hearts), so feel free to mute it. ;)

11:30 am EST - 2pm

Watch live streaming video from acrylicana at livestream.com

Stay tuned to this blog after the show for a fun prize giveaway! :D

Acrylicana After Dark presents Cinderella

2011-02-01T18:03:00.000-05:00

As a bit of a sneak peak into what I've been cooking up on this side of Acrylicana-lala-land.
(click images to enlarge!)

Sketches of the next fairy/folk tale being tackled, Acrylicana-style: Cinderella.

doodled out in Alchemy. I love that program. It's quick, takes up little to no RAM, and some of the most fanciful things develop.

More sketches for her dress. The Stagecoach detail is for the frame and her dress's print.

A version of the middle one was ultimately chosen.

There we have it, dearhearts. Cinderella has landed (click the image to enlarge). I'm pleased as punch to share it with you all. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. :) Where do we go from here? (not a real question, as I've got so much more for this series already done or in development).

Stay tuned, once again, lovelies, for tomorrow's AWESOME EVENTS!
Livestream session at 11am - 1pm (EST, -5 GMT) and a fabulous giveaway (blog entry with details on how to enter, prize, and when I'll announce the winner).

Under Construction, Livestream, and Doodles

2011-01-31T12:01:00.001-05:00

New website to be launching soon (within the next couple weeks).
I've got a small bit of news once it goes live, along with new work, events, and blog fun.
In the meantime, join me for 2 livestream sessions this week:

Wednesday, February 2nd 11am- 1pm (EST, -5 GMT)

Friday, February 4th, 11am - 1pm (EST, -5 GMT)

Click here to visit the channel.

(you can sign up for e-mail reminders for the next show)
Each session will be recorded for later viewing.

More fun collage pieces to come. Love doing these for sure. Gearing up for some major additions to Acrylicana.

Painting previews. Sketch done in Alchemy and painting is being done in Paint Tool SAI.
Likely to be working on it during this week's live drawing sessions.

Finally, major event coming this Friday. :) I was hoping the new website could launch then, but it's likely I need to take time and fill it up when it's ready. SO a new project I've been working on will launch here on February 4th, 2011!
Stay tuned! (totally a pun -- if you've kept up via Twiteror dA, you might know what's going on).

ZAP!

2011-01-21T12:39:00.000-05:00

Fun, collage, rainbowfest livestream yesterday.

You can watch part of the process at my livestream channel.
Sadly, only the first half was saved in the recording (not sure why, as both were set to save).

Check out the events on the channel for future sessions. :) Updated weekly. You can also sign up for an email reminder for the next one.

Pencil Hat Process

2011-01-02T11:52:00.002-05:00

Let's get to the point!

Lineart! in case you wonder how it's so clean, after scanning, I adjust the levels and hit up 'threshold" so it gets rid of any "paper" colour and the only values are absolute black and white (similar to "pencil" lines in photoshop) at 300 or 400 dpi (depends on what I scanned it at).

This doodle was really rather small, so a higher dpi was necessary so it's larger when I switch to 300dpi (tiny drawing scanned in at 800dpi equals larger drawing at 300dpi yay!).

Flat colour layer over lineart.

Gradient layer!

Gradients and flat colours by themselves. Really wanted to just paint this at this point.

Finished piece. Revisiting many of these soon with fuller paintings, I think. Maybe. Wanting to do so, but we'll see.

2010 in review

2011-01-01T19:25:00.000-05:00

Cute little meme going on over at deviantart where people summarize 2010 within 12 pieces of their artwork. I love how it shows the growth of an artist and reminds you where you were last January.

3 of those pieces (Jan, April, and December) were for Digital Artist magazine. October's pieces was actually done in March, but published in Sept/Oct for the StitchRock fliers down in florida. August brought us the fun little zodiac series, which became a limited edition line of jewelry (and may live on soon).

May (and April) expanded the Acrylicana After Dark series. That series has A LOT to do in 2011. Cannot wait to wax poetic on the goings on of the brand.

February and September were musings on a previous theme (from February '08) -- still hoping to revisit it and create a whole calendar based upon milkshakes and cakes, or whatever. Jewelry too. Sparkle drinks.

March's piece is a painting based upon a small commission. Sadly, the painting wasn't done to print resolution. I didn't expect I'd like it so much. Had fun with a limited colour palette, though.

June brought back our robot boyfriend, Bitty Love Bot. July saw one of the many pairs of shoes I've customized (my favourite, though --LOVE that technique. It's like working with pastels on Canson paper).

November saw a fit to push myself in portraits and aim to be a bit more realistic. I really wanted to continue this into a new series of girls in hats. May yet do so. I fear I'm repeating myself into infinity, though, and should just use that piece as a learning experience and go for fuller, fantastic illustrations.

Fun frame doodle based upon (in part) the digital paper cut out tutorial that appeared in the April issue of Digital Artist magazine (I believe). Love doing these. :) More to come for sure. Same goes for the digital paper quill style seen in December's issue.

Mushroom Fiesta Hat

2010-12-31T11:43:00.000-05:00

Third piece in new series.

Lineart. Truth be told, I had to edit the size of her chin. The original piece had it to Leno proportions.

Flat colours. Once again, ironing out a specific colour palette here.

Bitty Love Bot Hat Process

2010-12-30T12:25:00.000-05:00

Second piece in the new series.

Lineart. ink pen on bristol.

Flat colour layer.

Gradient layers step one.

Gradient layers step two. Once again, the last gradient layer could totally serve as a painting in its own right.

Greyscale layer. Looks like a painting in its own right, again, as well.

Final piece. Love this colour scheme. So sunset-y.

Space Yeti Hat Process

2010-12-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

New series of Girls with Hats in time for 2011.

Lineart for Spacey Yeti hat. Done with ink pen on bristol board.

flat colour and gradient layers over lineart layer. I think this layer could serve as a piece unto itself. Wanted to keep in line with the last series of Girls, though.

Greyscale version to check out contrast and values. If your colour choices don't read well as tones in greyscale, they just don't work as an image.

Final piece. Such fun choosing colours for this one.

It did begin a little differently than most: as a graphite drawing. Decided I didn't want the new series to be graphite pieces, though, so I grabbed a fresh piece of bristol and had at it.

Kiki completed and Pippi in progress

2010-12-21T20:02:00.000-05:00

Finished Kiki as far as she's going. Fun skin tone study in the end. :)

Was working on another doodle in various livestream sessions and offline.

Such fun, this piece.

acrylicana on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Watch out for the MUSIC.It can be rather loud.
You can catch one of the Pippi sessions on my livestream channel or zoom around the on demand and see some others.

Let's focus on the hand, shall we? These are screencaps from thelivestream session.

And the hair. Fun times, that hair.

Trying to figure out what I want to do with the frame. Will it be metal (like above)? Will I change it to palm trees? Will there be a background? Will this be compelted?

I don't know. My brain turned to mush this past week on account of being sick and making flash games for friends' xmas gifts. Fun times. :)

Acrylicana vLog 22 - Rambling December

2010-12-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

Hey It's Kiki

2010-12-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

Skin tone study.

Funny how much she changes as I work on it. Looking back, I like the mouth shape she began with. Will have to go back on that. The nose isn't looking eactly right yet either. I want her to look a bit Pacific Islander. Unsure if her brows will match her hair. And really unsure of what she'll wear!

My current family in Sims3 inspired this little study.

Underwater Kicks In Progress

2010-11-30T16:35:00.000-05:00

Latest shoe commission was a revisit of a pair I did in August '09.

Hey look! It's my old logo! how crazy it is to see Acrylicana branded in that fashion. Anywho, that pair was well fun, so I was definitely on board to tackle it again.

Started with lineart (of course). I livestreamed this particular portion of the process. You can check out the video on my channel. (just click that sentence and rifle through the recorded videos).
The rest of the process was completed off camera. I did snap a few shots, though, for the commissioner.

Just put finishing touches on them today and will snap a photo tomorrow before packing them up for shipment.

Speaking of shipment, I've got to tend to my shop right now. You can get 10% off your entire order (including shoes, t-shirts, and already marked down merch) with the coupon code"ILOVECOLOUR01" at check out. The coupon expires December 5, 2010.

Jellyfish Hat Continued

2010-11-29T11:15:00.000-05:00

Finished my Jellyfish Hat piece this past week.

Livestreamed the majority of this piece. Finished it in my last session on Sunday.

Used a couple textures (for the jellyfish and skin) from www.cgextures.com.
Painted in Paint Tool SAI.
You can watch some of the recorded videos in my channel: http://www.livestream.com/acrylicana
I will DL the videos, in the future, compile them into one mega video (sped up and edit out the chat breaks) later. It's likely it'll be rather large for Youtube, so we'll see where I can host it.

Check out my livestream channel for the next "event" and the full schedule of streams :) I add new ones weekly.

Rainbow Candy Storm Flats

2010-11-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

Second of the last four custom shoe commissions I'm taking on (for the time being). Having a lot of fun with the colours of this one. Very retro.

Livestreamed a good deal of the painting process.

Love that mixed purple. Really made it POP!

Click to embiggen.
Finished product. The shoes are now safely nestled in a USPS shoe box, on their way to the commissioner. :)

Acrylicana vLog 19

2010-11-17T10:21:00.000-05:00

Jellyfish Hat Process Parts One and Two

2010-11-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

Working on some new paintings. One of which is digital (the other is a few posts previous, which I'm taking a break from until I decide a colour scheme and skin tone). So far, I've taken progressive screenshots of the digital piece (working title "Jellyfish Hat") as well as livestreamed a few hours of the process.

Click on the image to embiggen.

It began as a silly marker sketch back in April (I think). I scanned it and proceded to forget about it (pretty sure I blogged the doodle back then as well). Hunting through my digital sketchbook (I have folders in each month's folder labeled "sketchbook") I decided to produce a proper painting from it. Working mainly in SAI, this is what I've done up. Really digging the hyper bright colours and having fun playing with realistic skin tones.

As I've progressed through the painting, I've used little bits of reference, such as my own hand (taken quickly while I was livestreaming). I spent an entire stream session (2 hours) working on the hand; fighting with the position until I realized I actually posess TWO hands of my very own and should use them thusly.

As such, her hand now resembles my own little baby-hands. Seriously, at 24 I still have dimples. No amount of time spent on the arc and elliptical trainers will rid me of them (baby hands FOREVER! YAAAY!). It'll be super cute when I'm old and grey (tomorrow).

More progress to come. In the meanwhile, I've got some shoes to paint, products to design, and a shop to update. As well as whatever else my schedule throws at me. It's lovely to break from all the "have-to's" and play with the "want-to's", though. Definitely keeping me sane as we cruise into the winter months (WHERE IS MY SUNSHINE?).
You can check out the livestream sessions here:

Watch live streaming video from acrylicana at livestream.com

They're far too long to download and create a Youtube vid of, but I might compress it a bit, in the future, for something in Vimeo (provided there are less limitations there -- I believe this to be true, but must research more fully).
If I can keep my mojo going with this painting (oh yes, I'm still well excited about it), I may turn it into a secondary "Girls with Hats" series. Wrote out a list of possible themes to tackle and might sketch out the next 14 girls tonight.

Custom Shoe Painting - Music Rainbow Fun

2010-11-15T11:26:00.000-05:00

Oh No! Editorial Portrait Vector Illustration

2010-11-09T16:26:00.000-05:00

Shoe Lineart and Livestream

2010-11-06T14:19:00.000-04:00

Last night I livestreamed the first stage of two shoe commissions: lineart.

Canvas flats. Theme: candy music rainstorm.

Converse Low-Tops. Theme: music, space, paper planes. Part of the brief for the commission was to be inspired by a particular music video and translate that feeling into the work. It's largely a cute and kitschy video and it'll be used mostly as a reference point for the colour theme.

Painted the tongue of the shoes so the design travels from one foot to the other. There's such limited design space on the lowtops that not painting the tongues, even though most of it is hidden when laced up, would be a crime indeed. Plus, it's fun.

You can catch the recorded sessions on my livestream channel. I'll be recording the painting process of each pair as well, though I'm not sure if it'll be on Livestream, as my laptop is still not really up to snuff in the streaming department, or just recorded for Youtube. Either way, there's little of the process of these shoes that you will not see. :)

Watch live streaming video from acrylicana at livestream.com

To view the video, click the player above to take you to the channel, and select one of the videos in the "latest videos" module below it.
I took the auto-play feature fof my channel, as so many visitors were confused when it was or was not live. I cannot count the number of times I visited my channel to see the chat flooded with "IS THIS LIVE?!" and other chatter to "me", when I was not there. I felt bad, as any response I could leave would not be seen by them. SO it's now well apparent that I am only live when a video is playing. :)