Alida's Art Journal

I've been super busy lately, with nothing I can show right now, but in a few moments where I'm in revisions on a job or whatever I've started working on things like this. Keeping up my skills, and making some stock art for a little passive income.

I'm working on a job that's going to have a vintage art deco look to the poster, so I needed a color palette, not just art reference. I ended up searching about 40 vintage posters and pulled color samples via photoshop.

I though I'd post it here, should anyone find it useful. The dark band cuting through is the sample of the "blacks". The pale swatches top-left are paper "whites".

I was able to find quite a wide range of colors, though I found reds and blues to be the most popular. Purples being the least popular and hardest to collect. This may just be a reflection of what we like today, because we've saved these posters, or a true trend of the times. I don't know enough about color trends at that time to be an authority. But here's hoping it helps someone!

JPEG here

It's been a while since I've sold anything directly. The four seasons magnets, I think?

I made the first set mainly for my own enjoyment, but I really liked how these turn out so I'm offering sets for sale on my site. Super glossy mini prints adhered to 24 3/4" magnets, just as you see in the picture. Really nice and hefty for their small size. Like the postcards, I'm thinking of making this a regular stock item, but for now quantities are somewhat limited.

I also got these postcards done up at the same time, to see how they'd look and they're quite fun. Click here to purchase either... or both! I have a flat rate shipping policy, which becomes quite a savings. Magnets can get heavy.

Okay, a rant instead of art today.

Do not buy online from Sears. Maybe not even in person.

Two weeks ago our washing machine croaked after 12 years of service. Got our money's worth, to be sure. So I do the price comparison and all that, finally settling on a machine from Sears. I pay online. They say 8 days. Okay, not great, but the others had long delivery windows too. Sears is just up the street so I figure it is the best situation possible. This was also after one of the small local companies didn't even return my call. (I thought this was an economy where they really need our business?)

Monday, I get an automated call. Everything on schedule. You'll get it Thursday. We'll call again to narrow the delivery time window. Seemed excellent.

Day of delivery, no new call. I call them just in case I missed something. My order has been canceled. No machines in stock within driving distance. We've no idea why you didn't get a call or email about this. So sorry.

And yet the website STILL shows it in stock. I say so. I am then told that their online stock system is not a live one. What...?

So they're giving this illusion of stock control which they don't have, then when that falls through... nothing. No call. No email. Zip. Yes, I work from home, but imagine if I were someone who had to take a vacation day to be here? I expect there's some office working people out there who're even more pissed than I am.

They are all so sorry it happened. Over and over. But there's no fix, and no indication from them that they're going to change their system. Complaint noted and I will have to wait 2-7 days for my money refund so I can start again. With some other company.

What's a shame is Sears used to be such a good company. I'm aware lately that a lot of consumer complaints have focused around their system of store credit and credit cards, but I avoided that and paid by debit. Sadly I found another area of their business that they've really screwed up.

A Cadbury creme egg, to be exact, with Lifesaver brand jelly beans. (Pretty inferior to Jelly Belly in my opinion but just fine as drawing subjects)

Colored pencil on pastel paper. About 7"x5" Thought I'd do a little drawing just to see if I still had the skills after doing so much digital lately! Done in about 2 hours with some distractions pulling me away from the table. Happy Easter, all.

... and one mouse, poor thing.

This is something I've been doodling with for months now. When I'm bored or need a change, I'd add a few more cats. There's some repeats as I tried to see what was the best one, but even then I like it as a whole. Might be fun as a wrapping paper, but I'm going to start by making some magnets for my fridge. If I like them well enough I'll offer up for sale. :) Each square is about 1"x1".

Red Dragon
7"x10" (image trimmed to hide pinholes from stretching paper)
Mixed media
ink, watercolor, and colored pencil on tea stained paper.

This would be the "Just in case I screw up" scan before painting. :)

And this is what comes of all the pages of lettering in the previous photo. It's always fun to get back to the brushes. This is part of my work to get my own website looking like something I'd want to promote. ;)

My drafting table this morning. I don't do inkwork often enough to be able to toss off something good in one go, so I do a page for each letter, pick the best, and bring it together with the computer. This is all stuff for redoing the look of my website.

These are the first concept sketches tiled together on a 12 illustration project I'm doing for Talisman Studios. Doing some environments and cinematic sort of scenes this time, to go with a novella. I like tiling the pieces like this so I can see if I'm getting repetitive (which I am) and I can adjust later.

Another piece for Talisman Studios. Nothing like getting a good reference photo for hand and glass. My brother's very cooperative. Here's the chain of work in progress shots all together.

And here she is done. I'm easing into a slightly brisk style, rather than trying to smooth out all the brushstrokes. I'm quite pleased with one - especially her expression.



Clothing blocked in here, and some working lines cleaned off. Highlights and a very simple background to come. It took about a half hour to get from this point to the finished piece at the top of this post.

I hope people enjoyed seeing the stages!

Here's a new work in progress set I'm doing for character illustrations. It's one character of 8 for a set in a Talisman Studios job. I am particularly liking this one so far.



More soon. Sometimes I get into a state where I forget to stop and take a snap of the progress!

Finally breaking in this little sketchbook in January of 2009. All in red rapidograph ink without pencil roughs or other help. We'll see if I stick to a theme and these "rules".

This is page 3 or 5/6 depending on how you like to count your pages.

So how's LJ doing? I've been hearing about outages, not to mention my own for a week there. And then there's the whole cutbacks going on...

A little bit of silly for the LOLCat scene. I'd meant to do something with it for last week's Illustration Friday, but I ran out of time.

I hope everyone had a good holiday! And I hope this posts... apparently LJ has been troublesome in the last while.

6"x9" Sepia ink and watercolor on tea stained watercolor paper.

And it is done! Fun way to spend my spare time today. Thanks to everyone who gave me feed back on possible translations. It wasn't the easiest. There sure were a lot of options.

As for the little phrase, I made that up today - or at least I hope I did. One never knows what creeps into the brain and comes out like an idea. Google at least was without hits.

Happy Halloween!

Almost there. It is the banner next, and cleaning up anything I missed with the watercolor washes. Pompeii red in the background, alizarin crimson in the wings. Pompeii red is my new favorite red-brown blend. I do love colors that come out the way I want right from the tube.

First run through on the inks. Going to take me a bit to ponder what I'll do from here. I'll be back this evening.

Does anyone know how to say "The Dancing Dead" in spanish? I don't trust babelfish all that well. The translations are like bad stereo instructions from a foreign country.