New Zodiac Girls

Over the last few weeks I've been creating a new set of zodiac girl prints for my etsy shop. They come in four different sizes ranging from 5x7 inches up to A3. For a peek take a look here - there is 10% off all zodiac girls until the end of the week with coupon code ZODIACTEN.

Here are some of the girls -

Capricorn

 Leo

 Aquarius

 Aries

Scorpio Girl

I was recently asked to create a Scorpio girl for a customer in the same style as my other zodiac girls. A few ideas sprung to mind and I got to work in my sketchbook.

I thought I'd stick with a warm colour palette for Scorpio and chose shades of pink, ochre and red. At the moment I've made a Capricorn, Pisces, Taurus and Leo and I might create some more- I'll show you Pisces.

I love creating custom orders and if you have something in mind please don't hesitate to get in touch. I can be contacted at coramantic@yahoo.co.uk or in my etsy shop.

Here is the final Scorpio girl, I hope you like her.

Into the garden of prettiness...

I'd like to share with you one of the prettiest etsy shops I've come across- Gracie's Garden Bazaar. Here you will find the most beautiful textile jewellery, embroideries and artwork. Cassandras work is stunning and I think you'll agree very affordable for original pieces.

I recently purchased the postcards pictured below, they are very beautiful and are going to go up on my wall in my new work space. I've been setting up a new area at home for painting but the clear out that's going on seems to be taking a lot longer than expected.

 

I hate when I start faffing about organising shelves and drawers instead of getting on with creating but I do like a bit of order to work in.

 

I've added a few new paintings to my etsy shop lately- You'll see a little cat lady popping up involved in various activities. I now have 10 original paintings listed in etsy and for a limited time blog readers and facebook fans can get 50% off from the painting section- just use coupon code PAINT50 at checkout.

 



Heart and Head Fights

The last time I posted I showed you that I was doing some experimenting with acrylic paints, well part of me wishes I had never started. Don't get me wrong I was quite enjoying the painting and I even listed a couple of them in my shop but it's led to a dilemma in my head - you see I realise when I paint lighter, cuter work more people 'like' it- more views etc and my head says to me if you created more upbeat whimsical paintings you could maybe sell more.

But my heart says no. What I really want to do is draw girls with sad eyes and smiles at the edges of their mouths, little bursts of emotion that come right from inside me - like the moments when you've been sobbing and someone makes you laugh through your tears.

I've been down this road many times, the road that says do what you love, even if only a tiny amount of people love it too. But the lane off this road that I wander down through my head says create to sell. So what am I - an artist that creates from my heart or someone who wants to one day create a business using my head. I wish I could make up my mind, or my heart.

Experiments in Acrylic

Every so often I crave working with acrylic paints and find the need to leave gouache behind for a while. I can be a lot more expressive working in acrylic in terms of texture and colour. I didn't want to stray too far away from my usual style but I thought I'd let you have a peek at what I've been working on and how its developed from my gouache and ink drawings.

I would really love some feedback on these, good, bad or indifferent.

The top paintings are my new works in acrylics and the bottom two show my inspiration.

Emotion and Expression

I have been playing around in my sketchbook lately with trying to capture emotion through expression. I want my characters to have feeling behind them, like they have a story to tell.

I have been finding inspiration from some previous work, work that has been quite spontaneous and true to my mood at the time. I think these pieces link nicely to my current exploration into emotion. I think beauty is supposed to lie in a symmetric face but I've been trying to create ugly cute creatures by keeping the eyes a little bit different from each other.