Watercolors

I signed up for a monthly subscription art supply box, SketchBox, a few months ago.  It is really fun because it encourages me to try new mediums that I have either never tried before or been too afraid to really embrace before.  For example, my very first box was filled with watercolor paints and an awesome watercolor brush that holds water.   I have experimented with watercolors before, but only casually, and because I spent the money on the box, I felt motivated to give the paints a real try.  It took a lot of learning and fiddling to get it right, but I love them now.  I might even try a landscape some day soon. (But don't get too excited, I'm still pretty terrified of muddy watercolor horizon lines.)

As those of you who follow me on instagram (@griffindrygoods) know, I started out with my favorite subjects, vegetables!  What else?  The eggplant was the first veggie I experimented with.

When I was happy with the way they looked, I moved on to asparagus.

I jokingly called them the Hulk veggies because of the color palette. Next came carrots, and boy did they take a long time to do.  After the eggplant, I decided that the outlining with micron pens should come before the watercolors, so I spent hours drawing each individual leaf on the carrot tops before I got around to adding color.

And so, my Salad Series was born.  It snowballed from there, here are the rest of them without discussion.

How do you get yourself inspired to try new things?

Wedding Invitations

John and I wanted our wedding invitations to reflect our character and interests.  We also are using our favorite fictional universes at our wedding reception, so it made sense for the invitations to match.  I have previously posted about this, here and here.  While it was my original intention to make six complete paintings, and as a result, six invitation options, I only ended up using two designs.  I made a Doctor Who inspired invitation, and a Firefly inspired invitation.

In the Doctor Who invitation John is the doctor and I am a companion, (inspired by Donna in "The Runaway Bride" only in that she wears a wedding dress.

In the Firefly invitation, John is Simon and I am Kaylee, a character you all have seen me play before.

I love how both options turned out and of course, we had them printed by Moo.

Catching Up

Hello all.  It has been quite a while since I wrote a serious post, and I am sorry for that.  I have been running around the last few weeks and it has been hard enough just crafting, without writing about it.  First off, I spent a weekend at my sister's for her baby shower.  The whole family is very excited for her son's arrival, so a lot of my crafting has been baby-centric for the last few months.  My mother came for a visit after that, and we played tourists for the week, visiting art museums in Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo, and of course the beach.  Then came Thanksgiving which ate a week of my life so easily, and finally, John's parents came to visit at the beginning of December.  While all the visits and trips were exciting and fun, the near month of hosting or being away was exhausting, and I feel like like the ground is finally under my feet again and I have space to share what I've been up to.

I've completed two paintings, this abstract one, and one of the San Diego skyline at night.  I haven't been satisfied with the photos of the skyline paintings that I have been able to take, but I do have these two detail shots:

I am really happy with both paintings, and hope to list them both on my etsy shop when I can get some better photos.

I have also been enjoying making baby clothes.

This cute cardigan.

And this onesie.  The great thing about baby clothes is that they are so quick to make that I finish one and can move onto the next quickly.

I also make a paper mache box and painted it to look like a Super Mario cube.

I expect that we will be using this as our ring box for the wedding because the companion cube is too big to really put in a pocket.

Well, now you are pretty much caught up on my recent crafts.  What have you been up to since I last posted?  Any big Christmas crafts?

Work in Progress

I am working on another wedding invitation painting.  Anyone recognize this background?  Can you guess who we will be masquerading as this time?

Happy Birthday, Camille!

Happy Birthday to my best friend.  Your present will be waiting for you on your return from Senegal.

Working on that geeky wedding invitation

It is coming along nicely, although the detail is a little all consuming.

The body of the ship has taken like three days.  And I'm not even done yet!

Wedding invitations in the works.

Here's something I am working on.  I am doing at least six paintings for our wedding invitations.  This is the background for one of them.  The tree took me forever.  All the little leaves.

Study #1

I am trying to paint more regularly, this is my first study.

Bernard the Butler would like to know who is calling. It would be best if you had a calling card.

A few things you should understand about Bernard.  He is the character I play in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign John runs.

He is a 6'7" coal powered, tinman butler.  He worked in the home of a merchant until said merchant and his family all mysteriously died.  Bernard carries shoe polish, a pocket watch, and he has revolvers and bayonets concealed in his arms.  It is a mystery what use a butler would have with such things.  Because of a serious case of OCD Bernard still looks shiny and clean as the day he left employment and joined the party.

Bernard

Look, I'm painting a picture!

Updates to come.