Adventures with Oil Paint

When someone stumbles upon my little blog I'm not sure what they think of my jumping from medium to medium and style to style. They probably think "wow, this girl is all over the place with her art/design/packaging"...and they would be completely right. I am an extremely compulsive personality and my art and design work is not exempt from this side of me. In fact, if I didn't have my artwork as an outlet for all the crazy, bipolar creative energy that I have I would probably drive myself and everyone around me completely insane.

My latest obsession has been learning how to oil paint. I had used oil paint a few times when I was younger and HATED it. Up until then I had been very happy painting with acrylic which was easy to clean (which is great for someone as messy as I am when painting) and dried quickly to help with coating and layering. Oil paint was insanely hard to clean off, the smell of turpentine made me gag and to top it off everything blended together! So that perfect color that I mixed suddenly got completely destroyed by the other colors around it. Can we all say "UGH!"

Once the idea recently came into my head that I wanted to give oil paints another try I could not be happy until I had gone to Michaels and purchased new brushes, ODORLESS turpentine (whew) and a set of oil paints.

And you know what? Oil painting is fun!

It is still ridiculously messy (I will be scraping paint from my fingernails for weeks to come), but the finished product is totally worth it. On the right subject the color blending becomes something truly beautiful, and the paint always seems to glisten like I just finished painting it a minute ago.

So above you see my first successful oil paint still life. I hope you enjoy it and I hope this post makes you go out and try something new!

It's a Celebration!

Happy Saturday everyone! For the past few weeks I have been working on wedding invitations for my amazingly beautiful and wonderful friend Megan. Her and her fiancé Josh are the two sweetest people in the world and I wanted to make sure that their invitations were really special. 

I came up with a few options, some typographic and some relating more to elements of their wedding, but in the end the invitation design of choice included my illustrations of the happy couple. Thanks to my handy dandy Epson Stylus Pro 3880 and a bunch of exacto blades I was able to do all of the printing and craft work myself from the comfort of my design studio.

I'm extremely pleased with how they turned out and I'm even more pleased that Megan and Josh got exactly what they wanted for their very special day!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mother Nature

Let me start off with the fact that I am not one of those people that can't stand the winter. I love winter! One of my favorite activities, snowboarding, is a winter sport. I also thoroughly enjoy getting off the mountain after snowboarding and drinking a nice spiked hot chocolate. Winter is AWESOME!

But... as of today... I am over it.

It is time for sun, for flowers, for chirping birds and sunglasses. Although technically Spring has already sprung I am declaring it officially Spring on my blog as of this evening. Today (after it was done raining) was a gorgeous NYC day, and to celebrate the occasion I have decided to unveil my latest illustration.

I hope you enjoy her, and I hope there is a long, beautiful Spring ahead of us!

Custom Save the Date Design

 

Recently I was asked by an old friend to design a Save the Date for his wedding and I couldn't have been more excited! Weddings are so much fun, and to be asked to design something so important was truly an honor. They wanted something simple and elegant that captured their character as a couple and also showed illustrated likenesses of them both. But the best part? One of them is a surgeon and the other a ballerina, and they wanted to be shown as such on their Save the Date.

After going through many different sketches of how I would show the couple I ended up with the above final design. The best part of all was sharing the final design with the couple and being told how thrilled they were with it. I love to illustrate and design, and when my skills can help make others happy there is nothing that brings me more joy.

Congratulations to Heather and Brad, and I'm so glad that I could help them out with a small part of their special day!


If you are interested in having your own custom Save the Date illustration created I am now selling them in my shop! You can check them out here.

The Sneak

It has been a while, but I finally have had some time to jump back into the digital artwork that I love to do. Here is my latest piece which I have affectionately named The Sneak. She is available for sale now in my Oh So LoveLee shop.

You can view her in the shop by clicking here.

Sherlock

Hello again everyone! Apologies for the lack of posts the past few months, a lot has been going on in my life since you last heard from me. I'd rather not go into too much detail, but both my personal and professional lives have been full of activity and I have not had too much time for the personal projects that I love to do so much. Luckily though I did manage to find time to create a new acrylic portrait of my new obsession, Benedict Cumberbatch (I call him Benny, and he can call me whatever he wants).

I have always loved detective stories. When I was in elementary school I used to sign out Encyclopedia Brown books from the school library and spend hours and hours trying to figure out the answers to all of the mysteries. When I finally discovered the stories of Sherlock Holmes I had found a set of mysteries that I would never grow too old for, and I fell in love. To this day I will read any Sherlock Holmes story, no matter how many times I have already read it, and I will be genuinely entertained every time.

I have seen many big screen/TV versions of Sherlock Holmes over the years, and I have enjoyed them all, but NO ONE plays Sherlock the way that Benny does. He makes you hate him and love him at the same time. And those cheekbones! Yea, I am a little obsessed, but Sherlock is a fantastic show and if you haven't seen it before I highly recommend watching it!

I hope you enjoy this portrait, and if you want to learn more about Sherlock here is the website for the show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sherlock/

Tory Burch Fragrance Media Kit

I know this is a change of pace from what I have been sharing on my blog lately, but I am extremely excited to share this new project with my followers. BorsaWallace recently collaborated with Estée Lauder to create a beautiful media kit delivery for the new Tory Burch fragrance, and I was extremely fortunate to be able to work on the design and execution of the project. This media kit was sent around the world to announce the launch of the Tory Burch fragrance and the entire product line. It included a delivery box that contained a sample of the fragrance, a folder containing informational cards highlighting the products and a brochure that captured the essence of Tory's philosophy and spirit. To see the kit in more detail click here to visit my design portfolio.

Enjoy!

'Tis the Season...

It's almost that time of year again! Although fall is definitely my favorite season, I can't help but get excited about winter and all the happiness that comes from being with my friends and family over the holidays. As I do every year, I wanted to create a few special holiday card designs to send out. Now that the Oh So LoveLee shop is up and running I can finally share these designs with you! Click here to see them all in more detail in the shop. 

My Sister

Hey again everyone! Things have been busy lately so I haven't been able to post as much as I would like, but I wanted to share this piece that I recently made for my sister, Brittney. It is a portrait of her in a gorgeous outfit that I just had to capture in an illustration.

As you probably already know, my sister is an extremely talented artist that works as a Visual Developement Artist for Walt Disney. Just yesterday she posted a great interview with her that was showcased on the Walt Disney Company Blog (click here to read). She has always been an inspiration to me in many ways, but just growing up with her influence around me definitely shaped my sense of design and beauty. I wish we didn't live on opposite sides of the country!

If you would like to see more of her artwork you should visit her blog here.

Love you sis!

The Lazy River

Today I am still yearning for a swimming pool. No, actually, I'm really yearning for a never ending lazy river that I can ride a tube through all day long (or as long as my sunscreen can hold out). So, as usual, I have projected my wants on to my latest illustration piece "The Lazy River".

As always, be sure to look for this girlie in my Etsy shop. Stay cool everyone!