There is actually a poem thing in the center, but no, I will not subject you to reading my bad poetry.

Sophia Lauren, watercolor, acrylic ink, color pencil.

Mostly traditional… I ended up having to fix a lean in Photoshop and touched up some details.

So, it’s 2012 and I’ve been feeling like something has been missing from my art life. Things are going well in illustration, but perhaps there has been too much in the way of work and not enough left for me.

Sitting at the computer working, day after day, is bad not only for the body but for the soul. While I do still draw in sketchbooks for myself, it is sometimes soradic – sometimes I will do several sketches a night, other times I may not pick up a pencil for a week or longer.

I feel like I have to at least try to get back to doing something with traditional materials, on a semi-regular basis. So I’m thinking of trying to do something called Traditional Thursday. I will try to put up a new piece on Thursdays that is not done digitally.

So here’s my first (ok, I’m cheating a bit, I have a head start since I have maybe 3 others done too).  Enjoy.

Late night sketching, couple of pieces from the Gucci S/S collection. Not a real fan of it, but couldn’t find the Fendi collection I actually wanted to draw. I guess high waisted pants are back in for Spring.

Finally had some time to do up the new batch of thank you cards for my clients. Will send them out tomorrow, hopefully.

I decided that this year, I was going to send clients something to thank them for their business once projects were wrapped. I was thinking about doing a printed card, but the idea of sending the same card to a client more than once didn’t seem nice, and I didn’t want to have several different designs lying about the house. I was also thinking of a Print Gocco thing but it’s an expensive little thing that is also pretty tedious if you’re just making one card.

Then I remembered that they sold little DIY cards at the art store and thought ‘why don’t I just paint cards for them?’. It’s great – my clients will get a little piece of real art, and I don’t have to worry about anyone getting a repeat design. And I’ve been meaning to paint more anyway, so it’s a nice way to sneak in a bit of painting now and then!

So here are the first two I’ve done that will be going out soon. The inks were done with a brush pen, with watercolors for color.

Had some free time to paint today so painted this. Sumi ink, drawing ink and white gouache.

Sketch of crow. Ink pen and watercolor. I think I need a new scanner to scan anything that’s not black and white. This one is making my browns look purple and neon-ish. This was the best I could do to adjust the color in Photoshop to look like the original.

The finished ‘traditional’ artwork.

With a bit of Photoshop tweaking to the colors.