Lizzy D's Art Blog|My art, projects, and life in general

So last year I was lying in bed after a day at looking at art and photos being sold in downtown Mesa AZ.  For some reason I distinctly remember a photo of Marigolds and that image stayed in my head for the rest of the day and into the night.  An idea popped into my head as I was lying there…and it was a good idea!  Fairies wearing flowers!  Very original I know but it wasn’t fantasy type clothing I was thinking of-no it was modern clothing!  And so I set myself to work and now a year and a half later I finished my project.  14 fairies were painted but only 12 will be seen grouped together in a calendar for 2011!  I am so excited about this just because it was the biggest project I put myself into!  I have it on sale for preorder here in my Etsy shop.  Here is a sample of one of the months.

In other news I finished my painting of my Dandelion Fairy only to be struggling with making it look right on the computer. I will post it once I get things fixed.

For future notice the TusCon is coming up in November 12-14.  I’ll be having a dealers table there and I’ll have a panel in the art show.  I’m going to be selling the calendar, prints, cards and even originals there so stop on by if you are in the area.

Sorry for the absence; as the summer progressed it became harder and harder to find the time to do anything with my art or anything online.  So I decided to just wait until school started again for my son.  Now that it has, I can get back to work.

This has been the project I have been working on recently. I’ve had this fairy in my sketchbook for a while and wanted to do something with it.  I am starting out with watercolors then using acrylics for brighter colors.  So far so good I think. J

These Fashion fairies were one of the summer projects I started and had to stop until school started once again.  I actually redid the Lily; here is the first one;

It wasn’t what I had in mind in the first place though it does look good it wasn’t what I wanted, I’m happier with the second one.  Now the Hibiscus, if you haven’t recognized it yet, was originally done for a fundraiser for Haiti at Jerry’s Art-o-Rama.  At the request of one of several people I made another one, though slightly different.

Coming up this weekend is CopperCon , it’s here in Mesa so if you are in the area come check it out.  They are not having an art show or art auction, but they did offer several panel spacing in the dealer’s room for artists to show their work. I’ll be displaying some of my original art there. CopperCon runs Saturday thru Monday, Sept. 4-6.

This time around I’m going to try to post more blogs and try to keep you updated on my art.  I must warn you though, I may forget; sometimes I get so into my art that nothing else happens – including keeping the house clean.

As you have noticed blogging hasn’t become a set habit yet but I’ll get there, don’t worry.  So how did Leprecon go… not so good actually.  I didn’t sell any of my paintings or prints, but I can count on one hand how many pieces in the whole art show were sold so it wasn’t just me.  It was a slow convention this year, and both the artists and vendors experienced low sales. I walked around the vendor area Saturday afternoon and it was empty save one or two people.  I was a little down about it for a few days, but you can’t give up on something just because it didn’t work out the first time.  When you get lemons you make lemonade!  And lemonade is really good!

This weekend is the Phoenix Comicon, and I’ll be helping with the Tiny Army Art Group booth on Friday from 2:00 – 5:00 and on Saturday from 1:00 – 4:00.  I’m planning on selling prints of some of my fairies and other works and telling people about the Tiny Army Art Group.  Not only that, I thought I would have some fun and give a discount on one print to whoever comes up to the Tiny Army Booth and says to me “pink marshmallows”!  Note: there will be other artist at that booth throughout the con, and possibly at the same time as me. This discount is only for my art – I don’t want any embarrassing mix ups. So come on down to the comicon and check out all the neat stuff there and say hi to me! The booth is just inside the entrance its number is T7 in the Phoenix Convention Center South Building. See you there!

Leprecon 36 started started Friday and my art is now in the art show there!  It was almost scary getting to it however.  I had neatly packed all the pictures in the car, some in the trunk and the rest in the back seat.  A lesson in packing pictures in the back seat, DO NOT lean them upright in the back seat, you lay them flat instead.  Which is the smart way to do it but I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box that morning.

So we are heading to the con when the first light we come up to suddenly turns yellow.  I was trying to stop quick enough but slow enough so I didn’t knock the pictures over, but at the end, they all went toppling over to the foot of the back seat.  All I could do was keep driving (since the con is only 10 minutes from my house) and pray that everything was alright.  When I got there I found that out of the four pictures in the seat only the glass on one was broken.  And it was a standard size so we were able to replace it quickly.  But still its a little scary seeing something you work so hard on having a near death experience!

The art show has some really awesome stuff and it was great talking to some of the artists there also I was able to met some new people and found a Tiny Army friend had works on display too.  There’s one I met who had some fun creative art on display, and his website is pretty awesome too-check it out – http://alexanderscotthughes.com/

Last night the guest artist Charles Vess walked through the art show and first spoke of his art and then gave his opinion of the our art.  He is a pretty amazing artist and had some great advice to give.  Its was a honor being there and hearing what he had to say about my art.

I’ll let you know how it all turned out when it’s over…

Tomorrow is the first day of Leprecon!  So if you are in town come check it out, it’s at the Phoenix Mesa Marriott here in Mesa, AZ. I have spent this last week trying to get everything ready, with the one thing that took up most of my time was trying to finding mats for the pictures.  I knew what colors of mats that I wanted to match with the paintings and the frames I had for them, but after searching through four different stores I had to settle with some second best mat choices.  After cutting them I found that they didn’t quite go well with two of the paintings and I wasn’t happy. My husband remembered a smaller art store that we hadn’t been to in years because they were a bit pricey and the store was cramped and unorganized, but I figured we might as well check it out. When we got there, the first mat I saw was EXACTLY what I wanted in the first place!!  In fact they had a lot more in store selection then the other places, and their prices were similar to the other places I had checked out.

So now everything is matted and framed and ready for the art show.  I must admit this is my first art show so I’m feeling a little nervous.  Mostly because I won’t be there the whole time so I can’t protect my art from any bad scrutiny.  I know that sounds silly but my art means a lot to me.

I just finished another piece for the art show, one I had as an option should I find some extra time for it. It was done on black paper with prisma pencils, which causes issues getting a good scan out of my scanner for some reason, but here is the original sketch:

She is the second of a light fairy series, this is the first one:

Well, I still have some last minute things to do so I’ll type again soon!