festival of lights
one of my utmost favorite things about diwali was placing tealights all around.
it was like transforming your world for one night…
purr
six years ago, my hubbahubba gave me one of the best presents of my life – our kitty uma. we adopted her from a local shelter, so when i was invited to participate in the east bay humane society art auction, i thought back on my first experience with adopting. we got her as a kitten, she barely slept and ran around day and night… but every once in awhile there were lovely moments of peace. ^_^
our lives feel more full of laughter and love because of uma. this is one of the pieces i’m contributing.
for more information about the event go here.
anatomy of an illustration
i’ve had a lot of people ask how i make my images and if i do commissions (yes, i do!) so i thought i would share my process.
a bit ago, a client contacted me to create an image of her and her hubby for their first wedding anniversary. so cute! i love those kinds of jobs and i felt very honored to be a part of their special day. she gave me some direction – their honeymoon to greece, them walking together, and sent me a bunch of photos. we agreed on a price, which included a couple rounds of revisions and i sent off preliminary drawings.
after i sent these to her, she told me what she liked – the look between them in the first, the composition of the third, except it felt unbalanced on the left. oh, and that she wanted her black boots (hehe) and i had put a cat in her hubby’s bag (third), but they actually have a dog! i revised the sketches and sent her the following sketch.
this made her very happy so there was only one revision.
from here i took my line drawing and in flash added a layer over it and went in with color. i don’t usually have any specific color in mind, i am fairly intuitive with colors. after looking at her photos, i knew the kinds of outfits both of them wore and i generally tried to pick colors that would unify them and the entire piece.
after this, i take the drawing into photoshop. i add highlights, gradients and this is where i spend time playing with overlays of color and really finalizing the image.
and voila! she was very happy and so was i! ^_^
janmashtami
janmashtami is the celebration of krishna’s birth. when krishna was a child, he was mischievous, and one of my favorite stories is how he would steal butter from a mutka (clay pot) that was suspended from the ceiling.
in india, on krishna’s birthday, they celebrate this favorite story by suspending clay pots with milk and butter and men pile on top of each other in these amazing human towers to break the pot.
have a great weekend!