Friday, 4 July 2014

Sunflowers: New Digital Painting, and Some News...


 Sunflowers. They may not be original, but oh, so beguiling, and cheerful. (And OK, just a bit dramatic, on a dark background.

I've needed a bit of cheer, having busted my ankle pretty comprehensively.

You might think this would lead to more digital painting. Which it did. Sort of. Eventually.

First there was sorting it out. So my apologies for the very long hiatus here.

But when I did get to being able to focus on the stretch of time it gave me to play around with designs like this, to turn them into patterns...

and much else besides... I got to thinking. And asked,"How can all this digital painting, which is fun, also be much, much more useful?" And I came up with several answers to that.

News
So, in the next few weeks, I'll be concentrating on the first of these.The aim is to enable you to customise (or customize !) Bounding Squirrel designs as much as you like, and then put the results on your own items.

Watch this space, as they say. (And thank you for your patience!).

PS. This design itself looks great on a range of customisable gifts too, like this one:

Friday, 25 April 2014

New Digital Painting: Love Your True Colours

And somehow, words have crept in as well... (which makes it "Digital Mixed Media", I guess...). Anyway, hope you like it, and please do share it along if you find it inspiring.

Thanks!



PS. The customisable version of this design is available ready for you to add your own text instead, onto items like this one:

Friday, 18 April 2014

Digital Art Journaling

Long time no post, because I've been exploring something completely new to me... art journaling.

I'm loving the way it allows me to explore issues by drawing, scribbling, and writing positive messages back to myself. It *feels* less deep than writing a journal (which I also do). And yet somehow, it seems to create more change.


 In a way, this starts to bring BoundingSquirrel spiralling back to where it began: I was a coach and writer, proving to myself that anyone who wanted to learn to draw badly enough (ie me) really could.

Now, I'm learning a whole new way to approach my first stamping ground-through digital art journaling.

The inspiration: Tamara Laporte
I have to mention Tamara Laporte here, because her inspirational, (and free!) "Art, Heart and Healing," course inspired me to have a go at art journaling. The course demonstrates hands-on art, but Tam offers a digital art course on her own site too, and makes it wonderfully and supportively clear that everyone should just choose whatever medium works for them.

So I took it digitally instead...And at the very least (and believe me, there's much more there, check it out) it's got me over my fear of painting people instead of always choosing aspects of nature.


Don't know where this will lead next, but watch this space...

Friday, 14 March 2014

Getting the Fun Back into Digital Painting



This was a quick 20 minute digital pastal painting of a daisy. I deliberately gave myself only 20 minutes to see how much I could draw in the time, and how much fun I could have, without "taking it seriously," or "trying" to do things correctly".

And it was huge fun.

Would I spend 20 minutes this way again? Absolutely-and especially when the "fun factor" needs to reappear in my life. Give it a go yourself if you feel the same way (and I dare you to post the results...I promise I'll support you in your pursuit of this kind of fun!).

Friday, 28 February 2014

New Digital Painting: Red Carnations


The Computer Man gave me Valentine red carnations two weeks ago. I started it this digital painting based on some of them on Monday, and I've still only just finished this... As usual, it's digital oil pastels, from scratch in Pixarra Twisted Brush. Enjoy, anyway.

PS> This design is now available on customisable gifts and cards like this one: