Fighting a bit of a head cold currently, two others of the staff have already fallen victim to it. I’m hoping mine doesn’t get as severe as their’s. Last night I took some cold medicine to help me sleep and it didn’t help much. I did have some mighty strange dreams, including one about a special Celtic knot made out of bat skeletons. It was very beautiful. Wish I could remember more about it so I could actually draw it! Dreams are so fickle.

Ugh. I slept bad and I have a Nyquil hangover.

Tags: sick
Current Mood: Ugh

Yeah, Olive being cute. Again. It's kinda her thing.

Tags: olive

Made some more knots today.


I’m beginning to experiment adding extra embellishments and details. I had such a good time making these today.





This one is for equine exchange here on LJ, haven’t participated in that community for almost a year and decided to sign up this round. It’s probably my most favorite exchange community, they always get a lot of participants and the characters are always so cool, they’re equines, how could they not be? So this is guy in for Hollso and he gets one of my shiny new Celtic knots for his background.

Tags: celtic knots
Current Mood: creative

Before you go congratulating me on my skill with Celtic knots, please know that I did not draw this knot on my own, I always get considerable help from various sources. For those artist out there who actually do design and create their own original Celtic knots and patterns, kudos to you, you are amazing. My brain doesn’t work that way. For the rest of us, here are some resources and the methods you can use to create knots.

The above piece was created using this book:
“Celtic Knotwork Borders in Repeating Sections” by Bradley W. Schenck

http://shop.webomator.com/cgi-bin/celtic_art_books.cgi?i=celtic_art_patterns/celtic_art_book.111215757

The knots can be pieced together in various ways and once having bought the book, you have free use of the knots you create from it in your projects, you just can’t sell the individual sections yourself. All and all I found this a fantastic resource and it was worth the effort of scanning the entire thing in, all 100 pages of it.

Still even with this significant help, laying out this knot in photoshop, preparing the linework and then coloring it took a lot of time and work and I’m proud of the result.

If you are curious about the knots in my other pieces I’ll share this other secret. I use a Celtic Knot Font, that can be downloaded for a fee from here:
http://www.clanbadge.com/knots.htm

Any other knots I use in my art come from public domain sources like medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Tags: celtic knots
Current Location: In front of Cintiq
Current Mood: accomplished

Yay! My iPhone is back! Goodness and light have returned to the world!

They couldn’t fix my original phone unfortunately, so they sent me a brand new one, AT NO CHARGE!!! How cool is that.

Anyways, I’m awfully excited to have an iPhone again.

To celebrate, have one of my favorite “i” commercials, the iTouch commercial featuring the song, “Music is my hot, hot sex.”



I think I like this song so much because it sort of reminds me of the Spice Girls, which I now admit to being a big fan of.

Don’t tell anybody. I’d have to kill you.

Tags: iphone
Current Mood: Yay!
Current Music: Music is my hot, HOT sex

People on the internet are stupid. I like how I do a couple Heralds of Valdemar inspired pieces and suddenly I’ve got people telling me that Farfalla is a Companion rip off. Excuse me? Farfalla has been around long before I was exposed to those books and if anything is more inspired from “The Last Unicorn” movie I saw as a child. Her tack is a combination of the heavily tassled Arabian horse tack and the decorative tack seen on horses in Medieval art and tapestries. But no, Mercedes Lackey must have the entire market on decorative horse tack so anything anybody else does MUST be a rip off of her. *eye roll*

This is why I generally stay away from fanart these days. It can be a good way to get a little exposure to your gallery and I admit I do make use of it like that on occasion. That’s the main reason I leave up all My Little Pony Art and The Last Unicorn Art, it draws people to my gallery. But sometimes it can get out of hand and people can get a little rabid. Then suddenly you’ve got people saying your original stuff are rip-offs.

Really, overall, this does not bother me that much. It’s just internet drama. Which is laughable. The main point is that I enjoy making art and what other people think is just secondary.

"Damn not given."

Current Mood: apathetic

I purchased one of these Keepsake boxes with my art on it from CafePress and I was really impressed how well made and beautiful they are. I was so impressed that I decided to open my own CafePress online store to sell these.



The boxes are made of solid hardwood with high-gloss lacquer finish and showcase a ceramic tile with an image on them, the interior is fully lined in velvet; the bottom is covered with felt. The wood comes in mahogany or black. The spring-loaded hinged lid stays open without tipping the box over and snaps closed securely. Measures 5.5" x 5.5" x 2.25" with a 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tile.

My shop has many more boxes featuring some of my favorite pieces, I also put the designs on framed tiles as well. I'll add more products when I have time.

CafePress Site!

Current Mood: productive

I just got a call from a credit agency that wanted to help me “grow my tapestry business.” Because my website is Tapestry Hounds, and I must therefore be in the business of making tapestries. O.o

I actually had to argue with him that that is not the case. It’s merely a hobby site where I post my art. This was incomprehensible to him.

Gotta love telemarketers. *Sheesh*

Current Mood: amused

I drew another piece inspired by the Heralds of Valdamer books by Mercedes Lackey. Fan Art is an interesting thing. People can really get up in arms about it. Now I’ve only read 2 of the books so I’m no expert on the series nor do I claim to be, mostly I just find drawing white horses with blue and silver tack enjoyable. I wanted to draw a Herald to go along with my companion and so took a little liberty designing some dress garb for her, this is the part that people are making a fuss about because it doesn’t look exactly like the “whites” the Herald are shown wearing on the book covers and “OMG, that’s not the official whites that “Misty” made.” *Eye roll* My attitude is this, it’s my picture, I drew it if you don’t like my interpretation draw your own damn picture.” LOL, fans can be scary. I personally like seeing new and different approaches to fan work and enjoy novel interpretations.

Anyways, here is the piece in question.

( Click for the artz! )

In other news, I’m getting another desk for my art room! Now I’ll have a separate space for working on traditional medium. Chris picked one just like my old one at the Ikea in Portland. I’ve been wanting another one for ages, I’m so excited! Next I’d like to get some sort of organizational thing for my closet for all my traditional art supplies, right now everything is heaped into a box in the closet and very chaotic. I’m so excited to get my art room all organized and cool.

Tags: art
Current Mood: content

Oh, hell no.

I believe in being open minded but so open minded my brain falls out.

The answer to my son or daughter would be, "No, no, no and NO!"

Current Mood: Give me a break.