How do you picture "new"?

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I guess "when it rains, it pours" because here's another new little posting!  This is a digital painting I did this week in response to an illustration prompt from the blog "Illustration Friday".  Illustration Friday is a great blog that provides a prompt every week on Friday (how did you guess?).  This week's prompt was "New", in honor of the New Year beginning.  I sat down with my sketchbook and wasn't sure what I was going to do with that, but found myself doodling this morning/flower image.  I guess "new" makes me think of a new day, and new things growing.

To finish it I scanned my pencil drawing and painted it digitally.  I played with painting it in Corel Painter first, but went with Photoshop in the end, using my Wacom tablet.

portraits

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Thought I'd post a couple of sketches while I was thinking about it.  These are from the last figure drawing class I taught before Xmas break.  I demo'ed that day (let myself draw) and focused on portraits of 2 awesome student models that I borrowed from other conservatories.  This guy above is named Mars.  Appropriate!  The guy below is Dmitri.  I couldn't help feeling like Dmitri came straight from the woodland realm of Mirkwood!  (The Hobbit on my brain)  Thankfully, Dmitri was pleased when I told him he looked like a Tolkien elf extra :)  Both portraits were done with conte' crayon in about an hour (each).

Honoring The Hobbit and the New Year

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Well, it's just about time for New Year's resolutions, and resolving art stuff is always at the top of my list!  To whet the appetite for my planned year of making more good art stuff (I didn't say I was resolving to use better grammar), here's the Hobbit bookplate that I made in response to the release of The Hobbit movie (part one!).  I printed them onto adhesive paper and gave them out with some of my Christmas cards.  Do people actually use bookplates?  Who knows.  (snarky comments received about being a Kindle user: 1)  But bookplates are pretty :)