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Another fun family portrait commissioned by a beautiful family. I loved that they had a vision for this portrait. This scene is inspired by their beautiful 2 year old daughters love for duckies. I love duckies too! Which made this such a fun project to work on.

This baby’s ready to be shipped off to its permanent home in Ohio!

Hope you like your new print Tobias Family!

Hugs & Kisses, Nina

A quick one for this week's Illustration Friday:I played the beautiful and meditative game, Journey, just after it released last week and feeling inspired by their use of color, I decided to color this sketch based on the "Desert" level.

I just realized as I went to post this on Illustration Friday's site, that, in my haste, I read "shades" as "shade" which changes the meaning quite a bit. Ah well.... I'll make sure next time to re-read before I sketch! Reading is fundamental after all...

There’s no way FLUID would get into this super duper high tech waterproof submarine!

I wasn’t planning on putting anything up for this weeks IF, but this seemed to fit the theme. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! The line work of this super awesome submarine was done by my nephew, Ralph Allen.

3 or so weeks ago, I came home to find this envelope in our kitchen table. Inside this thick envelope were awesome drawings of dinosaurs and other doodles from my 7 yr old nephew.

Tucked inside all these crazy dino sketches was this amazing looking contraption that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of.

His line work was so great and detailed and I thought how great would this be colored!? So I traced Ralph Allens line work, added some details and a background… It came out great!
This idea was inspired by Dave Devries‘s Monster Engine.

 It is such a rewarding feeling knowing I’ve made an impact in his creative explorations. I wasn’t going to let his work go unnoticed as this definitely deserved more than a simple “Thank You“. This was a perfect way to thank him for sharing his work with me!

Here's a quick digital painting for this week's Illustration Friday. Cupcakes have become so popular in recent years and you will be too if you take them to work or school.I suffer from a fierce and demanding sweet-tooth, but so far the trendy cupcake has failed to seduce me. Cookies, ice cream, and tiramisu - I'm still yours and yours alone. For now....

The Queen of Toy Land and her purple court jester!
He doesn’t look like he likes this game much. 

A private commission from a good friend. A gift for his wife and daughter for Calista’s 1st birthday! (so sweet.) This kid unbelievably cute. Apparently this is exactly the kind of love that Calista and Chloe have for one another. It’s interesting how their cat doesn’t claw her, if I tried to do that to my cat I’d hear grumbling followed by an intense need to squirm and claw her way out of my grip…I tried this last week..

The final image was 15×16″ so it needed to be custom framed. Had a hard time trying to find a custom frame shop that would be able to finish the frame on time for her 1st birthday. But luckily we found someone who got it done 3 days after the Thanksgiving weekend.  They did a lovely job at that. I hope they love it as much as I do.

 Tabitha got a little jealous during the unwrapping.

I thought this old illustration would work well for today's Illustration Friday topic and be oh-so appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:
I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!

Here’s my warm up doodle painting for the day.

Here’s a little photo I took of the painting when it was still in the underpainting process. Most of the work for the painting gets done here. For some reason it’s easier for me to see issues with composition and lighting once things get blocked out in this stage. It’s not the most efficient ways to approach things but it works for me.

All finished:
And regarding the "rage" in the post title - no, I'm not angry about anything, but I have to take a moment to promote my husband's new video game Rage which just released today. (And in the unlikelihood that the title isn't enough of a dead-giveaway, this game is not for young children! :) )

Official website: http://www.rage.com/gate/?return=%2F
EGM Review: http://www.egmnow.com/articles/egm-review-rage/
Several trailers: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/rage/5315

Okay, maybe not so much...

I guess I’m in the mood for funny monsters. Here are some sketches.

For this week's Illustration Friday topic, I decided to play with watercolors and created this little painting of one of my favorite flowers - poppies (which I think are a perennial flower, but I could be wrong).
This painting is cobbled together from several photos I'd taken when we lived in Los Angeles. This type of poppy (Alpine poppy?) was a popular garden flower in California. I remember seeing sizeable beds of them at my husband's office and we had some smaller collections of them at our little apartment complex. I always looked forward to their blooming every spring!

This painting is for sale - here - at my Etsy shop.

Drawn in ArtRage2. Electricity glow added in Photoshop.

This illustration started out as a cute sketch of a dad reading a bedtime story to his kids on a summer night. Then I thought it would be funny if it was a monster story. Then I thought it would be funnier if a real monster got scared by the monster story. I know, my brain works in weird ways when I work at night