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Am I getting sick of jelly yet? Not at all! Have had a huge amount of fun sketching it, colouring it, changing it around, watching it wibble and wobble away ... it hasn't been easy deciding what to do with it, but I do love a challenge - you can see a few of my prep sketches here and here.

The assignment for my MATS class was to create a jelly illustration or pattern to go onto fabric, and as I'm still polishing up my pattern design skills, I decided to turn my hand to that. It's now done and submitted, and here's the final piece as well as, under that, the pattern that I produced from it.

Can you see it on aprons and tea towels? I can! I've enjoyed this so much that my next step will be to wish up a couple of patterns that will nicely coordinate with it. Meanwhile, however, my own home is in chaos as the main rooms are being painted, so I'm camping out in one of the guest rooms and ignoring the mess till I can get back in there to sort it all out. Another week or so I'd say. All part of the huge changes that are coming up, which I shall share with you as soon as everything is confirmed and completed.

Until then, there may be a few quirks and trip-ups where blogging is concerned, so thank you for your patience (in advance). Have a delightful week. Cheers.

I'm working on a few different projects at the moment, all in progress, all squeezed in whenever I have a few minutes free. Here's where I was at the beginning of the week:

I'm glad to say that I'm pretty much done with the "I Choose to Fill Myself with Positive Energy" text design for the April free printable (for subscribers to the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter of course!), and I'll reveal all when the time comes. Meanwhile ...

I went a completely different direction with my Jelly assignment for MATS Bootcamp, and have managed to totally confuse myself. Should I go with something more along the lines of last weeks sketches, here, or stick to a slightly more geometric rendering of jelly moulds, as above? argh. We shall see. I may have to sketch a lot more jelly before deciding.

Meanwhile, here's the progress on a sketch I'm doing that will, perhaps, end up as a Thinking of You card up at the Two Smiles for HP (Hewlett-Packard) site.

I drew it, scanned it in and decided to experiment with some brand new digital pastel brushes that I purchased from Kyle T Webster. Oh my, I love them. Now that I've been deprived of Corel Painter (it just will not work since the last OS update and I don't want to invest and buy the upgrade only to discover that doesn't work either. I was, needless to say, hugely disappointed) these, along with his real watercolour brushes, are making digital painting a delight once more.

Here's a quick peek at what I've done so far ...

I'm using them exactly as I would my pencils on paper and there are layers and layers of colour being built up. Still have a way to go as yet, but I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out so far.

Back to work! Wishing you a wonderful day loving what you do and doing what you love. Cheers.

I've been working hard this week on some of the many changes that are going on behind the scenes in my life. But managed to take time off to play with the watercolours and marker pens. Painted a Tree of Hearts - no idea where that came from but enjoyed myself in the process - and then began work on some sketches for MATS Bootcamp, an exploration of jelly!

Am not sure where the tropical fruit jellos, or cupcakes or mice came from but I had fun with them. I'm trying to capture that gorgeous translucent gloss of the jelly and I may have to continue with watercolour now and see how that develops.

I'll leave you with an oldie tune, let me know if you remember it!

Jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibble wobble, wibble wobble, Jelly on the plate.

WIshing you a day full of inspiration. Cheers.

This will be the last of the cupcakes on this sweet-obssessed week, I promise. Well, for just a little while anyway ...

I've been working on cleaning up and digitally repainting the Quirky Cupcakes that I doodled at the beginning of the week, so I'll show you those first ... one with a blue boat balanced atop a sea of icing, another with quirky red hearts, one with a cheerful red cherry perched up high, and finally an pink and white iced cupcake with colourful round sprinkles.

Had enough of cupcakes yet? I hope not, as I have one more ... I used the Photo Inspiration: Pink Cupcake from earlier this week and digitally painted over it to produce the pink iced cupcake below:

It's a completely different look and style from the ones above it, that were doodled with marker pens and scanned in. I quite like both interpretations really.

I'm beginning to think that the Quirky Cupcakes might make for a cute pattern collection ... even on bedsheets and wallpaper, perhaps for a kids room? A cupcakes shower curtain? Well, I'm going to give that a go next week and will show you the results once that's done.

Which one of the above cupcakes would you eat first? Cheers.

Now that I've started on a cupcakes theme, I'm going all the way with it this week! So I doodled some quirky cupcakes ... they're a bit odd, whimsical, playful and lots of fun to draw. I doodled flower cupcakes, a sailboat cupcake, coffee cupcakes, a heart cupcake, a colourful iced cupcake, one with a cherry on the top, and even a landscape cupcake with mountains and a stream ... Here are the doodles:

I then scanned them in and started working on them individually. Don't like the bottom left and bottom right ones too much so those will be scrapped, but I think the rest might make for a cute pattern and as individual images to place on cards and gifts. So I made sure I scanned in a relatively high resolution and went to work on the rest. Here are what I've done so far with the first two ...

A pretty pink Daisy cupcake, and ...

... an orange Rose cupcake. What do you think? I digitally 'painted' them and cleaned up edges and finally applied a photoshop filter. I normally repaint them using Corel Painter 12 but since my last Mac OS update that no longer works, which is truly disappointing. I'm hoping that they catch up on the updates soon as I do miss it, but meanwhile, photoshop handled these cupcakes pretty well.

I'm still working on the rest of them. I may post those once I'm done. Cheers.

"Coffee makes it possible to get out of bed. Cupcakes make it worthwhile." - unknown author.

I worked on this yesterday, so haven't had a chance to properly clean it up. You're getting pretty much the raw deal here! I'd normally finish it off by moving around and smoothing out the words and letters, but as I haven't the time at the moment, here's what I've managed to complete so far ...

I started off with a very rough pencil sketch in my Moleskine squared journal:

The quotation seemed perfect for my Coffee Cupcake illustration, so I printed it out and glued it on as a guide around which the text would flow. I then inked it in, ready for scanning:

This is the scan, and here's where I'd work on the final cleanup, the icing on the cake if you will, and the addition of decorative elements. Not done. Let's hope it still tastes good:

I'm looking at it here and can see all the mistakes I'd love to fix ... making some of the text less angular, some of the spaces between words less awkward ... when I finally get around to it I'll post the cleaned version! Right now it's time for my second cup of morning coffee. Cupcakes, anyone? Cheers.

A few days ago I was given some delicious yellow cupcakes, made by a sweet friends of ours, Julie, who also makes some very cool jewellery, scarves and bags, check out her facebook page: Les Bazarettes.

It's the first time Julie has ever made cupcakes -- they were for her little daughter's birthday and it was she who requested the lovely, sunny colour. I took the time to take photos and the cupcakes disappeared immediately after ... definitely a succesful first attempt. We want more! Cheers.

I've no idea how this little sketch of candy canes transformed itself into a pattern ... I was just fooling around and well, this is what happened ...

I started off doodling some candy canes - no surprise, it being the festive season and all, and the mood of the moment:

Don't they look like they're dancing? I then decided to scan it in and just experiment a tiny bit, but got carried away. So, this happened ...

I then thought, oh well, I've gone this far, might as well add some stripes, a different background, etc. And a simple, cheerful collection emerged ...

Too late to put up on cards and gifts for this Christmas, I know, but watch out for it next year. I'm thinking it's going to look pretty cute on fabric and giftwrap, especially if I add polka dots somewhere along the line! Cheers.

I'm trying to make time to draw/paint regularly. We've been so involved with work recently that this somehow made it's way to the bottom of my priorities list, when in fact it should be at the top for various reasons, not least being that it's super-therapeutic for me, and, hello, without art I really have no business to speak of!

As I have a long queue of designs and patterns waiting to be placed on gifts and cards on the stores, I actually now have the luxury of drawing whatever I please, without having to consider its commercial value. I know, I know, I shouldn't anyway -- but unfortunately that's what has been happening of late as I do need to fill the empty pockets.

So. I managed a quick sketch of a cupcake ... completely from imagination (which just goes to show what I think about during the day) as it's not easy finding the real thing in the countryside. Not surprising really, as the French have such delicious pastries of their own. And I love them, especially the lemon meringue tarts that I have a particular weakness for -- and my Patisserie in the village makes pretty much the best ones I've ever tasted. Still, there's just something about cupcakes that's, well, different, wouldn't you say ...?

Drew this in coloured pencil, in my moleskine journal. And as it really is a very quick sketch, completely from my sweetly warped imagination, I'm sure you'll be kind enough not to notice the horrendously obvious errors that I shan't mention either. I now have a cupcake craving, sigh. Cheers!

A digital painting from a photograph by the friend who made the cupcake ... Thank You Michelle! It looked too delicious to resist, and as I couldn't pop one into my mouth as I wished, I drew it instead.

Felt like playing with Corel Painter 12, so I used the oil paint brush and picked the colours from the actual photograph to do this piece. I'm wondering though if perhaps the icing could with a bit of extra whitening, what do you think?

I love anything with sugar icing, doesn't it look just too delicious? I've been promised some cupcakes when she visits this summer and can't wait. Perhaps I'll do more cupcake drawings then, in a variety of mediums. From photographs. Once I've gobbled them down. Cheers!

These little digital doodles of mine are nothing particulary special as far as Art (with a capital A) is concerned, I know. They aren't meant to be. They are bits of colourful fun that pop into my mind throughout the day, are quickly sketched down into my book with marker pens, scanned in, and then digitally painted over whenever I have the time to do so.

I like them. They're cheerful and bright ... and perhaps they're trying to tell me that somewhere deep within this rather cynical husk there's still, rather well-hidden perhaps, a sense of uncomplicated joy left.

Above is Colored Pencils and below is a Red Coffee Cupcake. Enjoy.

A quick doodle, drawn in marker pens in my large Moleskine and then painted in Corel Painter 11. Catching up on tons of work so it's doodles for a while before I can get back to a more-time-consuming coloured pencil drawing. Cheers.

Pink & Green Cupcake cards & matching gifts at Floating Lemons @ Zazzle.

Used watercolour pencils for these, in attempt to play with the unfamiliar looser feel of brush and paint, while still managing to control finer details with the far more familiar pencils. I did several base washes for the background texture and used pencil on the final layers for the bitsy bits. Discovered that the quality of the watercolour paper makes a HUGE and wonderful difference too. Learning as I go along.

As for the macarons, I found them in a new stall at our Friday morning market. Such lovely vibrant colours. Had to buy them! Especially as they were obviously home-made and thus wobbly, wonky, slightly squished with bits falling off ... thus quite perfect as far as I was concerned.

My problem once I've finished any drawing is the design part of the whole process. As I have no formal training whatsoever, I find it truly difficult to figure out how to present my drawings so that they look appealing on the products posted for sale at the online stores. It's tough and sometimes takes far too long as I fiddle around with ideas. I normally end up uploading two designs: one of the drawing exactly as it is against a white background, boring but safe; and two, with whatever background I end up with -- here's what I did with these macarons:

Not quite sure how well that works as I've been looking at it far too long and thus have lost all sense of judgement. Just plain lost all sense, really. Wish I could take some courses in basic design. Am exhausted now as I've been working pretty much non-stop for weeks. My nose has drawn blood from the grind-stone. I've a drawing in progress (faithful pencils again) that I shall complete slowly, but I may go back to doodling for a bit to give my fuzzy brain cell a chance to re-energise. Cheers.

5 Macarons and 5 Macarons stripes gifts and cards at Floating Lemons at Zazzle.

Took time off from my drawing to play around with one of my old marker pen doodles and turn it into a last-minute Christmas design. Cleaned it up in Photoshop and placed it in my Zazzle store and managed to get a Today's Best Award for one of the envelope designs!

Cheers!

Curly Candy Cane cards and gifts at Floating Lemons at Zazzle

I've been dabbling rather than drawing recently. One of the results being the above cake, sketched out in marker pens, to which I added little bats for Halloween. Also did a couple of other cakes at the same time and I'll clean them up and add them at a later date.

Meanwhile, I've been concentrating on updating past drawings and designs at my Zazzle store, adding them to new products such as their stationery line (letterheads, matching envelopes and address labels, I truly enjoy creating matching sets!), and on cleaning and sorting out my home, preparing it for the coming months of winter work. Getting rid of the clutter and oh my, there's a ton of that.

I've also spent the last couple of days experimenting with watercolour, with truly embarassing results. More on that in the next post as I'm trying to salvage my one attempt by whipping my watercolour pencils out. If it doesn't turn out too tragic I may share it here ... we shall see!

I did receive a Today's Best Award from Zazzle for the Orange Striped bats Cake Avery Binder design:

Cheers!

Orange Striped bats Cake cards and matching gifts at Floating Lemons at Zazzle.