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I've illustrated flying elephants before, and even tried updating the older version (click here to see it - Illustration: Flying Elephants) a while back. There's something about the image of these colourful elephants flying joyfully across the sky that attracts me, so I thought, as I'm drawing elephants at the moment anyway, that I'd give it another try. This time in watercolour.

The above image is the final scan knitted together (it's on an A3 page and I only have an A4 scanner so I had to piece it together in Photoshop.

Here are a few of the progress shots ...

What do you think? I'm going to have to tweak them further digitally, clean them up a bit, then start placing them on products at my online stores as I'm actually quite pleased with the result.

Have to dash as I'm about to go away for a week. I've just moved home too, so blogging has been erratic. Please bear with me while I get my life back into some semblance of order and start having fun with my art once more. Cheers.

Snapped photos of some marigolds from the garden, erased the background on Photoshop and then popped them into Corel Painter and used oil brushes to repaint them. Back into Photoshop for a cleanup, and here they are.

Then played around a bit with filters to see if enhancing them further would give me extra-ordinary results. Came up with the result below and I do like it, though I think I prefer the colours and contrasts of the original above. Still, there's something slightly crazy about the version below that appeals to the 'need-to-experiment-more' side of my nature that's demanding my attention at present.

Wishing you a bright, extraordinary day. Cheers.

This one is for my mother. Please keep in mind the fact that I'm a beginner and still experimenting, and excuse all the mistakes that you more proficient watercolourists (is there such a word?) will probably be pointing out, as I'm playing without training or rules (Tons of fun!). Still my mother likes it and that's what counts, right?

Here's a few progress shots:

I used watercolour pencils at the end just to clean up and add some detail. Now, off to think of something else to paint ...

Have a wonderful day. Cheers.

I was supposed to post this two days ago ... but real life got in the way of finishing it up. So a quick sketch it will remain.

I had to remind myself halfway through that I'm trying to loosen up in my drawings! So the delicate structure I set up to start off with became a mass of sketchy lines instead. I'm quite pleased with the results, unfinished though it might look. Well, that's probably because it is .... not quite done. Here's the final scan and a couple of images of what I did to get there:

Drawn in my large moleskine journal with an assortment of coloured pencils. Cheers.

My original intention was to post something really bright and colourful for both spring and Valentine's Day, but I fell in love with the lovely greens and greys in this image, so here are some Spring Green Floral Hues instead, subdued but sweet. Have a lovely day. Cheers.

I've been working on class exercises and on submissions to competitions, which has left me with not much time for anything else, and, oddly enough, slightly uninspired this week.

I brought the pens out to do a bit of doodling with spring blues and greens in mind, and this is all I came up with ... those sun doodles remind me of the ones I used to do in high school, sigh. So I could consider them either very retro (does that give my age way?!) or a sign that I'm regressing into a second childhood phase - either way I suppose it means I'm having some fun after all ...

Wishing you all a lovely day with more sun than showers! Cheers.

A peek at the coming spring with a photo from last spring: Almond Blossoms.

It's National Doodle Day in the UK today, and they support of the work of Epilepsy Action. So I've decided to post one of my Moleskine doodle pages in their honour.

Yes folks, this is what I do when I'm stumped for something to draw ... these doodles seem to have a bit of a floral theme, I might use some of them for illustrations or patterns one of these fine days ...

Any preferences? I do like the blue one myself, but that's probably because colour makes such a difference, so it stands out. I'm going to take a quick break now and trot off to the Friday village market with my guests ... might find some flowers to buy and draw! Have a lovely day. Cheers.

Going floral today, with a bunch of lovely pink flowers to brighten up your day. Cheers.

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw.

Simply handwritten.

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.

Another exercise from my excellent e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design, that I struggled to complete. The class is really challenging me which I consider absolutely brilliant even if I don't live up to my own expectations. But I'm certainly learning tons.

Remember my Playful Geometrics Giftwrap Collection from a couple of posts ago? Well, not only have I created a mockup presentation for it, but added gift tags and a square greeting card. Of course, this is when my printer decided to play up and print out the most dreadful smudges ... I finally found a way to work around that  ... but I now have to learn more about gift-wrapping as, honestly, I've just hidden all the dreadful mistakes I've made! I'm not going to go anywhere near mentioning my lack of photographic skills. All now on my lengthy to do list.

Anyway, here are the results:

Here's the mockup page for the Gift Tags:

And here's the one for the Greeting Card:

Phew. I'm exhausted! Taking a tea break before getting back to work on my next piece. Cheers!

I have cupcakes on my mind obviously, so I've decided to follow through on the delightfully sugary theme this week. Found this photograph that was taken by a good friend, the multi-talented musician, all-round creative, cupcake-maker, Susy Sapphire. Yes, the cupcakes above were made by her. My sweet tooth is missing her delicious creations ...

When Susy first sent me this photograph I was greedily inspired, and used it as the basis for a digitally painted piece - but I never completed it. I've now decided to finish it off, so watch out for it in the next few days! Cheers.

Photograph Copyright © 2012 Susy Sapphire.

An exercise for my wonderful e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design - this was a difficult one for me, as I decided to challenge myself and not only stick to just geometric patterns this time, but also use colours I wouldn't normally use. It's taken me ages to complete, but I finally have some samples ready as well as the collection in two different colour combinations!

To begin, here are the sketches I doodled into my moleskine journal. Ignore that flower in the front, that was just for play. I didn't want the geometric patterns to look too rigid or formal, so I added a bit of quirkiness to them. There are whimsical warped circles, oddly shaped squares and rectangles, and slightly distorted plus signs scattered around everywhere. I wanted it to have slightly sophisticatedlook but with a dash of casual fun.

Most of the above rough ideas were scanned in and below are the end results. First, the Playful Geometrics Collection 1, based on the Pantone spring summer 2013 colours:

Next, a couple of the above on mockup giftwrap paper sheets:

Then, I (re)created the above patterns using the colours from my Peach Tulip Hues photograph (here's the image in case you're curious: Peach Tulip Hues) ... so here's the Playful Geometrics Collection 2:

And finally, a few of the sample giftwrap paper sheets from the above:

Having completed all that, I'm now no longer sure which colour combinations I prefer. I'm going to be using one of the above Collections to work on further, does anyone have a preference? I do like them both but may go with the second collection as the colours seem more spring/summery, what do you think?

Back to the drawing board! Have a sunny day, cheers.

Peach coloured tulips bought from the markets at the pretty Provençal village of Lourmarin.

"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.

An exercise for my brilliant e-course, The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design - having some fun with nail art. I hadn't realised how much intricate and crazy and lovely art there was out there for the ultra-manicured set, till I did a google search. I am now in a state of stupefied silence (typing doesn't count).

I had a try at playing with some nail designs myself, but they all seem pretty timid in comparison to what I've just seen. Still, this is about as wild as I'm willing to go for the moment ... here's a peek:

Nowadays, painting a coat of clear polish onto my nails is pretty much a huge event in my life, so anything more than one shade of any colour is pretty much beyond me. Hats off to those who adorn their fingers in such a gorgeous way, and if any of you have amazing designs to show off please do send me some pics, as I'd love to see them! I'm off now to give myself a much-needed manicure ... cheers.

Summer red cherries from my garden.

Still in the spirit of hearts, love, and Valentine's Day, I decided to doodle some flowers with heart petals, inspired by Provençal motif designs. Whipped out my large Moleskine journal and my marker pens and here are the results:

There's something I quite liked about those top flowers, though I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. So I scanned it in and cleaned it up a bit, just to see how it would look. Here's the scanned original:

And here's the cleaned up version:

Is there something odd but cute about it? I'm really unsure whether to work on it further and place it onto products, or create a pattern design from it or not. Perhaps I'll just put it in the To Do queue and look at it again sometime in the future and decide then. What do you think? Cheers.

We've been working on Valentine's Day projects here at Floating Lemons, so we're seeing hearts everywhere! No surprise then, that I've decided to draw one as my next project. The first step was to take some photographs for reference, so in the spirit of love and caring and sharing, here they are, just in case anyone out there is overwhelmed by a sudden urge to draw or paint white hearts ...

Have fun. Cheers!

A glimpse into my creative workspace ... and yes, I did tidy up a bit! I actually do have to keep things relatively tidy or my creative muse freezes up - or dashes for cover, and either way I'm left without inspiration. So, although things do pile up while I'm actually drawing or painting, I always put everything away once it's done so that I can start on the next project with a clean slate/desk.

The studio space is part of my open-plan living/dining/kitchen room (behind the camera), which I love as then I feel as though I'm in the midst of things rather than completely isolated.

Everything on that little table in the foreground is from our next free printables that we're preparing so that we can take a bit of a photo shoot for the blogpost. This is pretty much my side of the studio area.

My trusty coloured pencils are on a trolley so that I can draw in the living-room, or outside (in summer!) if I feel the urge to.

Here's our little organizing station. Fabric swatches, wrapping tools and papers, reference books, and the little black and white drawers are full of tacks, staples, pins, etc ...

That's pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed the little tour, it's time for me to get back to work! Cheers.

I love the fact that I'm putting a doodle up for the first day of the New Year, as this year I'd really like to approach my art with a more relaxed feel, and put my perfectionist-bully away -- and these little sketches are so enjoyable, drawn with less 'serious' attention to having a 'final result' in mind.

The fact that this particular doodle is of a heart is perfect too, as it's a reflection of my gratitude for everything in my life: being of sound body and sound mind, having a roof over my head and food in my mouth, and being able to work at something I love, as well as having such amazing, positive support from my family and friends, both off and on-line.

Here is the original doodle, sketched out in a hand-made book crammed full of lovely, coloured kraft papers that I found at one of the local markets. There's a particular joy I find in drawing in a book that has been created with love, especially when you get to actually meet the people who crafted it so beautifully.

And here's the doodle in close-up ...

As usual I got carried away, cleaned it up and then played with colours, placing it against ... red (the original), blue (see below), lime green, yellow (I didn't put those up here as I thought it might be toooo much), then changed the black outline to white and set it against a pink and black colour scheme ... and really, I could have covered all the colours of the rainbow, I was having so much fun, but I stopped there. For now.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and as we're trying to get some new designs up for it, my Heart Motif (in all its colour variations) will be joining the queue, so watch out for it on cards and gifts at my online stores soon!

2012 was my year of education and of building a stronger foundation for the future. I've made huge changes in my life and work, all quite amazing, and I'm now hoping to build on those, and look forward to exciting challenges this year. I am filled with gratitude.

I have a long way to go as yet, but I'd really like to thank my online friends who've been with me from the beginning of my journey, when I stumbled around trying to draw straight lines (of course I now know that they don't have to be straight, but I had to figure that one out bit by bit), and those of you who have recently joined me, for being so hugely supportive. I would never have continued with my art journey these past 6 years, without the encouragement and motivation I found online. Blessings, and a brilliant 2013 to all of you. Cheers.

I'm now going to (try to!) take a few days off to clear clutter, relax and renew myself. I'll be back on the 3rd, ready for new challenges!

Resolutions? To spend more time drawing and painting this coming year ... what about you?

I hope you have a wonderful New Year with your loved ones, and that the coming year will be filled with much positive thought and action and be a fulfilling one for us all. Cheers.