One World One Heart - My first giveaway!

This giveaway event is now closed as of 12:00 am 2/15/10 PST.

Many, many thanks for all of your kind visits and comments. It has been truly remarkable being able to visit others around the world during this event. Thank you everyone for participating! I'll post the winner(s) by the end of the day 2/15/10 and notify them as well.

Hi Everyone - welcome to my first-ever giveaway! I'm happy to take part of the event that Lisa Swifka created in 2007. The original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet and in her words: It transcends geographical location, socio economics, political affiliation, religious beliefs......it's a coming together like the giant community we are on this planet. If only it took a simple giveaway to create PEACE everywhere, in the mean time here we give from our hearts. We are not solving the worlds problems nor are we curing anything nor are we changing the world. We are merely generating a closer community between humans through blogging.

I found out about this event through Nicola, who is a wonderful friend and is also participating..I hope you'll visit her blog. I thought about how this new blog journey has truly been a wonderful way for me to share my work with people, and I thought, wow, it would be great to discover new blogs and creative people out there..I decided I wanted to participate..I hope you will visit Lisa's blog and discover new artists yourselves.

My give away is for a signed 8.5" x 11" PRINT of this new illustration I call, "Peaceful Journey". I wanted to paint something that would take you to a place of peaceful contemplation for however small of a moment it might do so. I hope it brings a bit of peace to someone's home. : ) I'm also thinking of a 2nd place giveaway, so stay tuned (more info to come soon).

There are a couple of rules to join the give-away:

1. You must have a blog, since this is a blog event.

2. You must leave a link back to yourself, so I can get in touch with you if you win.

3. Leave one comment on this post.

4. The event ends February 15th.

Good Luck, everyone, and I hope you discover many bloggers out there...have fun!

Clumsy – Illustration Friday

I love to paint squirrels for some reason..my "go-to" animal, I guess. : ) And sweet little girls who try their best. I don't really think she's clumsy at all..do you?

Hope everyone's having a wonderful week! Thank you for stopping by in your busy lives. I appreciate it very much.

Miette – The Guest of Honor

Thanks for the inspiration Vanessa! I had been steadily working on this piece last week when this week's Illustration Friday prompt came up. I decided to paint little Miette, and now I'm able to present this piece which I enjoyed painting. Vanessa left me a delightful comment the other week which prompted this illustration, and this is what I came up with. In my mind, there are wonderful tea parties being held in the woods all of the time..and all of you are invited to attend. Can't you just taste the treats and hear all of the chatter?

Many thanks for indulging me in this! I've also included the initial sketch, the pencil on watercolor block, and the painting in progress, in case you might want to see. Also, many thanks to my little one, Noëlle who told me to paint the "balloons" as if they were made out of leaves...see them in the background? I just think that is an awesome thing for her to recommend. And thank you Sierra for all of your critiques as well. My little artists are my pride and joy!

L'Invitation (IF-Wilderness)

With crown in hand,

Miette wanders into the wilderness...

(what or who will she chance upon?...stay tuned...)

Confined...

Never wanting her friend to feel too confined in it's stuffy ol' fish bowl, Sally, thanks to her kind–and indulgent–parents, takes her monthly trek to visit the ocean.

This was a quick one as I know I'm very, very belated with my contribution to IF this week...AND, I really messed up poor Sally's feet! Sheesh! But, I hope to post more of what I've been working on. I am almost finished with a "portfolio piece" and am also gratefully working on my work-work. I hope all of you are well! Thank you for stopping by - and I look forward to seeing what all of you have been up to!

A REAL honor! Thank you, Cory Godbey and his Terrible Yellow Eyes Tribute

I am so excited to tell you of the amazing thing that happened at the start of the New Year. I wanted to express my gratitude to Mr. Godbey about his tribute to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are book, and sent him my three illustrations that I decided to create back in early November. Well, to my utter surprise, he sent me a very kind email stating that he would like to include it in the last post, which was on January 1st. It is such a wonderful tribute to the work of Maurice Sendak, who has touched so many people with his work. I hope you all get a chance to visit the TYE sight to see all of the artists' contributions. I thank Cory for the idea, the inclusion, and wish him the best in his future endeavors..you should see what he is up to..amazing, amazing work.

Thank you, Yoon See! What a wonderful bookmark!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to post and let you all see the beautiful mermaid bookmark that I received from the dear Yoon See! She has been such a kind person through her visits to my blog. I hope you will visit her blog at: yoonsee.blogspot.com and see her creations and posts. She brightens my day and I look forward to visiting her this year and seeing all of the great imagery that she manages to post. Her holiday photos are astonishing. It's been wonderful to have discovered Malaysia a bit through Yoon See. And, you must check out her lovely art as well! Wow, now I get to enjoy this fine bookmark (just need to make time for my books!). Thank you again, Yoon See!! : )

Renewal

A little early, but I hope these "spring-like" illustrations bring a smile to you.

A brand new year! My resolution?...

I decided to start the new year by painting! And as you can see, I decided to update my old blog banner. It's funny, change is hard isn't it? I enjoyed my old banner because of it's simplicity... but I hope this new one shows some progress now that I've been here in blogland for awhile...if anything, it was definitely a great challenge to paint this and that is good.

I've set some goals for 2010 and that is to paint more, sketch more, and improve my backgrounds. Washes are so hard. I think I should take some watercolor classes.

In the meantime, I continue to enrich my mind with art from all over the world, from generations ago, thanks to wonderful books I've discovered. I also will continue to expand via visits to all of you wonderful artists who I get to enjoy each week. What a treat it has definitely been and continues to be.

I really try not to make resolutions, but perhaps set a tone for the year that I can keep up with and hopefully surpass. I will try to keep forging ahead with my skills and knock on doors of picture book opportunities this year. : )

Hoping you all have a great new year ahead, full of peace and hopefully lots of time creating.

- Shirley