Papa to son: "I surrender!"

Little Lusa and papa had tickle fights often. This time around, Lusa won.

One more entry for this week's IllustrationFriday.com...
(just needed to watercolor today, too)
Have a great week everyone, and thank you for stopping by..it means a lot! ~ Shirley

Illustration Friday :: Surrender

"I refuse to acquiesce to your request."

~Barbosa, in the Pirates of the Carribean

A very big stretch for surrender, but the image of Elizabeth dangling the medallion over the edge of Barbosa's pirate ship kept popping into my head. This is a pencil sketch scanned and painted in photoshop. Changing it up (technique-wise) helps to clear my mind..what do you do to help when you're stuck in an illustration rut? I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Pay it Forward

First of all..my heartfelt thanks to all of you who so kindly stopped by to comment recently! I have yet to get to everyone but will do so this weekend!

Also, the reason for a quick post with no illo just yet...I just stumbled upon Penelope Neal's post and wanted to get this out there asap.. and my goodness if you haven't seen Penelope's work, please do so..her animal illustrations are fabulous!

Here’s the concept: “Pay it forward” is the idea that random acts of kindness are given without expecting anything in return. It’s passing on a kindness hoping that your recipients will do the same, and forming a never-ending chain of goodwill, that’s what this is about. But it isn’t only kindness, it is also a means to connect and share instead of just keeping it to ourselves.

Here’s how it works: You’ll have to comment on this post and the first three people who comment will receive an original “Pay it Forward” illustration from me within the next few months. But those three people will also have to post the idea on their blog and commit to creating something for the first three people who comment and so on and so forth.

SO, the first three people to comment here will get something by me, but you have to do this on your blog as well. I’ll be reading your blog to make sure that you have posted something about your “Pay it Forward.”

I'm looking forward to posting my illustration (still in concept right now) for the giveaway - but wanted to say...pay it forward, friends! : )

Illustration Friday :: Dusty

The Sketchbook Project 2011, Thank You's, and Monsieur Olivet!

Hi everyone - just wanted to pop by and say hello! I hope you've all been enjoying January so far..wow, I can't believe it's already the 20th!

The Sketchbook Project 2011: Yay! I completed the project and mailed my sketchbook to the ArtHouseCoop a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to see all of the sketchbooks when it tours to San Francisco. I must say that I REALLY loved this project and am missing it already as it was my first completed sketchbook and I had never kept to a small format as this to sketch before.

Before I started, I wracked my brains for a cover illustration, and then decided, put it away, start somewhere in the middle..so I started on page 3. I think it was a good way for me to just dive in, not get too caught up on "perfect-perfect" and just start sketching. Throughout the project, I found that just sketching one spread a night or every other night was a peaceful and less-frightening way of tackling some of my illustration challenges like hands, the male figure, proportion, shading, lighting.

I'm going to purchase new sketchbooks to keep working on my drawing skills...do you have any recommendations of favorite sketchbooks, please let me know..as I'd love to hear from you and your experiences with this...as well as your experience with the Sketchbook Project if you participated! : )Note: cover was done on the LAST day of the project - I decided to scan and print on watercolor paper an image of one of the last sketches I did, and it made it to the cover. I cut out the hole, and glued it from the back. I wanted to keep the cover to black and white since all of the pages were done in pencil only.

click here for more at the ArtHouseCoop

Thank you's: I'm SO honored by my dear Ces. Thank you Ces! You are a rockstar sisterfriend bar-none. If you are not familiar with Ces, please go visit now. I am always, always amazed at the breadth of her beautifully detailed illustrations and paintings. Ces, you honor me as you had given this to me many months ago..I am kicking myself for not acknowledging it sooner..it is in honor of Arija , a dear sisterfriend of Ces's. You can read about the award here. And to Christie and Julie, many thanks for the Stylish Blogger award! I am so happy to get to know you both recently and it is wonderful to share this award with such kind, talented and energetic artists as yourselves..thank you!

Monsieur Olivet: It has been far too long since we've heard from Monsieur. I hope you all know that he had a quiet, though peaceful holiday season, and he is ready for a brand new year. If you haven't visited before, please stop here for a visit.

Always wonderful that you take the time to visit and comment...I appreciate it a lot, fellow artists and friends! ~ Shirley

January::Desktop download

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy!

1280x1024 / 1680x1050 / 1920x1200 / Ipod Touch or iPhone

Here's my contribution to my group blog, www.welovetoillustrate.com for January. Swing on over to visit and download all of the ladies' wonderful desktop designs for January! This is somewhat of a verrrrry loose homage to Sean Connery and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Loved that film!

January 1, 2011 - Something new..

Ch'i

Just kicking off the new year with something I put away many months ago - taking sketches and adding color in Photoshop. I had a lot of fun this morning playing around...here is Ch'i or qi (氣), "life-force" in Chinese culture.

I don't know if I mentioned this before but I am a proud Chinese-American. I was born and raised in California and experienced a childhood of very American traditions but also Chinese traditions as well. Every weekend my family would travel up to San Francisco to enjoy dinners at my grandparents' houses. We'd feast on 7 to 9 courses of cantonese dishes, and celebrate birthdays and Chinese New Year's with special dishes, candy, and of course fireworks (bricks, they'd call them). Recently I've been taking my kids to Chinese school each Saturday to learn Mandarin. This is our third year and it's been h-a-r-d, that's for sure. What a tough language to learn! Anyway, our teacher, Lao-shi Chang, taught us how to do a little tai-chi, and though we only learned a little, I enjoyed the idea of moving a ball of energy smoothly, consciously and focused to bring balance and stability. I studied a few years of Aikido as well and it brought back many good memories of the peace that I felt practicing the art. Here's to balance and calm in the new year!