New Knotwork – Work In Progress

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Kristen

It can be lonely when you’re up to your ears in knotwork – measuring, making grids, breaking grids, sketching in the rough outline of the knots, making sure the over-under patterning is consistent, the erasing, making sure the eraser shrapnel doesn’t accumulate so much that you can’t find your pencil, etc. So I thought I’d share a quick macro shot of the latest work in progress (while at the same time not really revealing anything – hah!)

This is one of the larger overall pieces I’ve worked on. The dimensions of the piece of illustration board are 16″x20″ (cut from a larger sheet) and mostly what you see is the border knotwork for the main image. Or a corner of the border work.

I don’t know how long it will take to finish the sketching, but after that I have to ink all of the outlines, then erase all of the pencil underneath, then scan it into the computer, then….. yeah. That. So that’s my day’s snapshot – have a good weekend everyone!

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Turtle Necks – Happy Together

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Kristen

I caught our turtles, Penelope and Myrtle, catching a little sunny dry-time on their rock, sitting in the limited space in a cute way. Well, it looks cute to me – to them it was probably just the most expedient way for them both to have climbed up there… but let’s not ruin the illusion – hah!

For this photo, I liked the title ‘Turtle Necks’ because of the pun, of course, but John also thought of ‘Happy Together’ (and now I’ll have that song in my head all day – could be worse – LOL), for the double entendre of the band’s name. So, what can you do – I went with both.

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Shell Shock Watercolor Sketch

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Kristen

Just a quick watercolor sketch of a (stylized/loosely interpreted) nautilus shell, on watercolor paper – guess I was in a summer/beachy mode at the time:


As usual, click the image for a zoom or for prints. Thanks for looking! 🙂

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Poinsettia Power Retro Illustration

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Kristen

A number of years ago I bought a pack of 10 gel markers. When I started using them, I discovered that some of them worked very fluidly and some of them seemed to have dried up during their time waiting on the store shelf. Eventually I tossed out the ones that didn’t work, and decided to try to use up the ones that were left, on a sheet of cold press watercolor paper. What happened was this:

The colors that worked, worked really well, so I’d consider getting individual markers of this brand in the future, but I might not get an entire set again – we’ll see!

Click on the image to see a larger version or for framed/unframed prints. Thanks for looking!

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Leftover Winter & Leftover Winter Photos

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Kristen

Since it’s chilly and hailing out right now instead of warm and sunny, I thought I could get away with posting a couple more wintery photos that I hadn’t shared yet.

The first one is self explanatory – a nice, clean photo of three icicles hanging off our roof. I love how the middle one especially has a lot of irregularities and isn’t just carrot shaped:

The second one I called ‘Winter Sunrise Surprise’ because it was an amazing scene I woke up to that morning. If you look closely (click the image to go to imagekind.com and see the larger zoom!) you’ll see there’s a big coating of ice on the branches and hoards of tiny little icicles hanging down from each branch. The pink sky adds a unique touch to this shot too, in my opinion.


Hopefully from this point on the photos will be more in ‘spring’ mode, and so will the weather! 🙂

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