Customize this birthday card with name and age! - and some news about upcoming projects

Happy Birthday cat cake stars pink green yellow Holiday Card
by MelskyArt

On this card, people can add the age and name of the birthday person via a template. This is very easy to do, even on a cell phone, because it is entering text into a field instead of having to click and edit text. 

This card is me going outside my comfort zone as far as color. Though I might naturally use any one of these colors, they are not a combination I would think to use. I selected them because I thought they would look cheerful together, and they do.

I've been doing some planning about how to schedule releases. There will be seasonal collections coming out on a regular schedule. This is still in the planning stage, but I anticipate that the first one will be Fall/Halloween 2020 coming out in early September.

Seasonal collections give me something to work towards. Years ago when I sold original paintings on Ebay, I had a small mailing list of people, and every November I would release a lot of smaller paintings and handmade gifts all at one and let people know.  I'll be setting up a mailing list soon that will come out once or twice a year.

I'll write more about what is coming up in this blog.

After the holiday is over, the seasonal collection will close until being revamped for the next year.

This house belongs to Luna

humorous gray cat art sign black blue
by MelskyArt

Luna is one of my cats. She and her mother are terrible. They are always hungry and lying about being fed. They are very assertive around food and I usually put them out of the room. They are also two of the best cats ever so I don't mind.

Oliver the cat

Oliver the Cat faux canvas sunflower painting art
by MelskyArt

I decided to make paintings that are portraits of cats I have known. This cat is named Oliver. People can also add their own cat's name. It's kind of weird doing customizable digital paintings where you can change the images around and add text. When I sold art before, even though I was selling it on the internet it was mostly just original paintings. I prefer selling art like this so I can keep coming up with new designs and not have to paint the same thing over and over again.

Developing a Design Workflow and Schedule

One of the most important things in running a store is to keep it constantly updated with new merchandise and activity.  This was true when running and offline store, and especially true online. When new items are added, it 

There are other things to be done daily as well. I write down ideas and sketches for new designs and post in my blog as much a

s possible.

I also have to be careful because making art is not physically active. I've enjoyed a lot of success with my art in the last several months, but it lost its glow a little bit when I discovered I couldn't fit into some of my summer clothing.

So an important part of my planning is to put the time in for taking a daily walk and planning household projects to give me some exercise. I'm setting a timer to remind myself to get up and walk around.

I lost a lot of weight and got in much better health in the last couple of years, and I don't want to lose that progress.

My routine is to get up very early in the morning and work on creating new designs first, and then on uploading them and filling out the information. Then when it becomes light I go on my walk.

That is my ideal routine anyway! I do it a lot of the time.

Today I made this black cat card:

Black cat red feed me card

by MelskyArt

and also put it on a clock:

Time To Feed Me Cat Clock
by MelskyArt

Cat Fish City Before and After

I finished this one today, painting it with watercolor and then outlining in black ink. I think it turned out pretty well. Pastel colored paintings like this don't show up as well online as the bright colored ones.

House of Happy Cats painting

This is a recent painting, I just finished it last week! It is watercolor, acrylic and ink.

The reason it has acrylic is that I made a mistake. I started painting sky where the house was supposed to be. So I painted over it with acrylic. The rest of the painting is watercolor and ink.

Tiger Lily Kitten

Here's another recent painting. This is watercolor and ink. I started by drawing on watercolor paper, then painted it in with watercolor. Then I did the background of the sky with permanent ink marker. That was a long process. I should have made it a bit less detailed but once I start a background I usually will just do the whole thing in the same way. Then I used a permanent ink marker to do the outlining.

I've noticed that a lot of my paintings feature orange cats, goldfish and tiger lilies but I don't think I have a painting with all three of them. I'll have to do one.

Sleepy Spiral Cat before and after

It's amazing how much it changes after the watercolor and ink additions. I used acrylic paint for the moon and stars, and then outlined with ink.

Another Cat Painting and a Defense of Coloring Books

Here is another new old painting! It's probably four months old.

This is one I did when I first got my watercolor crayons and colored pencils. I was experimenting with the new media.

I have a couple of different techniques and styles of painting. This is one of my standard ones. I draw an outline with pencil, then color it in. Then I add details.

I have not thought about this for a long time, but when I was a child I used to really like coloring books, crayons and watercolors. I liked having outlines and coloring them in and experimenting with different color combinations. I think doing that a lot helped me as an artist.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I also had those paint by water books - where you would have a picture that was colored in by all these dots, and when you applied water with a brush it would turn into watercolor paint. I loved these!

I have heard from a couple of places that coloring books are bad for children and they stifle creativity. I don't think that's true - for me they helped me learn the use of color and how to use a brush. I learned how to stay in the lines! You don't have to always stay in the lines but it's good to be able to do it when you want to. They taught me the skills I needed to do my own art.

Watercolor Crayon Paintings in Progress

These look awful! But they will be good paintings once I complete a few more steps.

I start these by drawing a basic sketch on watercolor paper. Then I draw patterns and some details with colored pencils. Next I take the watercolor crayons and put some color and shading in.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the next step of using watercolor on top of these. That will make all the crayon parts turn into watercolor. I could just use water but I like to experiment with just a little more color. I may put in some metallic detail with acrylic paint, and then ink the outlines in.

I like this technique because I can do the first part in my home office at my desk. There's no water to spill! I will do the rest of it in my studio upstairs where the cats are not allowed.

It's also really fun to get the paintings to this stage and then see what happens to them when the water is applied. It feels magical.

1 year ago

I was putting this up as one of my new paintings - well, new since I started updating this blog a lot. I was surprised when I looked at the date. It was painted on August 23, 2010.

This is watercolor and ink on watercolor paper, with acrylic paint highlights. It was painted for an online auction for a cat shelter.