Break Time is Now OVER!

Not that I’ve actually taken a break in life, but the blog break is officially over. These past couple of months have been busy with work, household chores, the book, family and friends. In other words, LIFE!


My finger is doing better, but I have a feeling it will never fully recover. I have limited strength and an ever-present “pop” every time I bend it. So, I guess I just need to put on my big girl panties and move on!

My jewelry wardrobe continues to grow, as I “experiment” with the whole jewelry-making process. My sister gave me a jewelry making book for Christmas and a charm bracelet book for my Birthday. All my husband has to say about it is, “Oh No!”

Last month I had the pleasure of organizing a bridal shower with a friend, for a friend. It was a small, intimate affair, and so instead of a cake we had cupcakes. I made them, and wouldn’t you know, it led me in another direction. Cake Decorating Classes! In my attempt to make something “pretty” for the shower, I realized I hadn’t the skill to create what I wanted, so I did my best

and signed up for the Wilton Cake Decorating class at my local Michael’s store. You can be sure I will now include cake decorating as a topic for future posts.

Work on the book continues.

Zoe's PawPrintArt will be expanded to include paintings painted with a paw print paintbrush the I made in Corel Painter.  The paintbrush was created using an image of Zoe's paw and will be used to paint entire paintings.  It's kind of a strange concept, I know, but here is a very fast, very rough painting that I painted so you could see what I'm talking about.  It is a Celtic Knot, done in celebration of St. Patrick's Day.

If you look closely, you will see that every bit of this painting was painted using Zoe's PawPrintArt paintbrush that I created in Painter! 

Well, I guess that's the past couple of months in a nut shell.  I'll be back with regular postings about art, jewelery making, cake decorating, the book, and whatever else I can share with you.

Today's Quote:  "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."  ~James Dean

What's on My Easel...

With the Tribute to Francis painting completed, I decided to try my hand at an animal portrait, of sorts. This drawing is from a photograph I took in the Cal Poly Canyon. The painting is being painted in Corel Painter XI, using the Artists/Impressionist brushes for the underpainting, and Pastel brushes to finalize. The painting will be called, "A Little Bit Country".

Step 1 - the drawing...
Step 2 - underpainting (Artist/Impressionist brushes) and beginning detail on the cow...

Step 3 - work out the colors and detail using Pastel brushes...

From the Jewelry Box...

The jewelry box is filling up fast -- following are a few of the latest designs...

Cover to Cover...

Work on the book continues. The text is divided among the pages and I am working on rough draft sketches. I've been drawing the sketches into a sketchbook in random order and at this point they are just "gist" sketches. I now need to scan them and add them to the text pages to see how they look. Once I have a visual, I can see what sketches need to be "revised" to ensure that some images take up the whole page, some cover a spread of 2 pages, some have a margin around them, some are toned differently, etc. -- in other words, to ensure that they are not all the same. We want to make sure that each page is different and catches the reader by surprise.

Today's Quote...

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art." ~ Oscar Wilde

A Tribute to Francis...painting completed!

What's on my Easel...

Let's start at the very beginning... I met Francis one year at my friend and mentor, Deb Festa's Open Studio Art Tour. Francis was out in Deb's courtyard, greeting everyone and making them feel welcome. I didn't know Francis well, but I know that he was a warm, generous man with a huge heart. Over time, I got to know him better, as Deb would share with me about her Dad. Francis was a very creative man -- he was a photographer, writer, gardener, and he loved making and improving upon things.

Francis is no longer with us on this earth, but his memory lives on today in a single flower -- an iris. Francis evidently had a love for irises, because he had a huge iris garden. After his death, his daughter Deb, dug up some of the irises from his home, and brough them to her home to plant. Deb in her typical generous way, shared some of the irises with my husband and I, and we planted a special iris garden in the front of our home. When the first iris bloomed, it was a beauty. It's funny how a simple flower can spark so much thought and emotion, but it did and I was prompted to paint a special tribute to Francis. I'm thankful for my friend Deb, for her open arms and open heart. I'm thankful for Deb's family -- they truly are an amazing family, and I'm thankful for Deb's Dad, Francis. I think of him and I feel lifted up. He lived fully, encouraged much and was so very warm and kind. This painting is my tribute to Francis...

It was painted on the computer using Corel Painter 11 and a Wacom tablet, following traditional painting methods. the painting started with a line drawing, followed by basic color choices for the finished painting...

Once I had the basic design and color choices made, I started on the background -- yellow, to allow a nice glow to the finished piece, followed by some random squiggles...

I then blended the squiggles, added more color, and blended again to make it look like undefined flowers and leaves in the background...

Then, I started sketching out and detailing the leaves...

The next step was to block in the yellow iris and start detailing it out...

With the yellow iris in, I then blocked in the purple iris and started adding details...

With the background, leaves, yellow and purple irises painted, it was now time to tie it all together. I added some yellow to the purple iris, some purple to the yellow iris, color to the leaves where needed, and darkened the background just below the irises (to ground them).

The completed painting follows:

Memorial paintings are quite an honor to paint, and it was certainly an honor to know Francis and paint this tribute to him.

From the Jewelry Box...

I had fun making this pair of earrings for Samantha, in honor of her 30th Birthday. I needed something special to package her earrings and painted this earring card with watercolor paints on 140# Arches watercolor paper, outlined the painting with a black waterproof marker, then punched two holes to hang the earrings. Happy 30th Samantha!

©2009 Deborah Jeffrey

Today's Quote...

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." ~ Anne Dillard

It's Tuesday -- Time for Another Update...

The U.S. celebrated Labor Day yesterday. I enjoyed the holiday and tried to labor as little as possible = )

Over the holiday weekend, I set up my new computer. Yes, I am one of "those" graphic designers who uses a PC and not a MAC. I purchased a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop with a high-def. screen, extra memory and a beefier processing system. It is powerful, fast, and is managing my software programs (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign; Corel Painter II, etc.) quite well. I enjoyed setting it up and my first painting session leads to...

What's on my Easel...

The Tribute to Francis painting is coming along. I now have all of the primary color in and will now start to refine and work towards completion. Deb Festa, you will have your painting before the month is over!


From the Jewelry Box...
My new toy (computer) took all of my free time, so there is nothing new in the jewelry box for today. My husband's niece, Kim, is getting married Saturday, so I'm certain I'll be creating something new to wear to her wedding!

Cover to Cover...
The book is progressing nicely. I met with the author yesterday and we are in the process of deciding on a printer, (there are a few more questions that need clarification before we can make the final decision). We have decided a few things, though: the page size will be 8-1/2" x 11", the format will be landscape (wide), and the illustrations will be drawn and painted on the computer on watercolor textured paper.

The next step is to contact the printers and obtain their layout specifications. Once I have that information we can finalize the overall content of each page and I can start laying out the book and roughing out the illustrations -- yea!

Quote for the day...
"What we learn to do, we learn by doing." ~ Aristotle

Cover to Cover

Happy Tuesday to you! I am very excited about today’s posting because I get to tell you about a project that has been on the backburner for a little while now, but it is now something I can share…to a degree. I will be illustrating and formatting a children’s book!

The author is local and this is her first book. The book will be a self-published, 32-page, hardcover, children’s picture book.

Since this is the first book that the author has published, we have been learning about publishing together. Because this is a totally new endeavor for me, I thought I would share the research and process involved in illustrating, laying-out, and publishing a children’s picture book… Starting with my next posting = )

At this time, I would like to thank the individuals who have offered great advice on how to approach this project. Deb Festa, for introducing me to the author of the manuscript, Fay Sirkis, for teaching me how to paint digitally, and for sharing your layout, design and illustration experience; Susan Harrison-Tustain, for teaching me how to paint watercolor portraits and for the advice about how to approach the project and publishing; Karen Sperling, for your advice about self-publishing; Stephanie Roth Sisson, for your advice about illustrating books and publishers; David, Mom and Dad, for your unconditional love and support – THANK YOU!

And now, What’s on my easel…

I have completed the dog portrait. I mentioned before that it ended up being a digital portrait, but I printed it out onto Arches 100% cotton rag watercolor paper and added watercolor paint to it. It is the first time I have attempted this, and I must say, I like it! It added that special touch that makes this a one of a kind portrait!

The Tribute to Francis painting is coming right along. The yellow flower is there, but still needs refinement and finishing touches – these will be done AFTER the purple flower is completed. The purple Iris is started and here are a couple of photos showing the progression…



From the Jewelry Box…

In my last post I mentioned a necklace idea that was inhabiting my brain. Well I must confess, the picture in my brain is not at all how the necklace turned out. I don’t have a photo of it (in it’s current state), but suffice it to say that it WILL be remade!

So as not to leave you wondering if I accomplished anything in the jewelry-making area, I did throw together a pair of black and white earrings to go with another black and white outfit.



I’m not thrilled with the design, but as Thomas Edison once said…

Quote of the day…
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~Thomas Edison

Morro Bay Collage Update

You probably thought that I had forgotten about the Morro Bay Collage. Well, I just had several projects that captured my attention, but you'll be happy to know that they are now behind me. I was able to spend some time this weekend working on the Morro Bay Collage.

As I examined the painting, I felt like it was just too blue, so I changed the sky color once again and added some of the colors from the sky to make the painting more cohesive. I'm posting the previous version and the current version so you can compare.

Previous version

Current Version

My goal is to complete this painting this week and get the complimentary Morro Bay Collage cards to those of you who voted for the "light" sky previously.

Oh, I just remembered. I harped on the benefits of painting digitally, but found one "little" problem with the whole thing. As I worked on the painting this weekend I painted, touched up, refined, etc. and then lost all of my work -- you see, I forgot just how important the "SAVE" key is when working digitally. Oh well, lesson learned!

Creative Challenge #14

For the last week I’ve been away from my computer, email and painting…well watercolor and digital painting anyway…

My parents went away on vacation and while they were gone, my sister, husband and I did a mini makeover in their home. My husband installed crown molding in their living and dining rooms and we painted the walls taupe, the ceiling off white, and the trim and moldings white. It was a fun project and my parents returned yesterday to find their home not as they left it…. There were a few casualties – I broke their drapery rod, ruined a rug, and broke a blind, but other than that, they were grateful = )

So, I’m back home and thinking that I need to paint…but what? I have so many projects started and I know I need to work on them, but I just received my latest copy of Corel Painter Magazine and there is a challenge posted. There are a number of images and the challenge is to take one or more of the images and make a digital painting. As soon as I saw the images an idea for a painting popped into my head – I’m not sure if it is a good one, but it is an idea nonetheless and now I am working on a challenge painting.

The images I have chosen to incorporate into the painting are:



From the above images, I have created this preliminary image…





and have painted it a bit to develop this painting…so far anyway. What do you think? It is not my “style” at all, but definitely something to stretch me.



Life provides a series of opportunities to learn and grow – I hope I never tire of being willing to try something new.

Your Opinion Matters

Work continues on the Morro Bay Collage, but I need your help. I am playing with two sky colors and would like to know which you prefer -- the light sky or the dark sky?

I want you to know that I value your feedback, and the first three people who provide me with their input will receive a FREE Morro Bay Collage card (once the artwork is completed of course.)

As always, thank you for your continued support!

Deborah