Travel Art

Two Little Fairies

Hallo World! These overzealous girls love a dress-up party. When the animal abuse stops, will justice be served? Run girls, run!! That cat has murder in his eyes. Anyway, this painting is for sale in my store. Maybe you'll invite these three characters into your home?

Details:

Christmas Pinup!

Hi :) I painted this for a how-to book that I'm writing, "Pretty, Sexy, Cute!" I hope you like it :) I'm also selling the original in my store. Maybe get some holiday cash out of it.

 Here's more detail:

Enjoy!
Until next time,
Tiffanny

Walnut Creek

Penny and the Pig's Tale

Hello there, blog readers! My blog has been dead for a while. I've been busy illustrating this cute little tale written by Joel Clauberg. It will be published soon! I will give follow up details. Until then, I've been given permission to show my favorite pages. I hope you like it!

Watercolor Commission

Foxes, Tigers, Monkeys, Iguanas and Pigs

Zoo today.

Until next post!
Tiffanny

Sketches of Olive

Here are some sketches of my friend Luke's dog

Im so busy. Full time job + freelance children's book illustrations + potty training my new puppy. I'll post more drawings once I come up for air

Until next time!
Tiffanny

My Brown Eyed Girl

Meet my new dog! I love her so much. We already have a song! Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison

Hey, where did we go 
Days when the rains came? 
Down in the hollow 
Playin' a new game
Laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey 
Skippin' and a-jumpin' 
In the misty mornin' fog  
With our, our hearts a-thumpin'
And you, my brown eyed girl  
You my brown eyed girl

 Arrow and Me!

 

Mermaid drawing demo

Here's a mermaid I drew last night. I filmed myself drawing it, you can click here to watch me draw!

My Favorite Word

I took 2 old pieces of mat board, sheets of old packing paper, dental floss, elastic and hemp and turned it into a nice Coptic-bound sketchbook.

 Here's a closeup of the Coptic binding, with criss crossing to help tighten the binding, which if done by hand tends to be loose. I couldn't pull too tightly because packing paper is somewhat delicate.

 Coptic binding allows your pages to lay completely flat, which makes it nice for sketching. That's my cat Poco.

My cat friendly woke me up this morning. I think he misses me.

On the cover of my sketchbook I wrote the word "Endurance"

Endurance is my favorite word in the English language. With regards to sports, it means pushing through physical pain and continuing on. YOUR BODY IS A WIMP. It ALWAYS wants to give up, and endurance is your mind telling it to continue. With regards to life, WE ARE ALSO WIMPS. We have goals we want to attain, but we have a thousand reasons to not go for it. Too old. Not enough time. Not enough money. Too lazy. Too scared. Do it anyway. Endure the hardships. Find away around obstacles. Complacency makes you normal, but endurance is what makes you great.

Using exercise as a metaphor again, working out isn't fun. Go anyway. Endure. It's the people who go anyway even when they don't like it, that can keep themselves fit, hot, healthy, focused and a cut above. That's life too. Sometimes you're down - you don't want to do what it takes - do it anyway. Endure. With art, with love, with life, with exercise, with cancer, with AIDS, without your arm, eyes, with your significant other or without, with all, endure.

Drawings coming soon,
Tiffanny

RIP - Ramses

This is Ramses (bottom cat) joining my other two that I lost a while ago.

The last week was really hard for me, I had to take my cat to the vet and have him put to sleep. His name was Ramses but we called him Psycho, for when he was a young man he was very naughty. Psycho passing seems very strange and eerie. This was a cat who was around when I was a sophomore in high school. He's seen me graduate high school, was there to comfort me through my first breakup, then a second, and then some more. He was there when I graduated college. He's been with me through my first job, my marriage, my first house, several moves, to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and then Texas. He's always been around and now he's gone.

I sometimes wish that great love was enough to keep us together. If only all I needed to do was hold him tighter, tell him enough times that I love him, that that would be enough to keep him from disappearing from my life forever. But love, powerful though it may be, is still a glue that loses it's hold over time. Togetherness doesn't last forever, and it never will. It's the nature of things. (I define togetherness of course in the physical realm. Being together "in our hearts" is a poor substitute for the real deal and doesn't even deserve comparison. The ability to get lost in a snuggles and kisses is the thing I will miss the most.)

So grab your kitteh and hold them tight. Savor the togetherness while you can!

Goodbye Ramses! I'll always be in love with you!

Tiffanny

The arrow and the wind

My dreams:

1) To be a part of something greater than myself - to be a part of something big that I can't do on my own. To work with a team of people I care about to accomplish something together, and in the end relish and savor the victory of success.

2) The slight opposite of my first dream, I want to succeed as an artist in my own right, without being part of a team. To have my art be its own identity. To have people say, OH that's a Tiffanny drawing! I like her style! To be a master at drawing so that I can freely express myself, like I can with speaking or writing.

3) To have my art say something meaningful to the world - For someone to be touched by the message of whatever I have to say, whether it's a laugh or a cry, or a sigh. For images to mean something, rather than just "This is a cute girl, This is a good concept drawing of a unicorn, or monkey" I want people to be struck emotionally, in some way, like, "OMG that's so funny!" or, "I cried when the same thing happened to me"

In the last few years, so many personal battles have allowed me to lose sight of my life goals. I'm reiterating it right now, for clarity's sake. I will be an arrow, pointed at these goals, and I will hit every one of them. Life is too short to meander along.

Some people are wind.

The wind is only your friend when it is behind you. Otherwise it is either pushing you down, pushing you back, pushing you sideways, and throwing things at you. People like this cannot be in your life, if you are to hit your mark perfectly. Some dreams are hard enough without people like this around.

Dreams can be very very fragile. Few people have dreams anymore because they get abandoned so easily. Giving up is so very easy. Inaction is far easier than action. Looking around me, meeting so many people, I've heard it so many times people saying "I always wanted to ____ but it seemed too hard so I became ____  instead". I hear people say, "As much as I want ____ my heart isn't in it anymore". Your dreams are worth protecting and fighting for. Fight for the people you love, fight for the career you want, fight for the recognition, the money, the car? You want a hot body? whatever. In that movie, Pursuit of Happyness, the character Chris Gardner says to his son "You want it? go get it, period."

I have been in such bad shape lately. I used to be the girl who hit my goals no matter what. I exercised 6 days a week without fail (for 10 years, no matter how busy I got), I worked on my art daily. I exercised my dog regularly. I fed my brain with books. But just yesterday, I started wondering about what the point of life is. Why I work so hard to find myself feeling so alone and sad. I cried until I had nothing left, I was so depressed. That's not me. How have I become this way? I have lost sight of the big picture. The big three goals I've always had that I've been chasing. I got lazy and I lost sight of it. I can see it again, and I'm going to go get it, period.

My New Year's Resolution

Roald Dahl once said,

that "if you have good thoughts..."

"...they will shine out of your face like sunbeams..."

"...and you will always look lovely."

I think it's a good goal for me to be less sad and more happy in 2013. That's my resolution.

Here's some details and sketches: