I actually made a piece this month. Considering I gave birth last month and haven't had a full nights sleep since well before then, I think I get a prize just for having something to post.

(Also, those who think she ought to be doing more things with her arms are missing the ENTIRE POINT. Just sayin'.

A few of my favorites...

Freshwater mermaids are often ignored in favor of their flashier saltwater cousins. This may be due to their more subtle methods of driving unwanted humans from their territory. For example, rather than luring sailors to their deaths and other such drama, trout-maids are spunky tricksters with a sense of humor.

And if you’re thinking this doesn’t look anything like my style....you’re right. I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone this month. I have a new iPad, so I’ve been playing around with Procreate.... I’m having a lot of fun but it is SO not my thing! But I’m calling it done now because we’re heading out on vacation for all of next week and I don’t want to forget to post. So this was an enjoyable experiment but I will be heading right back to my comfort zone for awhile after this.... hooray for vectors and flat colors!

A quick sketch that I ended up liking so much I had to finish it.

Here are a few recent pieces I'm proud of:

Since I'm not above double double-dipping, here is another of my Howl's Moving Castle images that happens to relate very well to the topic.

I'd love a critique on this one:

Feel free to use my name and website.

EDIT:
Honestly my initial concept was just "Wouldn't riding a giant tortoise be AWESOME?"

But there are a number of directions I could have taken it. For example, I could have had the guy on him look incredibly bored or impatient and have other types of creatures streaking past. I think the concept I wanted to go for here beyond the initial COOL GIANT TORTOISE TRANSPORT thing was sort of "Joy in the Journey" (cliche as that sounds.) Rather than having your transportation be the sleekest, fastest, newest thing, why not have something that forces you to take your time? Why not get reading done while you're out running errands, when you can casually glance up between page turns to see if you need to steer in the next minute or two?

I hope I'm making sense, and that that even counts as a concept ;-). I'm looking forward to seeing the critiques, whatever images you choose.

I'll toss my work in the ring ;-).

This is still kind of a work in progress as I'm still looking to get and apply feedback for this piece ([https://forum.svslearn.com/topic/6723/feedback-for-thumbnail-sketches-for-howl-s-moving-castle-contest/9](link url)) BUT I thought I might as well post it here, as it definitely qualifies as my "Slowvember" project. And of course it is actually aimed at another competition altogether, but I'm not above double-dipping

I recently finished this Rockwell master copy. It was a fun project, it definitely pushed me. I'm not super comfortable in Photoshop (I love Illustrator), so it really helped me to get in the program and really use it to make a finished picture for the first time in a long time.

You can see it by the reference photo here: http://www.sarahluann.com/blog/new-hardware-and-a-master-copy

I wanted my process for this to imitate oil painting as closely as possible. So, no layers--everything was done on the base canvas layer.

Also, I did not do any color picking from my reference picture, I only picked colors I had already laid down on my own copy. My thinking was that my canvas could represent the “palette” of colors that I had already mixed, while the reference photo was just that--my reference. This was also just a good exercise in color matching using the Photoshop color tools, which I am NOT perfect at, so you will notice some color differences between the two if you look on my blog.

Third, I used brushes with over 70% opacity for the initial 70% of the painting, and then used less opaque brushes or blending tools later. To me, this was like laying down paints on a blank canvas to start, and then painting into wet paints later in the process.

I also did not zoom in for the first 70% or so of the painting. This is kind of an indirect correlation, but to me this was like using big brushes to get in the main details in the beginning, and only moving on to smaller brushes to get the little details in the end.

Lastly, I tried to match the textures as well as I could, but since I’m relatively inexperienced in Photoshop there was a lot of learning and experimenting with the brushes to try and achieve this, and I still have a lot of work to do there. This is what I felt was least successful in my piece.

Textures and colors were my big struggles, and drawing accuracy is always something to work on.

I started this on Saturday and have spent at least a couple hours on it every day (except Sunday) since then. It isn't perfect but I've spent many hours starting at it, and I think I learned what I wanted to learn from doing the project, so I'm calling it done.

@lmrush I do use inprnt for print on demand, but for doing shows/cons I’m sure there are places to get a larger order for a better price.

Hopping in on this thread to ask, what online printers have people used and liked? I’ve had a local printer print my stuff in the past and they’ve done Ok but I didn’t love what I got, so I'm looking to try other printing options further from home. For me, somewhere in the US would be nice just to avoid international shipping.

Way to keep your quarter, Lee

Freshwater mermaids are often ignored in favor of their flashier saltwater cousins. This may be due to their more subtle methods of driving unwanted humans from their territory. For example, rather than luring sailors to their deaths and other such drama, trout-maids are spunky tricksters with a sense of humor.

And if you’re thinking this doesn’t look anything like my style....you’re right. I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone this month. I have a new iPad, so I’ve been playing around with Procreate.... I’m having a lot of fun but it is SO not my thing! But I’m calling it done now because we’re heading out on vacation for all of next week and I don’t want to forget to post. So this was an enjoyable experiment but I will be heading right back to my comfort zone for awhile after this.... hooray for vectors and flat colors!

Hello again friend! Nice to see your font again. I hope you find a way to take care of yourself... your hands/wrists/etc, and your creative self! Welcome back.

@Kevin-Longueil Ok, I clicked edit, groups, svsog... I don't see save changes though. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

ETA: I figured it out! Thanks for your help

@Chip-Valecek so pro is only for book publishing? To make it clearer what I'm asking about, here are a few of the designs I was paid to produce:
https://shop.cricut.com/en_us/3d-floral-home-d-eacutecor-digital-set.html
https://shop.cricut.com/en_us/holiday-snowflakes-digital-set.html
https://shop.cricut.com/en_us/holly-and-ivy-digital-set.html

They're more in the realm of licensing rather than publishing. So I guess my question is, does "pro" refer to book work only, or other applications of art and illustration?

I've been around since before 2017 though only intermittently active depending on what is going on in my life at any given time.

And I don't know if having done work for Cricut counts as "published".... are we just talking about book publishing, or paid illustration work in general?

It reads as a snowboard to me, but I don't know if thats because I read the title of your post first and had that in my head when looking at the piece.

@Adrian-K Thanks Adrian! Yours is beautiful as well. Happy to see a fellow DnD player ;-). Your piece reminds me of a friend's webcomic, Dungeons and Doggos. Have you read it? https://dndoggos.com/

I feel like the concept of Values was really driven home for me in the Creative Composition course. (Thats what it's called, right?)