Hello SVS community! Here is my Yeti cooking for February!
I just finished my first SVS course "Creative Composition". Such a great course & I really took to heart the emphasis on planning and sketching out concepts in advance. I know that seems obvious, but I've always been a 'just start drawing and see what happens' kind of artist (I'm learning now that illustration requires so much more) it was a huge challenge for me to design and really think about the concept for this one, I hope you guys like it. Good luck everyone, I love seeing all your work!!!

Hi Everyone!!! It's so awesome to see what you all have been working on so I figured I'd share a piece I made this weekend. I've been going back and forth between watercolor and digital painting, so yesterday I decided I would try combining the two. I used the watercolor like an under painting and then added the digital painting on top. Overall I think I'm happy with the effect of the layering but I'm definitely going to explore more to see if I can capture a bit more of the watercolor feel.

Here is the watercolor underpainting and the final version with the digital painting.

Hi Everyone! My name is Tiffany, I just joined SVS last week, I'm super excited to participate in this challenge & looking forward to getting to know this awesome community!

I imagine my Yeti is a well traveled, successful B&B owner with a profound love of the greatest utensil to ever be designed...the spork.

@carlianne I do a bunch of different things for my company but I'd say my primary job is curating and designing art for hotels. I am still dealing with designers, art directors and timelines but I'm less emotionally invested since the purpose of the art is to design for a specific location. It's challenging at times, depending on the project & how many revisions are needed, but I really enjoy the variety. Sometimes I'm collaging photography in photoshop, sometimes I'm painting abstracts or ocean scenes, etc. I think what I enjoy the most is how much I learn from each project, it could be experimenting with new art material to try and get the right effect or just simple things like exploring color or composition. I've also learned so much about curation, design, sequencing images, merchandising, marketing, branding (haha, I still need to learn how best to apply this knowledge to my own work).

@Melissa-Bailey-0 Yes! I think there is so much potential for exploration here. I've noticed my style changes a bit when I only draw digitally and there is just something fun and unexpected that happens when you use mediums that are a bit unpredictable (such as watercolor). My background is fine art so I'm used to letting the mediums do a bit of their own thing as part of my process. On the other hand I love the control I have with digital, I can re-size, recolor, layer and move things around if needed, but I'm a bit of an over renderer so I think trying to find balance between the two will be good for me. Are you drawing in Photoshop after you scan your watercolor images?

@LisaF Hi Lisa, just checking in to see if this is still scheduled for tomorrow? I'm new so I'm not sure how everything works yet and I'd like to make it if possible.

@carlianne I love this question and it's so cool to read everyones different experiences. For me making art is the way I process and understand the world. There have been so many things in my life that the ability to create has gotten my through. I really feel so fortunate every day that this is the path I chose, my world is colorful and full of magic because of it.

I understand your feeling of being "lost or torn between all the avenues available", I think we all cycle through that at different points when we decide this is what we want to do with our lives. I spent many years exploring different avenues: I showed work in galleries, I owned a gallery, I did the craft fair tour for a few years (haha, too many things to list) and through all those avenues I learned that, for me, I didn't enjoy being dependent on selling art as my primary source of income. I've been lucky enough to find jobs working for art companies and through these jobs I have learned so much, even been paid to learn skills that have improved me as an artist. Now I'm here with all you wonderful people, my daughter is grown, I have a job that I enjoy, so I can spend my evenings and weekends exploring and simply making what I want because I want to. I always crave more time to work on art, but I think this makes me work harder and really appreciate the time I do have.

I guess at the end of the day all we can do is pick a direction and go, there's no right or wrong and if we don't like it we can take what we've learned and try something new.

Thank you for starting this discussion, it's always good to reflect and I'm really enjoying everyone's responses.

Yes!!!! I'm in the same boat as you, missed the first Yeti project, learned from the home and started re-working and playing catch up. Thanks for creating this thread, I'll definitely post mine here once I get them done ;).

@Melissa-Bailey-0 Awww, thank you so much! I really appreciate the encouragement. I've been moving towards illustration for the past 7 years or so, starting with copic markers and micron pens and evolving into digital & watercolor. I have a degree in painting and drawing but was never taught all the principals of illustration, so I've been a bit unsure of my progress over the past few years. SVS has been an amazing discovery for me!!! This community and the classes are so awesome!

I have an ipad as well and a similar process. Haha, I guess it is pretty complicated when you actually write it out step by step. I have not tried designing first digitally then printing the sketch on watercolor paper. I'll make that a project for this coming weekend! I recently got a Cintiq and I've been exploring Photoshop drawing but, in my opinion, nothing compares with drawing in Procreate on my ipad.

How about Beatrice Alemanga (http://www.beatricealemagna.com/) or Laura Carlin (http://www.lauracarlin.com/) I think both have such a beautiful mix of fine art elements such as abstraction and expressionism. It could also be the use of traditional mediums in there work which gives it this sortof textured, dreamlike elements that to me really enhance the emotional quality of the stories they are illustrating.

So when I was a kid, my favorite pictures were always the ones that had tons of detail. So my personal challenge this weekend was to make a picture that had a ton of detail but to use color to give it a focal point. I picked monsters singing because I completely love to draw monsters and I saw a picture of children singing in a choir and I was completely in love with all their expressions and thought it would be fun to do a monster version, lol. Here is the sketch and the final color version:

@Valerie-Light Love this! The focal point is definitely on the characters, nice work!

@Jeremiahbrown Thanks for letting me know! I will probably get some advice from you about your experience and Amazon listing, once I get to that point. We're still in the re-write phase so it might be a while, lol. I just ordered your book and I'll be sure to give my full review once I have received it (I'm pretty sure it will be awesome). Congratulations, seriously, you should be proud!!!

These are all pretty fantastic! Purely from a design perspective I LOVE #3, it's such an interesting perspective and it reminds me a bit of Talouse-Lautrec and some of his unique compositions. However, I think the design and perspective in #5 makes the White Witch look the most intimidating. First she is staring straight at the viewer, which is very confrontational and the POV is from a lower angle looking up at her which seems to imply she is above/greater than the viewer (which I'm assuming is the child shown in the other sketches). Love seeing your process here! Looking forward to seeing which you choose to develop.

@Matthew-Oberdier Brilliant!!!! This totally made me chuckle, love it!

@Braden-Hallett Haha, love this on so many levels!

@Whitney-Simms haha, some projects are definitely cooler than others. There are a bunch of artists and companies out there that specialize in hospitality art. It is a pretty cool job, I have yet to see my work in a hotel but when I'm researching for the project I get to learn a lot about the town/city the hotel is located in, so I get to let my imagination travel to all these different places. I highly recommend if you ever get the opportunity ;).

@carlianne I do a bunch of different things for my company but I'd say my primary job is curating and designing art for hotels. I am still dealing with designers, art directors and timelines but I'm less emotionally invested since the purpose of the art is to design for a specific location. It's challenging at times, depending on the project & how many revisions are needed, but I really enjoy the variety. Sometimes I'm collaging photography in photoshop, sometimes I'm painting abstracts or ocean scenes, etc. I think what I enjoy the most is how much I learn from each project, it could be experimenting with new art material to try and get the right effect or just simple things like exploring color or composition. I've also learned so much about curation, design, sequencing images, merchandising, marketing, branding (haha, I still need to learn how best to apply this knowledge to my own work).

@carlianne I love this question and it's so cool to read everyones different experiences. For me making art is the way I process and understand the world. There have been so many things in my life that the ability to create has gotten my through. I really feel so fortunate every day that this is the path I chose, my world is colorful and full of magic because of it.

I understand your feeling of being "lost or torn between all the avenues available", I think we all cycle through that at different points when we decide this is what we want to do with our lives. I spent many years exploring different avenues: I showed work in galleries, I owned a gallery, I did the craft fair tour for a few years (haha, too many things to list) and through all those avenues I learned that, for me, I didn't enjoy being dependent on selling art as my primary source of income. I've been lucky enough to find jobs working for art companies and through these jobs I have learned so much, even been paid to learn skills that have improved me as an artist. Now I'm here with all you wonderful people, my daughter is grown, I have a job that I enjoy, so I can spend my evenings and weekends exploring and simply making what I want because I want to. I always crave more time to work on art, but I think this makes me work harder and really appreciate the time I do have.

I guess at the end of the day all we can do is pick a direction and go, there's no right or wrong and if we don't like it we can take what we've learned and try something new.

Thank you for starting this discussion, it's always good to reflect and I'm really enjoying everyone's responses.

@Melissa-Bailey-0 The Three Point Perspective podcast was how I discovered SVS! It's so good!!! I used to stream Netflix shows in the background while I made art and now I just listen to the podcast, lol.

I'm going to definitely try out the printed sketch method, thanks for the tip, I'll let you know how it goes ;).