Blog

I am thrilled to announce that my entries for the 8th Annual Figurative Art Competition were honored with awards at the Light, Space & Time Gallery

Take a break from the Christmas rush, pour yourself a mug of hot cocoa and enjoy these animations I created featuring the Christmas and winter-themed digital artwork I have made into greeting cards in years past, as well as some seasonal quotations.

Read More

I'm really excited to have joined up with Tomball Art League (TAL) and went to my first meeting today. Since it's December, it took the form of a holiday painting party and gift exchange, plus everyone bought some snacks, so there was a wonderful spread of food.

Read more

After a summer spent undergoing multiple surgeries and extended periods of recuperation, I'm getting back into my art and my blogging!

Read more

I'm thrilled to announce that I have received an Award of Excellence and three Special Recognition Awards in the "18th Annual Collage, Digital & Mixed Media Juried Online International Art Exhibition.hosted by Upstream People Gallery of Omaha, Nebraska.

Read More:

This week's blog gives some background on the latest addition to my gallery, "Gentle Giant - A Horse at Work in the Forest.

Read more:

For my final blog post of 2015, I've gathered some thoughts about the ending of the old year and the coming of the new.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates. I hope you are having a wonderful day filled with family, friends, good food and good company.

In my blog post this week I am going to share my latest series of digital paintings, called "Picture Postcard Cottages," and tell you a little more about the cottages themselves, which date back to around 1600.

For my blog post this week, I thought I would share a sprinkling of inspirational quotes for artists, as well as some quotes about fall and autumn. I hope you enjoy them.

Being a digital artist, I have found that the quality of my work is not only influenced by my level of technical expertise with the software I am using, but also with the quality of the digital models available....

My husband and I love to visit San Antonio, and a couple of years ago we decided to visit the San Antonio missions. I really enjoyed the trip, enjoyed learning the history of the missions and took literally hundreds of photos. While I had some lovely photos when we got back, I never really did anything with them. They just sat on my back up drive, waiting. But recently I discovered a program called Impression by Topaz.

Read More

My husband and I met in an online chat room, back when they were all the rage, and maintained a long distance relationship for five years, before our wedding in 2007. "Here Without You" is one of my earlier digital artworks, created in DAZ 3D, created on a long night sitting at home alone listening to our special music on iTunes.

Read More

I'm originally from England and last year my husband decided to plan a cross country road trip for us. It really was the trip of a lifetime and we came home with a treasure chest of memories and hundreds of photographs.

Read more

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have recently got back into painting with soft pastels. After several years of no art in my life at all, and then a few years creating art digitally, it's been fun, interesting and therapeutic to put pastel to paper and see what I can create.

Read more

It's a cold, wet, dreary day in Texas. The sort of day to curl up on the sofa and read a book, or watch a movie!

It got me thinking about a 3D digital artwork I created some time ago called "Rainy Day at the Lake."

Read more

It's a chilly, drizzly, bleak day today. Not the sort of day we expect here in Texas in springtime. But while the garden is enjoying the rain, I revisit a digital artwork I did last year, featuring a field of our iconic Texas Bluebonnets.

I had fun trying out different textures and blending modes on a photograph I took at the RHS Gardens in Wisley, England.

On December 21st, I participated in the Fantasy Art Land Show at JoMar Visions in Houston. I really enjoyed the day, met some great artists and learned a lot that I can use at future shows.

Every year for 50 years the L.A. Municipal Gallery has held its "Open Call" exhibit where any artist can show up with their art and an entry fee (to benefit gallery programs) and the piece is shown. The Los Angeles Center For Digital Art decided to launch an international experiment of the same nature where the artists upload images that are printed and hung by the gallery.

I've always been an artsy, crafty type. Going back to when I was single and living at home with my parents, I loved painting, sewing and macrame etc. Even when I moved to the U.S., I enjoyed working with my hands and being creative.

Through circumstances beyond my control, I eventually ended up sharing my living space with a number of furry felines. And cats do kind of get into stuff...

Fall is my favorite season. I love fall colors, even though we really don't get much in the way of fall color here in Texas. It seems to me that the leaves stay green until they just drop off the trees here.

That could be why I enjoy creating artwork which features fall colors.

A couple of weeks ago I started working on a new artwork which I entitled "Country Lane in Fall".

What follows is a little detail about how I created it in Vue. I'll show you the actual image at the end of the post :-)

It was my birthday last week. We won't go in to details, like how old I am, but I wanted to give a shout out to my wonderful husband, Eric, who willingly parted with a hefty chunk of change to replace my three year old iMac with a new 27 inch iMac.

So I thought I'd give you a peek inside "Mockingbird Studio" and give you an idea of where I work on my art projects.

There are a number of online communities for digital artists: Deviant Art, Renderosity, Cornucopia 3D to name but three.

Each site has thousands of member artists, many of whom inspire others and give of themselves by creating tutorials for other artists, and also providing content, such as materials and backgrounds, for others to use in their own work.

This week, I thought I would share with you three of my favorite digital artists.

When Light, Space and Time Gallery announced their 3rd annual "Figurative" competition, I was hesitant to enter. I wasn't sure that anything in my portfolio would fit the criteria, but then I remembered "Dance with Me", which I did in 2010.

Throughout the years, many great people have given their thoughts on art, inspiration and creativity and these messages hold true even in this day and age.

Here are just a few quotes about art and artists that I hope you will enjoy and find inspiring.

A few years ago, I came upon the most delightful book at a lunch-hour book fair in the downtown Houston building I worked in. It's called "Fairyopolis, A Flower Fairies Journal."

My latest digital artwork was inspired by a recent trip to England, where we visited the lovely Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water.

Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter. Blessings to you and your families.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to create a 3D scene in Vue that I could use for Easter products. After struggling to get the exact scene I wanted all in Vue, I ended up doing a mixed media piece.

I started out by rendering a scene with a cluster of Easter eggs, nestled in some long grass and dandelions, with a background of tree-lined fields, and a nice hazy spring atmosphere.

I'm what is known as a "self taught" artist. That is to say I never attended art school, although I did take art to "0" level at school in England.

When I transitioned into digital media, I discovered that digital artists of all types are accustomed to honing and increasing their technical skills with whichever program they are working in using free online tutorials. These range from how-to essays with screen shots so you can see how to get a particular effect, to video tutorials.

This post is intended as a bit of a grumble, but I'm fully aware it may turn into a rant! The problem is time - or lack of it. I find myself struggling to find time to do all the things I would like to be doing. There just aren't enough hours in the day!

The whole experience of participating in my first art exhibition was very enjoyable.

Everyone I met, from Show Chair, Daniel Brent, to Suzanne Buckland, President of Artists Alive and Well, Patrick Palmer, the Juror for the exhibition, and all the other artists were so nice, friendly, down-to-earth and welcoming, I really felt at ease and the nervousness I had about meeting a group of strangers completely disappeared.

Having my work recognized with an Honorable Mention was more than I expected - you could have knocked me over with a feather!

This was originally posted to my blog on January 16th, 2013.

Today was a first for me. One of my artworks was accepted into a Juried Art Exhibition, sponsored by Artists Alive and Well, and today was the installation of the various pieces on the Upper Concourse at 1600 Smith Street, in Houston Texas...

I spent a lot of time over the Christmas season on 2007 listening to Jethro Tull's Christmas Album. It's still one of my favorites but then it was even more special as it had been the first Christmas gift Eric had bought for me, before we were married. Since he was travelling on business that Christmas (bummer) I listened to that album almost 24/7 as a way of keeping Eric near.

I really loved the cover art of that album. As I listened, I began to wonder if I could recreate the scene, or at least evoke the feel of it, in my newfound obsession, Bryce.

One of the difficult things I come up against when discussing my art is that many people have no concept of what 3D art is.

After all, the end result is a 2D image on a computer screen, or if you have it printed, on paper or canvas -- right?

This is the time of year when we start making plans for the coming year -- things that we want to start doing, such as being organized, remembering to blog on a regular basis, meeting with clients, work on our art, designs, garden -- whatever our passion.

What better way to help keep track of those plans than with a calendar.

Even though it's not even Halloween yet, my mind has moved on to Thanksgiving. (Kind of like in Hobby Lobby where the Halloween stuff gets puts out on the shelves while I'm still trying to find July 4th decorations, and the Christmas decorations are out already in September!)

I started out by creating a Thanksgiving card for my store at Greeting Card Universe. Then I added it to my Zazzle store too.

Well here we are in September already. It's hard to believe summer is officially over (this being Labor Day weekend and all). Looking back at my blog, I see I lagged a bit in August with only one post. I'll see what I can do about stepping it up a bit as we head into fall.

It will soon be time to break out the fall decorations for the house. I love decorating for fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving as much as I do for Christmas.