Watercolor Breakfast Table Mini Prints

I loved taking my watercolors to these cute mini prints!

They are now available for purchase in my online shop.

Lots of activity in my studio these days!  Follow me on Instagram @smallfoxpress

to keep up with my latest creative projects.

Pop Up Event Saturday, August 20th!

I've been gearing up for a pop up event tomorrow at Tin Top Handmade in Old Town Winchester. I'll be set up on the walking mall from 11:30 - 3pm, so if you're in the area, drop by and say hello! I'll have tons of prints, cards, framed and matted pieces, along with some other odds and ends, so there will be a lot to peruse!   

These teeny tiny matted mushrooms are my new favorite!

Also love these new hand-painted moths.

 Really excited to meet some new folks and share my work tomorrow!

Pen and Ink Florals

I recently bought a wonderful new fountain brush pen by Kuretake, and have found it's the perfect tool for inking flowers. 

I also picked up a fountain pen converter so I could fill the pen with a nice waterproof india ink and watercolor over my drawings.

I've got a long way to go before I master the brush pen, but I'm pretty pleased with these early experiments!

Thanks for coming by! 

Sketch Therapy

Birds keep popping up in my sketchbook these days.

I don't usually do much with text, but had a lot of fun with this. 

No, that's not real hand lettering. It's a drawing based on a typeface called Bakery that I filled in with watercolor. Maybe one day I'll take the time to learn how to write pretty words for real. For now, I'm satisfied to fake it.

Rainy Saturday Morning

Just me and my sketchbook.

Travel Sketches

Finally home after two weeks of travel! I took a new Moleskine watercolor journal with me to Guadeloupe and Florida, and am happy to report that it got quite a bit of use. It's neat to see the style and quality of the drawings morph and improve, even after just a few weeks of experimenting with different tools and techniques.

Here are a few pages for you to peruse. I hope they inspire you to keep a travel journal or sketchbook of your own!

The first few days I stuck to pencil and light watercolors.

Eventually I started to incorporate my new favorite pens.

Played around with pasting in little pieces of ephemera - a bottle label, a ticket stub, etc.

The last few pages from the trip are my favorite. I got a little better at designing a layout, and was able to get that fun, loose sketch look from the pens.  

Inside my notebook.

I've been making a habit of spending time in my Moleskine watercolor journal almost every day. It's been equally successful as a therapeutic practice as an artistic practice.

Drawing and Writing My Way Home.

At home in my notebook.

It's been a while.

The creative impulse, which had felt stifled and sad for many months, seems to be flowing freely once again.

And finally I don't ask what the point is.

It brings me back to my authentic self, my truth, my heart's desire.

And that's good enough for me.

Watercolor + Liquid Gold

So I experimented with a few new things yesterday:

1. Fredrix Watercolor Canvas (one of the excellent finds from the studio sale I attended way back in February).

2. Liquid Gold Leaf + Watercolor

The Watercolor Canvas I LOVE.  I've got two more to play around with still, and I'm thinking of continuing use of the liquid gold with watercolor - the effect is pretty cool.  

Spring is here!

...Well, almost.

After a sunny weekend, we got another storm Sunday night, and woke up to a few inches of powder Monday morning.  But already it's on its way out.  As I write this, I can hear the drip-drip-drip of snow quickly melting off the roof. 

Still it's an overcast day, so I decided to brighten it up by pulling out my watercolors and trying my hand and painting some spring flowers.

I love this time of year.  The little buds on the trees are near bursting, and fresh green shoots are poking their way out of the earth.  I can't wait for all the colors to arrive!  They will be well worth the wait :-)

It's a Small World, Take 2

This morning I painted yet another watercolor drawing to add to the Small World series.

First I laid some color down over the pencil drawing:

Then I drew in the detail with an ultra fine-tipped pen:

Now to just get all three of these guys ready for the wall!  The pieces are actually quite small (how could they be anything but?) - each has been painted on 8x6" watercolor paper.

I think all three would look great hung in a kid's room - maybe in kind of a minimalist frame behind some colorful mat board?  What do you think?

It's a Small World.

I had so much fun with yesterday's piece, I couldn't help but keep the theme going:

I don't know which excites me more, the idea of a giant mushroom, or a deer that can fit in the palm of your hand.

:)

Small is Beautiful

I made a very exciting discovery while on a camping trip at Bodega Bay a few weeks ago:

A whole miniature universe growing on a small piece of rotting tree!

Lichen Town delights and inspires me to no end.  So full of magic and mystery.

I love to imagine what it would be like to shrink down to size and explore the wild jungles of this tiny world at an enormous scale.

I suppose this is the idea that has inspired my most recent watercolor creation:

Just a cluster of mushroom caps towering like tree tops.  

It's unclear who has shrunk and who has grown.  Bluebird doesn't seem bothered either way, but Fox appears somewhat confused. 

I think I'll continue to experiment with more small worlds, large-scale.  It is certainly a recurring fascination of mine, ever since I was very young.

This being the case, you can imagine how much it pleases me to be staying in an apartment with giant snails living above the refrigerator.

And a pair of tiny cats fwipping their tails atop a tin piano.

I'm fairly certain that they hold little recitals on the coffee table while Bryan and I are away.

It really does make me smile.

For the love of Paint.

I found some really amazing old watercolors here at the apartment the other day.  They turned out to be just the thing to help alleviate the funk that marked the earlier half of last week.

It's a medium I haven't had much experience with, so I basically just let myself play around with shapes and colors.

Not surprisingly, a few of my favorite friends decided to show up. 

Contented Fox.

Sunbathing Bunny.

Painting just for the love of it.

Ahhhh definitely feeling better :)

Snail Mail Art

Two of my friends recently welcomed their first baby into the world, and yesterday I got to sit down and create a special card to send them.  It was a great opportunity to pull out one of my favorite inventions: the watercolor postcard.

The set of watercolor cards I am currently using I have had for some time, and came all the way from Germany.  I had just finished up a semester abroad in Rome and was traveling through Europe by rail.  Poking around the city of Freiburg, I stumbled upon a cute little art supply shop where I picked up my first set of Aquarell Postkartenblock.

Back then, I never could have guessed that 8 years later I would still have a handful of these cards to spare, let alone that I would be using one to send to my friend of 12 years in honor of he and his wife's first-born!

And how exciting that this would also be my first time painting in my new home studio  :)   

So much magic and mystery in life.

Speaking of which, at the time I sat down to begin my postcard painting project, the subject matter of the piece was still entirely unknown to me.  So I did what always seems to work best in those situations when I simply haven't got a clue: I doodled.

And wouldn't you know that just the perfect thing presented itself almost immediately:

A handsome elephant with a curved trunk.

Elephants are beautiful symbols of family, so I was happy to roll with it.  After just a few minutes, with a little tweaking, I had come up with a simple, symmetrical design:

And then added, of course, a baby.

Started out by laying down some green grass and yellow-orange sky.

Then threw some color on the pachyderms, plus a little red to bring out the heart silhouetted by their trunks.

Hmm... still missing something...

Ah, perfect :)

I hope this inspires you to try sending some crafty love via snail mail.  Thanks for stopping by!