New shop item Friday!

Last day or two, I've been working on a new amigurumi crochet item- The Dogtopus!  This is the first one I've made for saleing in my shop.  I'm pretty excited about this new item, and I hope it does really well and gets positive feedback. :)

Check it out now! Enjoy!

Oddity Owl Art Store - Dogtopus amigurumi doll

Introducing... the Dogtopus!

Do you know what amigurumi is?  Amigurmi is the Japanese art of crocheting small, cute plush animals and other cute anthropomorphic creatures.  Normally, amigurmi toys are animals, but there are also inanimate objects and food.  It's so adorable, that the art of amigurmi has exploded all over the world.  There are many books and patterns out there to create all kinds of great items.

I have been trying to teach myself crochet for years in order to make some cutie amigurmi items too.  It's been hard for me to get my mind wrapped around crochet pattern diagrams and instructions.  It took many a great youtube tutorials to help me finally get the basics under my belt.  I started working on a dog pattern from the amazingly helpful book Ami Ami Dogs by Mitsuki hoshi.  After several epic fail attempts, I eventually started to get an item that resembled an animal shape.  Mitsuki's dogs are great, but they are realistic dog colors.  My dogs, instead, were going to be made in fun, vibrant colors.

Since re-shaping and re-starting my business, I've been trying very hard to produce more inventory for my shop.  I want to stay motivated and on track for always having more products to put out.  I didn't do this last time around and it ended up causing a few kinks in the system.  Anyways, my new motto is anything I make, I should sell too.  If it's good for me, then it's good for you.  So I thought ok, I'll make a few doggies for sale and get them up on my shop.  I picked out my body color yarn and got to work.

Started working on the head and face. 

After the ears were made, I took a break.  I sat back and thought over what I was working on.  I started thinking about how I was just following someone's pattern that anyone could get their hands on.  There could be several dogs already out there to buy.  What would make my dog any different then all the other dogs?  For those who know me, know that I take a lot of pride in not being cookie cutter, for myself and for my work. I enjoying thinking and being outside the box. 

So what could I do? I didn't want to just make a copy of a dog someone else is already selling.  Was using a fun color enough of a change to make it different? Hmm... I didn't think so.  I got my sketch journal down off the shelf and got to brainstorming.  I ended up coming up with something different then your average dog, and idea I really liked a lot! Something new, something I'd never seen, something fun!  But it meant I was going to have to design it myself.  Did I know enough about crochet to be able to make up my own patterns? Back to brainstorming.  I drew up some ideas for the body, using what I already knew from attempting to make other amigurmi animals, and coming up with a pattern I thought would work. 

Now it was time to get back to work.

Started working on the body.

Then I started making the legs.  Wait... what? Is that 5 legs? And I'm working on more? What's going on here....?

Legs, legs, legs!

Next up, I made a little sailor hat.  It doesn't really look like a sailor hat though... it kinda looks more like a white bowler hat. o.O  I wanted to try and stitch on an anchor in the front of it, but It would have been too difficult to do because I had already stitched the hat on the head.  Next time I will have to put the anchor on before the hat gets on that head!

Now it was time to start putting all the pieces together.  Head on the body, then the legs.  I also needed to add a nose to the snout..

and then.... the Dogtopus prototype was done!! Half dog, half octopus, 100% adorable!

I am SO happy with how Dogtopus came out. :D  And it went pretty smoothly while making it.  Can't beat that!  I can't wait to make one to put in the shop.  I'm working on one that will hopefully be in the shop by early next week. Yay!

And the winner is......?

So yesterday I talked about how I wanted... needed... to come up with a new logo and avatar for my shop, Oddity Owl Art Store.  I discussed my ideas about wanting to do a simpler version of the Owl sketch I had already made.  It was too much detail and I needed something smaller and easier to read. I want to keep the hand drawn illustration look to the logo, since that best represents the majority of my work. So I came up with 2 sketches.

The top one, I really liked.  It had the olive trees and the owl both shown, which was what I originally had wanted to be in the logo.  The bottom one didn't have the olive branches.  The less cluttered design was nice.  Even though I really wanted the trees in the design, it seemed like that design might be too hard to read at small sizes. 

After deciding which logo I liked the best, I drew a bigger sized version.  Once it was inked, I uploaded it to photoshop to do a few small touch ups.  Nothing too big.  Mostly it was just touching up the lighting and image size.  After the touch ups were done, it was time to find a font that fit with the picture.  I ended up not being happy with anything I had on my computer already, so I went and found some new fonts to use.  Ended up finding some really fun ones.

Here is the finished logo!

So... am I happy with the final result? I'm not sure! Hmm... The beak is a little larger then I meant for it to be, I think it might look better a little smaller.   I will leave it for now and see how I feel about it in a few days. :)

New logo and avatar for Oddity Owl Art Store

My weekends are normally more relaxing then my weekdays.  I spend Saturday catching up on chores around the house and Sunday is usually my all day lazy day.   

This sunday I'm doing some yard work though.  Trying to get a bed of wildflowers to grow.  I'm not a very good gardener so I spend a lot of time fussing over the little garden.  I did some work this morning before the sun came out too much.  There was a nice breeze, it felt good to be outside.  

While picking up leaves and watering the future bed of flowers,  I thought about the Oddity Owl Art Store logo.   I need something to represent the stores idenity, and I needed something to be the stores avatar on sites such as twitter and facebook. 

A few weeks ago, I came up with a (mostly) full body owl in flight, carrying an olive twig, surrounded by a border. It is very pretty and I like it a lot.... but now I'm thinking it might be a little bit... too much.  Too big, too much detail. 

See, I think there is just too much going on with this one.  I want to make something much more simple, easy to see at a small avatar size.   I want to keep the frame around the owl, and I want to have enough room to have the name of the store in the picture as well. Keep the olive branch or take it out of the design? The bigger question is-  should it be simple, clean black and white lineart only, should there be a little bit of grayscale grunge added? I'm not sure which version I want.  I guess I can always try it both ways and then decide from there. 

It's always exciting and fun designing a logo.  There is a little bit nervousness in it too.  It's not just a picture, but it's the face of your store / brand / name.  It's what your fans are going to identify you with, so you want something awesome from the start.  I'm really looking forward to tossing around some ideas in my sketchbook. 

Color outside the lines

I grew up in the heart of New Orleans.  We only had one car, my dad mostly used it for work, leaving my mom and I to walk almost everywhere we went.  It's an old, beautiful city.  At the time, I didn't realize it, but the big city life left a mark on me.  A mark that later on in life would inspire and influence my art.  A mark that isn't exclusive to New Orleans, but to all big cities.  Urban decay.

Urban decay is when a previously functioning location- a city, part of a city, a building- falls in to disrepair and disuse.  I love the beauty and horror that coexist in urban decay.  So much emotion and personality in the ruin. So much history.  A wonder of what once lived here, and what creatures might still creep in the shadows. 

I am not an urban artist... I don't draw cities, buildings or other urban environments.   But I try to bring the feel of urban decay in to my work.  The strong emotions.  The cracks, the mess, the uneven.  I try to capture that look of  something old, worn and broken.  I don't want the perfect, spotless art.  I want the running ink, the paint falling outside the lines, the unintentional droplets of paint that fall on the paper. I want the messy lines and heavy shadows. There is nothing more beautiful then that. 

Yay! New blog!

Hello! I'm an artist and I run the online shop called Oddity Owl Art Store. I specialize in illustration work, but I love to do all kinds of other art as well, such as water color, inks, painting, print making, wire & bead jewelry, crochet plushies, book binding, resin & mold making. I could go on and on. Anything I can get my hands on, really. I am always searching for new things to try, new techniques to learn. I love reading books and magazines that inspire and teach new lessons. Brainstorming an artistic solution to a problem is so much fun!

While I've worked with promoting my art for a while now, I never had a blog about what I make and what I sell.  I thought it was about time to make one!

It's a little empty at the moment, but I plan to have lots of things to talk about!  The main purpose of this blog is, of course, to show what my projects and products are,  but that's not all! I also want to create dialogue with readers and customers, creating conversations that everyone can get involved with.  Maybe some how-tos, reviews, links, lists.  I would like to eventually come up with some sort of contests or giveaways. 

I'm really looking forward to getting things rolling with this.  It hopefully will be a lot of fun.