Here is something I was just working on about a week ago . . .
There are two card designs, for Mother's day (for my mom and mother-in-law). I was frustrated with not having figured out something sooner, but I'll be able to send the digital picture to my mom, and give a printed version to my mother-in-law (and also send her a card, but it will get there later). I had prints made, to make cards out of, today-- and this was really an evolutionary process, so I thought you might be interested in seeing how it came about . . .

​Here is the original color pencil drawing: 

​And when I was editing the scanned image about a month ago, I hit a key accidentally which brought about a different, more "glowing" look to it:

So I saved this variation, and when looking for a picture I could use to make a mother's day card, I decided to try to do something with it. So first I selected the main section of the picture, as I wanted to use it to make a "bouquet"--

​Then I put this on a bluish background and added some stems, leaves, and other details-- (to make a"glowing bouquet")

​It looks OK from a distance, but it wasn't the look I wanted for a mother's day greeting. So decided to go back to the previous version, and thought, "I'll just print it out as an art print, instead of making a card . . ." and went to get 2 prints made.  In looking at the prints more closely, I decided to cut off the bottom part where the soil in the pot is . . . because the colors just looked kind of strange (maybe because of printing ink differences or just because the colors ARE kind of strange).
 
So then it looked odd to have all the short, chopped-off stem bits at the bottom of the bouquet, so I cut around the bottom flower edges, doing some experimental trimming with each print-- and the final shape for each bouquet turned out to be a little different.

Next I glued the cut-outs onto some nice paper, for cards (as seen at top of this post).
 
What's kind of funny is that in the finished cards the flowers turned out to be up-side-down from how they were originally drawn . . .  it just seemed like it looked better to have the haze (and straight cut line) at the bottom. 
 
 So the cards were finished, but I still wanted to send a digital picture to my mom . . . and so used the earlier design, but added some text--

So that is my long story about making cards and trying things out with images . . . 
I think sometime I want to try selecting out the main bouquet area of the too-much-stars design, just to see what that looks like by itself (it could be interesting to look at a group of very hazy/starry flowers).
 
It took a really long time to do this whole process of experimenting, but I had a good time working on it, so wasn't terribly upset with myself about staying up until midnight and not getting anything else done . . .

Here's a drawing of my friend Helen, who is a musician-- she writes very beautiful songs and sings them at various places-- now mostly on Zoom song circle meetings . . .  Here is her bandcamp page:  ​https://helenchaya.bandcamp.com/

I sketched this quickly, while listening to her sing at a Zoom meeting.  I think that is the first time I've drawn a musician while watching on video . . .  

Well, I finally graduated from college classes in graphic design and web graphic design . . . (that was last summer) and now am a working professional artist :)  

Above are two greeting card designs.  The "Cloud Pony" is the most recent.  The other one is called "Song Birds."

These cards and others are available at my Etsy shop, www.etsy.com/shop/dianehurstart.

Also, some other art projects have been some watercolor paintings, made-to-order --

Here is "Butterfly Trio" -- this was a custom painting, with butterfly colorings chosen by the customer.

There are some other ones, too . . . more posts to come!

For a long time I have been going to music events fairly often . . . both because I like to listen to music and because I like to play it -- so sometimes go to open mics.

While there, besides enjoying the music, I usually have a sketchbook with me and will draw some things.  Sometimes it is random drawings with abstract lines and shapes, sometimes it is representational, and also sometimes it is representing the people I'm listening to . . . portraits of the musicians who are playing.

I've gotten a pretty big collection of these musician drawings over the past few years, and here are some of them.  This is part one, as there are too many to put into one blog post, and I'd like to share some other ones later.

Here is Carl Solomon, a singer-songwriter who I heard playing at a West Coast Songwriters meeting:

​And here (below) is a band,  Epic Season, who came to play at X-Fest NW in summer 2018.
They had a lot of energy, and it was fun to draw them :)  I also very much enjoyed their music.

This term I'm taking two classes that use the computer to create artwork.  One is teaching the Adobe software, "After Effects" (for making short animations), and the other is giving me lots of practice -- and challenges -- in using Adobe Illustrator.  I saved this class for last, of the required art classes in my degree program (yes, I'm almost finished), because I knew it required use of Illustrator, and although I took an Illustrator "how-to" software class earlier, I feel like that was just a brief introduction, and I have so much more to learn.  

Well, I'm starting to learn things, now, while needing to use the software for various projects in the Digital Illustration class.  Some of this is though trial and error, and some is with the good help of the lab assistants in the art bldg computer lab, as well as help in class from my teacher.

Here is a recently finished poster.  The assignment was to make a poster of a famous scientist of the 20th century.  So I chose the inventor of the rocket, Robert Goddard.

Hello!  Just wanted to post a few animal drawings up here . . .

Here is a fish, swimming along . . . through a digital image sea . . .

and a long-tailed cat  . . .  I wonder if he'd like to go fishing . . .

or maybe feathers look more appetizing . . .

The birds drawing is color pencil . . . and the buzzing bees below are made with wax crayons.

What animal would you like to draw?

For the final project in Figure Drawing, we were to create a large picture with several figures, and it was supposed to tell some kind of a story.

I decided to make a children's art illustration, since that is one of the fields I'm interested in developing my art for.  

But at the time I was working on it, there were just a few days available to complete the work, and I would be taking a trip to San Francisco (taking part in a song competition!) over three of the four days.  So wasn't sure how to make the picture large . . . it needed to fit in a small suitcase.

So I ended up making a series of panels, that would go together to tell the whole story.

​The work is done in ink and color pencil.  Here are some of the panels:

As you can see, the "story" for this picture is about communication--
​old ways and new ways :)

​It took a lot of tries to get the sketch accurate for the swinging child; and I could tell the figure drawing practice I'd had in the class was useful :)

Here is the whole picture; I put a "frame" around the panels (like window panes) to finish it up- this is something added after the final presentation in class; I just barely had time to complete photoshop edits and get the panels printed for that . . .

Something I noticed after completion was that the kids look like they're dressed for warm weather, but this is a winter tree (!)  Also, I think it needs more branches . . . so maybe I will do some edits to this digitally, in the future, to develop the illustration and make it be spring or summer.  But overall, it was a good project and I liked making a children's art illustration that is also a story in itself.

This summer I took a class in figure drawing.  I did find it valuable to draw a multitude of images from different poses by models; some good growth as an artist. Here are a few sketches/drawings:

Here is an ink wash sketch; this was something new, too . . . I haven't "drawn" quickly using a paint brush before.  Usually  when painting I am slower than with drawing.  So this was a good experiment, to try going quickly.  ​

 For the drawing above and the two at top, we were given a long time to work on the drawings.

The man sitting on a stool was one of the few drawings made with a clothed model. Most were without clothes, for the purpose of learning how to draw human anatomy, and although my art interests are more for drawing clothed figures, as students we quickly got used to observing and drawing nude people (or maybe I should say I got used to it; many of the others had been doing figure drawing before). 

One of the benefits of this class was to become more aware of details in human figures; this helped me in doing the final project-- a large picture with several people, and with some kind of narration context.

But my favorite thing about this class was being "required" to do nothing but draw for three hours twice a week!

In my Graphic Design Explore class we went to visit a printing resource center in Portland.
The Independent Publishing Resource Center is a place where anyone in the community can come and use the equipment for making prints/publications, with payment of a user fee.  There are also workshops to help in learning how to do various printing methods, and for graphic design and bookbinding.

When we first came in, we saw a vending machine for "zines"-- it looks like there weren't any zines in it at the time, but it looks very unique and spiffy.

Besides letter press equipment there was an area for making silk screens, and also an out-dated form of copy machine, a Risograph. The Risograph uses actual ink, not toner powder.  So only one color can be used at a time, such as with silk screen.
​
​Here is the silk screen area:

And to help with preparing projects, or to make prints using a photocopy machine, there are a few computers and a scanner available for use.

We were given a tour of the IPRC, including taking a look at their large library of "zines."  Our tour guide explained all the opportunities at this resource center-- besides using equipment there is also education available for how to use these various printing methods.

The Independent Publishing Resource Center, in Southeast Portland, is open Tues through Thurs 12 pm - 9 pm and Friday through Sunday 12 pm to 6 pm.  I think it is a great idea, to have a place where these graphic design tools can be accessed by community members at low cost, and training is available for how to use the printing methods. They are not as often used for art and  desktop publishing as laser printing is, but using them could be just what is needed for a certain project.

Have had some photos up in a group photo show for the past month and a half-- it is still up, but this weekend will be the last couple of days.  There are some really interesting photographs in this show, including some printed on both metal and wood!

The show is at Touchmark Village, in Vancouver, WA -- this is a retirement community, and they have a beautiful community room with a grand piano where the photos have been hung.

Here are photos of the photos :)

The black and white photo of the ocean and cliffs, on the left, is printed onto metal.  No frame is needed, and it has a kind of glossy appearance.  The metal-printed photos were by Faun Scurlock.  She has been selling her photography at Vancouver Farmer's Market.

The tree photos on the right are ones I took this past year . . . In fall I was focusing on taking picures of leaves, in winter it was "winter trees" and in spring, all kinds of flowering plants.