My artwork is for the creativity in you! I truly believe we all have our own unique inner creativity and for this reason my goal has been to design artwork that inspires people. If you feel you’ve lost your creative spark just stop for a moment, think back to an early time when you as a child found yourself fascinated by a magical moment. Take a little handful of that fascination, bring it back with you and keep it close to your heart – that is where the creativity starts. My process is to see or think of a shape that sparks my interest and then my imagination takes over from there. For example, it might be a cat doing something that is totally silly or possibly the beautiful symmetry and aroma of a rose. Then I tend to immerse myself in related thoughts which begins to come together to create the image or series of images. Often times real life events spark the avenue I end up taking. A good example of this would be the image link below. I was thinking about developing a series of funny cats and doing some rough sketches when my son popped into the room to let me know that the cats knocked over the trash cans that were outside waiting to be collected. My mind instantly came up with the thought of a cat’s treasure hunt and surely there is no better place than in a trash can. http://www.oliviaandco.com/shop/art-singles/cats-singles/Cat-Treasure-Hunt Once I have my idea I do rough sketches, refine the sketches, and finally create the actual drawing by hand. If adding color to the image I use a small variety of media but my preferred choice is watercolor. Because most of my artwork is detailed I tend to use a good quality smooth finish Bristol board. Finally, I clean it up a bit on the computer and it is ready to go. My mother was a lovely portrait artist and would often times be very whimsical with her creations. I would watch her with such amazement hoping that one day I would be able to do that too. Also, spending my early years with my cherished grandparents set my love for beauty and fantasy in motion. My grandmother had the most enchanting fragrant flower garden filled with tiny twinkling fairies and little secret nooks and crannies where the ivy had grown over to the point that I couldn’t peek past the foliage. I was sure those mysterious openings led to the Land of Oz. I’m still pretty convinced that was true since we lived in Kansas, just outside of Emerald City. I believe I fell in love with whimsy because of those two very strong influences in my young life and why my art is the way it is today. Thank you so much for taking the time to read a bit about me; hopefully it was a shared imagination moment. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please drop me a note I’d love to hear from you. Warmest thoughts, Olivia http://www.oliviaandco.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/1879768192301441/ http://www.oliviaandco.com/shop/Drawing-Dangles-Evolution
