Tennessee Tomatoes

I just packed 2 paintings to go to Nashville, Tennessee - they're destined for the the Tomato Art Fest show at the Art & Invention Gallery. If all goes well, they'll find new homes in Nashville and won't be coming back! Why, you may ask is Ann, the animal artist: #1, painting tomatoes and #2, sending the art to Nashville?

Well I'm glad you asked! Here's the story:
I painted a tomato for the 2005 Loomis Eggplant Festival, where I had a booth with my art in both 2005 & 2006. Of course, I was displaying my animal art, but thought it would be appropriate to have some eggplant art and decided to paint a tomato as well. Then, about this time last year, I received an e-mail from the owner of the Art & Invention Gallery asking if I still had the original tomato painting. She'd come across the image in my CafePress store while searching the internet for tomato art for the Tomato Art Fest show.


I had already sold it, but I offered to send her some cards and magnets with the image. She liked that idea, so I sent those items, most of which she sold. Since the Tomato Art Fest is an annual event, I told her I'd get a new painting or two done for this year's show.

Now back to present day. I painted one piece of three tomatoes ("Three Amigos") in watercolor on Yupo.

I was contemplating painting another tomato piece, but while searching through my reference photos, I came across an interesting photo of a tomato worm (tobacco hornworm). Now, it may seem blasphemous to put a painting of a tomato worm in a show honoring the luscious tomato, but I felt it could work, even if it was a bit subversive. I did run the idea past the gallery owner and she said "go for it". The photo was completely green (not terribly interesting), but I liked the composition, so I played with it a bit in PhotoShop to tweak the colors and provide a guide for the painting. Below, you'll see the all-green photo, the PhotoShopped version and the final painting ("Green Scourge").

This painting took on a life of its own - I started with watercolor on Yupo, but the background colors blended more than I'd planned. It was at this point that I realized the painting was not going to resemble the photo all that much. That was fine, I decided not to fret over it - I was happy with the colors and overall look, so I moved forward. I used color pencil on top of the watercolor to add detail and additional color to the worm, tomato and stem. I also changed some of the shading - the shadow under the worm was a glowing yellow, which looked great in the photo, but didn't read right on the painting. Even after adding color pencil, it still needed "something", so I put a bit of black ink linework on the same components.



The painting has a psychedelic, graphic look to it - I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out.

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Artwork for "Diamond in the Ruff" Logo

Recently, I had the pleasure of drawing a pair of Siberian Husky dogs for a business owner who's opening her own Pet Spa & Boutique in Lincoln CA. She contacted me after seeing my work on my web site and we met to discuss her ideas. She had been working with a sign company to design her logo, but wasn't satisfied with the clip art that was available - she wanted something more custom, specifically huskies. After discussing the project, we decided that since I'd be coming up with custom art, we might as well use her two huskies as the models for the art.

She provided digital photos of Hailey & Oso, along with the basic logo design, so I'd know how to size and crop the art to fit within the logo.



The art had to be simple so it could be printed at various sizes: from the large logo on the sign on the outside of the business to the tiny logo on business cards. For that reason, I decided to create a line drawing (without a lot of detail) using a black ink pen. For this type of work, I like to use the Micron disposable ink pens.

I combined the digital photos by cropping & overlapping them a bit and printed that image as large as I could on an 11x17 sheet of paper so I'd have a reference at a fairly large size. It's easy to shrink an image down and maintain resolution and detail, but it doesn't work the other way around. If I had done a small drawing, it would have become ragged and pixelated when enlarged to be part of the sign on the building. I drew the image in pencil on another 11x17 sheet, and then inked it in.

I scanned the drawing at high resolution and that scanned file went to the sign fabricators for them to incorporate into the logo.

Here's the drawing (approx 11" x 14")



And here's how it looks in the logo:



And here's the logo on the building:





Visit Diamond in the Ruff to learn more about the business (which opens in August, 2007).

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Big Beetle Bug

My latest ACEO is a scratchboard drawing of a longhorn beetle, a California Prionus or Prionus Root Borer (Prionus californicus). These wood boring beetles visit our place every summer. They're large, dark brown and they make a creepy noise when disturbed. It sounds like something right out of a horror movie, but it's only their hind legs rubbing against the sides of their outer wings. The scientific term for that is "stridulation". FYI, crickets stridulate to make their characteristic chirping sound, although they're rubbing their hind legs together.

I did this drawing as part of the eBay Scratchboard Artists' Group's monthly challenge. Each month we draw something relating to a theme - this month's theme is "bugs". The only "rule" is that the drawing has to be done on scratchboard. It can be left black & white or colored with ink, color pencil or watercolor.

I chose a small piece (ACEO size: 3.5"x2.5") of black scratchboard for this beetle drawing and then selected one my many beetle photos for reference. I enjoyed the challenge of scratching away most of the black to leave just the beetle and its shadow. I didn't realize until I was scanning the image that it's actual size, since the beetles can get up to 2 1/4" long. And if you think the beetle's creepy, do a Google search for its grub!

View the auction listing for the beetle.

The auction runs for 7 days, ending at 6:15 PST on the 12th.

For lots more scratchboard art (mine and a number of other artists) and a demo of another one of my ACEO scratchboard drawings, check out this new site: ScratchboardArt.com

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"Siblings & Pets" Show A Success!

Lots of catching up to do - it'll take a couple of posts!

In this post, I'll report about "Siblings & Pets", the art show my brother and I had back in May. This show was a long time in coming and unfortunately did not happen at the best time (more later), but we still had a great show and a blast at the opening reception.

My brother (PY Simpson) and I have wanted to show our artwork together for many, many years. But it wasn't until a couple of years ago, when I started creating my "Paintings with Petzazz" pieces, that I felt I had art that would complement his. My work prior to that (which I still continue to do) was very realistic, black & white and not "fun" enough to show alongside his whimsical sculptural ceramic pieces. And then, after I had a style that I thought suitable, it took some time for us to coordinate our schedules so that we could show together.

PY is represented by the Phoenix gallery in Sacramento CA, so we worked with the wonderful owner to figure out a time for our show. Downtown/midtown Sacramento has a monthly event, "Second Saturday", where galleries are open from 6 - 9 to showcase new art and host artists' receptions, so our reception was set for the second Saturday evening in May. The show ran through the end of May.

We chose to limit our art to dogs and cats - mine being paintings and his being ceramic sculptures. PY began working on his art in December - I didn't even want to think about it back then! But his ceramic sculptures take much longer for him to do than my paintings do for me, so it was smart of him to get started early. He created 10 sculptures and I had 12 paintings.

Then a horrible thing happened in April, PY's beloved cat, Kotex (yes, you read that right) became ill and had to be euthanized due to kidney failure caused by the tainted pet food. This was one of the earliest cases in our area - the day the news was breaking about the tainted food was the day she was put down. This was extremely traumatic for my brother and made it especially difficult for him to continue getting his work ready for the show, but it also made him realize how much our pets mean to us. We dedicated the show to Kotex and the other pets who had been lost due to the pet food.

I had already planned on doing a couple of paintings of Kotex, so they were even more meaningful after she had passed.

Even though we were saddened by Ko's loss, we managed to have a great time at the opening reception, which was attended by over 400 people. Second Saturdays always draw a big crowd and Phoenix is one of the hot spots.

None of my art sold that night, but 4 pieces sold later and PY sold at least 5 of his sculptures (4 of them that night). He had created 5 pieces of a sphynx cat whose photos I had shown him some time ago. That naked, pink cat became his muse for this show and I made sure to invite the cat's owner. She attended the reception and was able to meet PY and discuss his art of her cat at length. She was quite touched and proud that her cat meant so much to him and even bought one of the sculptures.

We included some of the same breeds in the show: Boston terrier (PY's was wearing a blue sweater), dachshund, pug, chihuahua and of course, the sphynx cat.

Well, that takes care of this report - check back soon to find out what else I've been doing to keep busy and stay out of trouble!

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