Merry Christmas Kayla!

This is a Christmas present I painted for Kayla.  Kayla is my 18 month old cousin.  You might remember me talking about her in this post.  I painted a canvas for her room for her first birthday this past summer and I wanted to paint her something to match it for Christmas.  I found this awesome little round wood stool at Michaels and thought it would be perfect to paint up as a gift!  I didn't paint it to match exactly, but you can still tell that they go together.  When I was done painting it, I put a little stuffed animal on top along with a few pairs of socks, and wrapped it up in clear christmas cello wrap that I found at the dollar store.   Merry Christmas Kayla!

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Every year I say I am going to design my own Christmas card, and every year I get consumed in decorating my house, christmas shopping, wrapping gifts, making presents, ect. that I never have the time to do so!  This year I put my foot down.  I actually designed this card back in October, to ensure I had one to post!

  I hope everyone has a great Christmas!!  

Gennaro's Xmas Gift

This is a christmas gift I made for my cousin Gennaro.  It's a small garbage can for his room.  I know it may sound silly giving someone a garbage can as a present, but his mother is a huge fan of hand painted things, and I have overheard her say numerous times how she wanted one for his room.  Sorry for the shitty pictures, I have to learn how to take better ones!

Bah Humbug?

It's hard to get into the Christmas Spirit sometimes.  And while I do enjoy Christmas eve and Christmas day, I hate the days and even weeks leading up to it.  Everyone is out and about causing traffic and crowds everywhere!  It's been taking me an hour and a half to drive home from work every night because of it (my house is only 22 miles from my job).  Even doing something as simple as food shopping within the weeks before Christmas is a real pain in the butt!  Here is an illustration I made about how I feel about the holidays.  Hopefully I'll get out of this funk soon...only a week to go!

Gennaro Eugene

This is a painting I did for my cousin, Lynn's, baby shower.  She was having a baby boy and already had his name picked out.  I actually did this painting over two years ago, a full year before I even started this blog, so I never had the chance to post it.  As much as I love painting traditional paintings like this, I don't get the chance to do this that often.  Her favorite animal is a turtle, and she has a crazy little boxer named Bella, so I tried to incorporate Bella's personality into the turtle.  Gennaro is now two and a half years old, and this painting is still on the wall of his bedroom!

Happy Birthday!

Today is my birthday.  Not just any ol' birthday, but my 30th birthday.  I've been dreading this day for months now!  Even though I don't look it, and still get carded when buying lottery tickets, I am having somewhat of a hard time accepting the fact that I am now in my 30's.  Here is an illustration I did of some cupcakes to try and celebrate the death of my twenties.  I wasn't going to add the type on top, but I recently downloaded a new font from fontspace.com named KG Lego House, and was dying to use it!  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  

More ipad drawings!

Here are some more ipad Paper 53 drawings I did while watching tv.  

Hurricane Sandy

Anyone who hasn't heard, Hurricane Sandy swept across NJ on October 30th and destroyed almost everything in it's path.  It left a lot of people with out power, myself included, who was without power for 10 days.  One way I prepared myself for this hurricane was to go grocery shopping three days before.  While I was there I saw these cute little pumpkins and realized that it was almost halloween and I totally forgot about getting a pumpkin!  I picked one up with intents that I would paint it if the power went out.  Well our power did go out and within moments I lit a bunch of candles and painted this by candle light.  I had so much fun!  Since the power was out, there was nothing to distract me, like tv or internet, or my cell phone, so I was really able to enjoy it.  If I realized that I was going to be without power for so long I would have picked up a few more, but instead I spent the rest of my 10 days knitting and trying not to be grumpy.  I will be posting some of my knitting projects once I stop being lazy.  

Happy Birthday Lily!

My little cousin Lily just turned 10 last week and I made her this card!  I know I am a little behind on sending this to her, but I wanted to draw her something instead of just buying a generic card, like I normally do for my other cousins.  She is really the only cousin I draw stuff for, and this is only because she is really into art so this is something I know she will appreciate!  Happy belated birthday Lily!

Hey Lady!

This is a quick doodle I drew tonight while watching re-runs of Honey Boo boo.  

Century 21!

I haven't been posting lately because I have been busy.  I was just hired as a full time photo retoucher for Century 21 Department Stores!  It's weird having a full time job after freelancing for so long, but I am definitely happy there and hope to never go back to freelancing!  More posts to come soon!

Wood Illustration!

Lately I've been seeing a lot of different artists making drawings on actual pieces of wood.  I thought the idea was so great and was excited to give it a shot!  I bought this piece of wood at Michaels about two months ago, but I've been procrastinating ever since because I was positive I would somehow screw it up.  Since I downloaded Paper 53 for my ipad, I really haven't been doing any traditional drawings, and last night I figured I'd just go for it.  It was the first time I just started drawing without an actual sketch in from of me, and to be honest I was surprised with the results!  It's the first drawing I've done in a while that I actually like!  The only thing I didn't like was how messy the bark of this piece of wood was.  Since the moment I took off the plastic wrap, pieces of bark have been peeling off everywhere!  At one point I even caught my dog licking it! (Must have tasted good!)  Anyways, I'm sure I could somehow glue a hook to the back of it so it can be displayed on a wall.  I am definitely going to be experimenting with wood art again very soon!

Internet withdrawal!

I never realized how addicted to the internet I was until last weekend, when we went on a mini vacation to Chicago.  If you think about it, I'm around the internet a lot, for 8 hours a day at work, then a couple more hours at night when I'm at home.  The only thing preventing me from being on the internet all the time is the fact that I am probably the only person left on earth that still does not own a smart phone.  As much as I would love to have one, I guess I just feel like it's a waste of money, considering I already pay for internet in my house.  However, it definitely would have come in handy while I was in Chicago!  While we kept busy during the days exploring the city, nights were our down time.  Since I'm not much of a tv person, not having internet in our hotel was killing me!  So to pass the time I made drawings on my ipad with Paper 53!  As much as I felt disconnected from the world because of lack of internet, it felt good to be able to spend some of my nights drawing!

Ipad drawings!

I got my ipad a little over a year ago.  The reason why I got it was because I still don't have a smart phone and I wanted something that I could easily bring on vacation with me so I can still feel connected to the world.  It wasn't until recently that I discovered Paper 53.  After debating for several weeks on whether or not I should spend the 7 dollars to get the full app, and another 29 dollars for the Bamboo Stylus, I gave in and I sure am glad I did!  Of course there are some things I don't like about the app, for example, the color selection isn't that great,  and it would be nice to be able to change brush size, but the thing I really had to get used to is not being able to rest your hand on the ipad while you are drawing because it is skin sensitive.  Other than these three things, it's pretty neat, and I'm definitely addicted to it!  The first picture of the giraffe I drew for this week's Illustration Friday topic, which was "tall".  The other two I just drew for no reason!  I'm pretty sure I'm going to be posting a lot of ipad drawings on here in the future!  

Marker

I've attempted marker on several different occasions in the past, but for some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite master the technique.  I decided tonight to give them another try.  While I'll admit they were a little frustrating, I think I'm on my way to getting better!  Here are a few marker sketches I did tonight while watching the Olympics.  I also tried mixing these marker sketches with color pencil.  I mainly used the color pencil for the shadows and highlights, which I find easier to do than trying to shade with the markers.  I can't wait to continue experimenting with these two mediums together!  

Illustration Friday:Lonely

Here is my illustration for Illustration Friday!  The topic was lonely, though I'm not really sure you get that from my illustration.  I probably spent more time on this than necessary, and that is mainly because I was experimenting on trying something new.  I was really trying to work on my shadows and highlights, which is something I never really attempted in the past.  

WWE RAW 1,000!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love WWE wrestling, and that I have always loved wrestling since the early 1990's.  Tonight's Monday Night Raw was a special 3 hour program celebrating it's 1,000th episode!  To celebrate I drew two of my many favorite wrestlers; Bret 'the hitman' Hart, and Hulk Hogan!  I'm inspired to draw more of my favorite wrestlers, but for now, I only have these two.

My website!

Major renovations of my website are now complete!  Check out some of my new work!  www.ginanasissi.com

Teenage Mutant Ballet Turtles!

As I was cleaning and organizing my office the other day, I came across a bunch of my old sketchbooks.  One in particular was from when I was in high school.  Flipping through the pages reminded me how much I enjoyed drawing when I was a kid!  There was one illustration that caught my eye.  My teenage mutant ballet turtles!  TMNT was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid, and it was also the very first video game I ever played and beat for my very first video game console, Sega Genesis.  My friends and I would draw these little guys over everything!  I don't know how we came about to add tutu's on the turtles and make them dance, but we did and it sort of became our signature characters!  10 years later I decided I should turn this into a digital illustration, just to bring back the happy memories of sitting in the back of my classes with my friends giggling and doodling the school day away.  I added the beach scene background.  It's always funny to see a bunch of turtles dancing ballet on the beach!

Illustration Friday: Suspend

I've done a few Illustration Friday's in the past, but I haven't done one in a long time!  This week's topic is Suspend.  I tried to make it look like the girl was suspended from the balloon, but I'm not sure if it comes off that way.  Either way, this was the first time I mixed a colored pencil illustration with a digital background that I did in Illustrator.  I don't always like the way I draw eyes on my characters, which is something I always struggled with in my illustrations, but hopefully someday I'll come up with a better solution to this problem!  

My dark post

You'd think that someone who loves to draw would have an illustration or two of their work in a frame hanging in their house.  Not me.  I tried sneaking one up once, but failed.  The reason?  My husband hates my art work!  He has said on more than one occasion that my art work is too child like and innocent.  He's more into dark stuff like skulls and blood and tattoos.  I created this drawing to make an attempt to draw something a little darker.  I had full intentions on painting this with acrylic paint, however I was so eager to start that I just grabbed my color pencils and began!  I am happy with how it came out!  Though I'm not really sure this can be considered a dark illustration!

Crazy hair girl

I feel like recently I've been on a creative art spree!  Here's a little illustration I drew while watching tv tonight.  I've always wanted to do something crazy like this to my hair, but I always chicken out.  Maybe someday...

I'm not too crazy about the paper I used for this illustration.  I drew it in an old sketch book from a few years ago that I realized was only half filled.  I now realize why I never finished drawing in it.  I really don't like the paper!  It has sort of a rough texture to it, which is something I liked back in the day, but now I prefer smoother paper.

Gennaro's 2nd birthday

My little cousin, Gennaro, just turned 2 and his birthday party is this weekend.  I wanted to make him something that he could actually play with and since I know he goes to the beach a lot, I thought this would be a cute idea!  I went to Amazing Savings and got these two sand buckets and filled them with cute little beach toys...a few shovels, some bubbles, a water gun, a beach ball, and some swimming tubes!  Then when I got home, I painted the outsides of the buckets with his name on one side, and a beach and water scene on the other using oil paint pens.  I really like painting things like this, but I don't get to do it that often, as I only know a handful of kids, and this really isn't an appropriate gift for an adult.  When it was all finished I got a little fancy.  I wrapped it up in some clear cello wrapping paper, and tied some red ribbon around it.  I hope this makes him smile!

Happy Birthday Kayla!

This is a painting I made for Kayla.  She is my newest little cousin.  Her first birthday party is next weekend and I painted this canvas for her room!  I haven't painted like this on a canvas with acrylic paint in a long time and it felt great to be able to do this again!  Happy first birthday Kayla!