ASHER & HADLEY PERSONALIZED WATERCOLORS

I've had two commissions for personalized watercolors waiting for my attention for a long time.  With the end of school, family and pending surgery I am behind on these orders. These simple little pieces take a great deal of time to complete and are often more of a gift of my time even with the price tag.  I thought I'd share a little of the process.

To start I draw multiple, cartoon images to suit the customer.  Most of these watercolors are personalized baby gifts and match some sort of nursery theme.  I usually draw the images in colored pencils and then paint them with watercolors.  I often make a ton of these pieces not knowing exactly how I'll arrange them around the child's name.

Then comes the job of cutting out each little piece over and over again.  I use both scissors and X-Acto knives to get the intricate, tiny cuts.  I actually stumbled on the idea of creating 3-dimensional paintings after a horrible watercolor mistake on a nearly finished piece.  I was desperate to salvage hours of work and decided to create cut-outs to cover my mistake.  The idea took off!  I think having this little characters and embellishments popping out of the picture are a great touch.

So here is Asher's finished watercolor.  As in all commission work - I sure hope my friend likes the finished piece!

Here's a close-up of the monkeys, background and the silly, jungle birds I invented to embellish the painting.  I tend to get really "busy" with these paintings but the fun is assembling all the tiny pieces and seeing it come to life.

 I debated about posting the painting for baby Hadley.  As is sometimes the case, this customer needed a copyrighted image used which always makes me a little itchy.  But this special baby has a Disney themed nursery waiting.  I really prefer to invent my own cartoon characters but I actually loved putting this painting together.

I am still preparing for a total knee replacement next week.  However, I am also battling my blood pressure which has been extremely high.  If the blood pressure problem doesn't regulate I may be hobbling around a little longer - so, prayers appreciated!