Colors everywhere!

Typical me I have started another page before I have finished the first one.... Decided I would make this one all the colors of the rainbow- love that there are no rules! One thing I have realised while trying this out- these pages take a looooong time to color! And I have drawn a lot of pages over the last few years, I could be at this a while as I kind of feel like I should make my way through the lot! (ambitious plan I know....)

Playing with color

So I've been drawing coloring pages for years, and have sold them around the world for people to color. But until this last week I have never sat down and made time to color one myself! So when my new Pretty Patterns Coloring Book arrived from amazon I decided it was about time I had a go! Here is a pic I took, not finished yet but I am loving working on it, so relaxing and makes a nice change to work in color. Looking forward to working my way through the book!

Self Published!

I am very excited to have recently self published my first 2 coloring books! I guess that makes me an "indie" author/publisher!

The first of the 2 books is my best selling coloring book from my etsy shop. I had to make a new cover but the artwork is the same. Click here to see it on Amazon: Zendoodle Coloring Book

I then decided to make a brand new book to publish. It became available on amazon this week, and I love it! It contains some of my favourite patterns and I am very excited to see it for sale as a real book! Here it is: Pretty Patterns Zendoodle Coloring Book

I will also be making the second book available in Etsy as soon as possible :-)

I have a 2 year old!

Yesterday my little boy turned 2 years old, wow! This is pretty unbelievable, time just flies by so incredibly quickly once you have children.

We had a lovely party with family and a couple of his little friends- very cute! We spoiled him rotten of course and it is so lovely to see him playing with his toys, he is such a little monkey and is often doing anything other than play with toys like he is supposed to!

So I am now trying to get my head round the fact that I am old enough to have a 2 year old, he seems to have turned into a little boy all of a sudden, playing on his scooter and with his new garage for his cars. We are still waiting on him talking properly though, he is a man of few words, but he certainly knows how to communicate! ;-)

When the little man is asleep I am still working on my Etsy Shop, and loving it just as much as when I started it back in July! I have moved into making printable coloring books, and they have been really popular so far. I love thinking of people all over the world coloring my work, very cool. I base my designs on the art of Zentangle®. This art form is also referred to as Zendoodling, although if you check out the Zentangle website, you will see these are much more than doodles! I think what I love the most is that I only need a piece of paper and a black pen, and I can get going! No setting up with materials and fancy equipment- I don't have time for any of this!

If you want to see the kind of thing I have been working on, here is my best seller at the moment, my printable coloring book. (I am currently working on the next book, which is taking me a while!)

Zendoodle Coloring Book

Thanks for reading :-)

Etsy: www.etsy.com/JoArtyJo

Twitter: @JoArtyJo

Facebook: www.facebook.com/JoArtyJo

My Hand!!

Hello everyone!

Again been busy creating for the last few days- I am having a phase of having too many ideas in my head to know what to do when I get a chance to sitt down and do some art! Crazy feeling and it is actually resulting in some annoying artists block! When that happens I have decided to make an ACEO as they are so small I don't really worry about going wrong etc. Chances are I like what I do anyway once the pressure is off!

Okay so here as promised is my zendoodle hand :-D Can you see it?! A zendoodle is basically a 'controlled doodle'- a shape divided into sections and then filled with the most crazy and random of doodles. The doodles themselves do not have to be difficult to draw, it is the overall effect which looks so intricate, difficult and complicated!

It is for sale on Etsy at:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/79246733/original-ink-drawing-hand-zendoodle 

This took a good few hours to complete, and I thought I would share the progress with you!

Step 1: Draw round a side plate, place hand down then draw round hand....

Step 2: The scary bit- draw wavy lines across whole thing!

Step 3: Start doodling! This is the fun part, and from here on in I really do not know where the drawing will take me next. It is a case of, pen, paper, idea, GO!

Step 4: Keep Doodling!



Step 5: And doodling.... I really love all these tiny little spirals inside the larger spiral

Step 6: looking fuller

Step 7: I think the bit on the left (unintentionally) looks like veins! See I really have no idea what it will look like till it's happening in front of me! :-)



Step 8: I think this is my favourite section, the 'leaves'

Step 9: Keep doodling.... alomost there

Step 10: finished! (I went over the curved ines on the left to make them stand out more, that side was looking a little unfinished)



So there you have it, step by step, amost! it would be amost impossible to show you every single step! But hopefully you can see the systematic nature of the zendoodle, and how simplicity can turn into such intricacy. Have a go yourself- it is such good fun! You don't have to do something as elaborate as this, a random shape divided up can produce equally fantastic results!

If you like my work please take a look at my etsy store: www.etsy.com/shop/JoArtyJo

Sorry can't stay longer, all that photo uploading took ages! ;-)

Jo x x



My First Sale!!

Hi guys

Sorry for the gap in blogging, I have been working hard on my art- it's very easy to get swallowed by this laptop so I have been trying to keep it to a minimum while I finish my projects!

So- the big zendoodle hand is ALMOST finished- I hope to post pics on here soon!

Today I got a free spot in a BNR and made my first Etsy sale HOORAY! Now I feel like a genuine seller :-) I sold these little thank you tags which I only listed yesterday! I have now relisted them :-)



http://www.etsy.com/listing/79133656/thank-you-tags-unique-original-drawings

So thank you Kara who I know follows this blog- not only did she give me the idea for the tags but she also ran the BNR and nudged me to get involved. Thank you Kara I owe you sooo much!

So I am now mega excited and working on more tags to list :-D

Sorry to be short and sweet but sometimes that is the best ;-)

Jo x x

www.etsy.com/shop/JoArtyJo

Creative Day

Another boiling day here, hope the rest of the world is having such lovely weather!

We had a trip to the 'toddler splash park' in our local park- however being school holidays it was full of running/shouting/scooter riding crazy non toddlers, so LO did not really enjoy it as he was constantly in someone's way it seemed :-( may stay away from there till september now!

Also had a trip to HobbyCraft to pick up supplies :-) I plan to try making thank you tags and also greetings cards so picked up some cards and a cute little thank you stamp! Looking forward to getting started on those. Today however I was working on a new project, a big zendoodle of my hand! As it is a pretty big piece (compared to my others!) it is still unfinished. I have been taking photos along the way so I can show you all the steps to creating it! Very excited about that.... I hope it will be ready by tomorrow night.

For now here is my latest 5" x 7" zendoodle, I really love making these sooo much! Won't say too much about Zendoodles now as that is what the hand project is all about.



Well that's all for now- off to bed at a reasonable hour tonight as all of these late nights are really catching up with me now!
Remember my shop! www.etsy.com/shop/JoArtyJo

Lots of love

Jo x x