Capo di tutti capi

Some time ago someone asked if I could make a Christmas gift for a girl showing her cat. The cat, named Behemot, is a real bad ass and he bites and scratches everyone, even his two-legged family. The goal was to show his attitude in the painting. I think I've managed really well :)

How do you like it?

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Window stars

Lately I've made Christmas decorations (it's my first time!) with my Love. We have created paper stars and hang them on golden and silver threads on a window. The look really really pretty :)

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Traditional printing classroom

I don't know if I have ever showed how my favourite place on the University looks. It's a place where I work (or rather 'worked') on my fab Faceless Faerie series of illustration. What I like the most about this place is that you can take over the whole room and then workflow is just incredible :) You just have to find the moment when you'll be alone there.

 This is the work place the way I see it when sitting at the great table. You can see a press in the middle, a table on the left where you apply the ink and make all those dirty preparations, a sink just behind the press to wash your dirty hands (it's better to wear gloves than try to wash off paint with water ;) ), on the right inside this kind of aquarium is a place where you wash off paint from your offset stencil. And on the table you can see my 'Bus' print :)

Faeries always sit somewhere near me :)

But during working on traditional prints they usually sleep in my pencil case or on my notebooks :)

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Not dead and artsy

I have a lot of photos to share with you :) So here we go:

It may look sweet but in reality this smelly dog of ours slept in my parents untidy bed again and the cat was trying to punch her ;P The cat was running to fast for me to take a good photo so only the one where she was getting ready looks sharp enough. On the other way my dog is deadly afraid of all sorts of cameras - maybe she thinks her soul will be stolen when I take a picture of her. Who knows :)

Some time ago I was commissioned to paint a portrait of a cat. It's already finished but I can't show it before Christmas as it's a surprise Christmas gift. But it looks great :)

 I am crafty lately because I found something that really caught my attention - beaded embroidery. I've already made 3 cell phone cases with beads; one sold, one a Christmas gift. I have few more on the way - the one with a yellow flower will be for sale.

 My cat likes to accompany me when I work (she actually sleeps on my knees right now too). To be true: I prefer when she sleeps while I work since she can make a great mess when she's awake. Lately she has run through my oil paints palette 3 times, each of the time ending in a struggle of washing her paws with a soap under the tap.

Sweet kitty as a conclusion of my live lately. Marie Antoinette usually sleeps in weird poses. It's so cute :)

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Little Pieces Sell-Out

It's been a while since the previous sell-out. And since I've made a lot of new small pictures it's a good opportunity to sell them all :)

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Afterwards - Illustration Friday

He thought that it will end up differently ;)

I've recorded the process of making this picture:
* all 4 videos

Watch live streaming video from adelaida at livestream.com

And here are some sketches too:

And now you know exactly how I work :D

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Light Box

Say hello to my new friend Aurora :)

She's a light box, or should I rather say, a light TABLE, since she's enormous! 

I have been looking for a light box for a while, even considering making one by myself (or by my-Love). And suddenly I've found a Polish company that provides plexiglass but they also make  light boxes. Cheap ones. For my monstrous Aurora I've paid 360 PLN (about  126 USD or 91 EUR). And she's 60cm x 60cm (23.6x23.6 inch). Other light boxes I've found were 1/3 smaller and twice as expensive.

She'll be a great addition for my atelier when I will have one eventually :) Gosh, I can't wait to start making some huge sketches on it :D

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Gift from me to me

It's important keep oneself happy. And for me it means tasty coffee, sleeping as long as I can and buying books. Books with pictures mostly. And this is one of them :)

A collection of chosen Arthur Rackham's illustrations. Gosh, I adore his works *__*

This book worked as it should - I want to draw and paint right this second! :D

Little update from my silly cat :3

*I don't know what you are talking about... And please clean this mess, it looks horrible*

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Racing - Illustration Friday

'Big feet are the best way to be good at racing' said the hare.

And some sketches of the characters:

This is an illustration to a nursery-rhyme by Ignacy Krasicki entitled "Lew i zwierzeta" (The lion and the animals).

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Daily Sketch - 103

A sketch to this week's Illustration Friday's topic 'spooky'. I will finish this later on because I feel I can make more of this idea than just a sketch :)

You can see the process of making this sketch on my LiveStream Channel.

Here's my friend's intake on this topic --> click.

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Ancient - Illustration Friday; Daily Sketch - 102

When I thought 'ancient' a picture of goddess came to my mind but it was a too complicated vision to put it into canvas in 30 minutes, so my version of Bastet goddess must do it :) She looks nice, doesn't she?

You can see my friend's daily sketch on this topic on her blog.
As usually you can see the process of making this sketch on my LiveStream Channel.

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Daily Sketch - 101 of IF's topic 'magic'

This would be a nice picture when finished :)

My friend's version of this topic.

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Vintage - Illustration Friday

First old IF topic that's on their list. Good excuse to make it a more completed piece :)

Have you seen your old hat lately?

Few sketches fir this piece:

I've recorded the whole process of making this piece on my LiveStream Channel. I've made it in 6 parts (stopped the recording when the paint needed to dry and when I needed to sleep ;P). Here's the last part:

adelaida on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Would you like to see more live recordings like this? But maybe with a better camera.

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Cling - Illustration Friday; Daily Sketch - 100

One hundred Daily Sketches! Wow :D

I was trying to make it as simple as possible. Hope it worked :)
As usually you can see the process of making this sketch on my LiveStream channel.

My friend's version of this topic.

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SketchCrawl

Have you ever heard of SketchCrawl? I found out about it today. And took immediate action :)

The 29th edition will take place on 16th October, so it's almost no time left to organize a great bunch of people but facebook has been invented for cases like this, hasn't it?

Visit the SketchCrawl web site to find out if your town takes pa2rt in it. If not - organize it. It sounds like a great fun.

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Regal - Illustration Friday; Daily Sketch - 99

I've decided to change my daily Sketch into Daily Dictionary (I have been doing this some time ago - you make a sketch on one specific word). But because there are so many Illustration Friday themes I have not used before I've decided to do them - from the oldest ones to most recent. First one was 'vintage' and I'm changing my sketch of it into a watercolour piece (you can see the process on my LiveStream channel; it's not finished yet) and the second one is 'regal' and that's what came out of it :)

Regal manners :3

You can see the process of making this piece here:

Watch live streaming video from adelaida at livestream.com

My friend Kamila and my sister are making those Daily Sketches too!

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Videos on illustration

3 videos I came across by accident but they are really interesting and worth seeing.


How to illustrate a book - Part 1 from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.


How to illustrate a book - Part 2 from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.


Lynne Chapman on Sketchbooks from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.

Gosh, I miss illustrating a book - it's time to be found for a new assignment :3

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Transportation - Illustration Friday; DS - 98

 

The best transportation is a free transportation, don't you think? maybe you need a ride? Meow? :3

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Beneath - Illustration Friday

Occupied with everyday life we sometimes don't see our true selves. We don't look beneath our own skin.

I wanted to make this piece watercolour but since there's no time left for that the ink version have to do it. Unfortunately, there are no as many details as I wanted to make (because this piece was intended to be a final sketch for watercolour). So you have to imagine that:
- most of the leaves on the tree are visible and quite detailed
- those bruises and sparkles on the water are well drawn too - you can see that it's a water already but in a better version you'd also think that it's a damn pretty water :D
- the thing on the girls hair is a bird's nest and there are little birds inside it and bigger ones flying nearby
And that would be the main point of this work - in everyday life we only hear that those noisy little birds are living in our hair and making it a mess. We can not see that we are like a home tree for them.

More sketches for this work:

My cat Marie Antoinette (Tosia) helped me too :3

*Oh, those silly drawings... Can't you do something more constructive?*

*Play with me!* It's quite hard to teach her not to bite paper. She already left her marks on my too-freaking-expensive-paper for traditional printing.

 *Booooring...*

 And now it's time for a silly face :D :D

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