Welcoming Baby Cards

New Line Of Baby Cards On GCU!

I often times overlook Illustrator but on occasion I get around to opening it up and playing around with it. Since I don't have a drawing tablet Illustrator is not my first choice to use but I wanted to do another line of simple baby cards for single up to quadruple births and I wanted to make them multi-cultural.

First I started out with the background, I made a small swatch of polka dots in light and dark pink then added it to the swatch pallet. I applied it to my card background and added type on top. To draw the baby I started out with a circle for the face, drew half circles for the eyes, two small circles for the cheeks and placed them accordingly. To make the pacifier I made an oval and placed a half oval on top for the handle.

To make the bonnet and bow I began with a oval made from the pentagon tool. As I was stretching it I held the up arrow so the sides increased to around twenty or so. I used the "pucker and bloat" filter to make the billows in the bonnet. I then added a smaller regular oval to serve as the lip. For the bow I made a triangle and moved the anchor points to round it out. I copied and pasted in front of the first triangle and reflected it to form the other side of the bow. Add a circle for the knot, some lines for the creases, and the bow is finished. For the tails I just drew them freehand with my mouse and repeated the copy, paste, reflect for the other side. I moved the bonnet behind the face and the bow in front and placed it on my card. To change complexions and colors was easy from there by just selecting the items and picking the colors from the color palette. To add extra babies I copied the face after grouping all of the shapes and pasted them.

There are cards for single, twins, triplets and quadruplets and if you need more babies feel free to drop me a line and I will be more than happy to make one up for you. Cards are $2.79 with bulk purchases being lower.

to be continued...

Well It has been 9 days since my last update and I am just popping in to say that I have been very busy. Most of my time in the next coming days will be spent web cleaning and orgnanizing my stores, adding the new Say It With Color designs to CafePress and trying to draw a few new illustrations for Spring. I spent most of Monday in a garage with my car up on a lift and that afforded me a few little doodles, not many because it was not the most relaxing of places to draw, but look for two new cat designs for Easter. Hopefully the web cleaning will not take too long but my CafePress store has been a bit neglected because of technical issues so until then keep checking back and I will be sure to update everyone as soon as I can.

to be continued...

Penelope - The Lucky Black Cat

Penelope is one of my cats, or should I say I am her human. I wasn't inspired to paint today but out of the corner of my eye I caught Penelope staring at me. Although she does this often (which means she is looking for a way to get on my lap without being noticed) this time I grabbed my pencil and sketched her before she had that chance. I don't normally paint or sketch without a photo because for me it is easier when something doesn't move around. I gave it a try though and it sort of looks like her, not too bad for a first shot.

While I did manage to get the sketch almost completed before she moved in, the remainder of the painting was completed with her purring contentedly on my lap.

to be continued...

Tiger - Silent Stalker

Well sometimes being blocked has it's advantages. Although I have managed to put out a small cow illustration I haven't painted anything really serious in quite some time. Not really knowing what to do with myself today I came across a photograph I took last year of a beautiful female tiger. The best part of the photograph was that there weren't any bars in the way and she was right up against the glass panel looking way across the other side of the enclosure at her sisters playing on the hilltop. I must say it was a once in a lifetime shot second only to photographing this beautiful animal in the wild. Anyway I kind of forgot about it until I was shuffling through some papers today and I was inspired.

I began with a rough sketch on Arches 140lb cold pressed watercolor paper, a paper I reserve for those special paintings because of the cost. When I was satisfied with that I used a small amount of frisket to keep the whiskers from disappearing. I don't like to rely on frisket to often but for this purpose I made an exception. Besides do you know how hard it would be to paint around those whiskers and still have a free brushstroke?

I began to lay in the color by layering light washes, begining with a light ochre and adding burnt sienna as I went along. When I was satisfied with the browns and ochres I began to use an ivory black (Most watercolorists do not use this color for reasons I never quite understood, I however embrace any color I can get my paws on) I started off with a wash of black in the general areas and began shading her fur. When I was ok with what I had I took a break to work on the eyes. Eyes can make or break a painting and I paid close attention to it. Bright yellow was layed in with a small amount of spring green to give them a sparkle only a cat's eye seems to have. A light shading of black to round them and carefully a painted iris leaving the highlight finished them off.

Now the fun part, the stripes. Using a wash of ivory and a relatively thin brush I lightly painted the stripes as if I was holding a pencil and sketching them in. I then softened the edges to make them rest into the fur.

Now the worst part, the background. How I hate this part, what to do? Shall I use the greens of the jungle and soften the background to suggest foliage or should I just keep it simple and compliment the neutrals of the painting so as not to distract the detail I worked so hard on or should I combine the two? At first I thought to combine the two add some olvie and forest greens to the dark sepia tones but as I began to paint I realized that keeping this simple and monotone was the way to go.

So that is how this painting came about. It took me about 2½ hours to complete, the original painting measuring 8x10, twice the size I normally paint. Hopefully you enjoy it.

Silent Stalker can be found on Zazzle, RedBubble, and Greeting Card Universe

to be continued...

13 Black Cats Designs is now on Redbubble

13 Black Cat Designs has finally signed on to Redbubble

In the coming days I will be uploading some of my more serious and larger works to Redbubble, adding this to my already growing list of things to do. I also intend to update my main site and upload a new design I am working on to Greeting Card Universe and Zazzle. I have been having trouble with CafePress with timeout issues and that is why my shop has not been updated in quite some time. Hopefully this will be resolved as soon as I stop getting the runaround from everyone there. As for the new design, it involves a few cows. The new design is actually a painting I painted many years ago in acrylic on a milk can and a lazy susan, I just recreated it in watercolor for my stores. As soon as it is ready I will give you the scoop right here, so come often.

to be continued...

Yet Another Redesign

Well in a few hours it will be a new year and with it comes a new website. Yes I have yet again redesigned my website. I just could not get happy with the layout of the past one and my knowledge of HTML and CSS/Java and all of the bells and whistles were lacking. I finally broke down and bought a program to help me and help it did.

Now everything is in better order under each design and you will be able to choose which store you would like to purchase from. Hopefully it will make browsing and shopping much easier.

Just roll over an image and a pop out menu will let you pick which store you would like to browse and buy.

Greeting cards are available in all three stores but I recommend if you only want one to use Greeting Card Universe, the quality and service is outstanding and you won't be disappointed. Of course you can buy them in bulk but I also offer box sets on CafePress. As for the other gift items the quality is superb no matter which store you choose. So feel free to browse around and drop an email if you so choose. Any feedback is appreciated.

Now hopefully some inspiration will hit and with it new designs so check back soon and see what is new!

to be continued...

New Website Design

Well I have been working tirelessly trying to get my main website up and running and in a more consistent state. (see a little sneak peek to the left) I am nearly half way through now and still have a way to go. I plan on you being able to shop directly from my website. Hopefully it works out smoothly for everyone, trying to maintain 3 stores into one website is a big job. Hopefully I didn't make it too confusing. All of this redesigning is taking up quite a lot of my time and because of this my artwork has suffered a bit. I do however have a small back log of things just waiting to be scanned in and uploaded. Leave it to me to start a major upheaval on the cusp of the holiday season. It may not seem like it now but Halloween is just around the corner then you sneeze and we are celebrating New Years Eve. I would have liked to do more Samhain designs and I may take a short break from the main site to do this but being an artist I have a tendency to flit about, it gets done just not in a linear way. I have also added some extra features to my site including a look at the staff that works behind the scenes at their jobs and a few links that you may be interested in as well as a section just for new designs so you don't have to go hunting for them.

I guess for now that will be it, I just needed to take a short break and write in non-html format to keep my sanity. Keep an eye out for the new site, hopefully it won't be too much longer.

to be continued...

An Introduction of Myself

For those of you who just happen upon me and are not familiar with my work let me introduce myself. My name is Nikki and I started 13 Black Cats Designs around February of 2008. Initially I began posting my work online as a means of therapy, a way to work through a very tough time in my life that was full of extreme loss and sadness, a bit of regret and anger too. In reality it was a way to drag myself out of bed.

I started simply with just CafePress, not expecting much to happen but that was not to be true. I began getting feedback that was all positive and encouragement, both from strangers and friends, it even helped an old friend reconnect with me. Then a few sales happened and I became interested in painting again, which I never thought would ever be and I opened a second store, this time on Zazzle and right after Greeting Card Universe. To connect them all I purchased my own domain and I am now in the process of a major overhaul and hope to have it all updated soon. With all of that I decided to add a blog. I have been fighting it, after all who cares what I have to say or for that matter do I have anything worth saying? Well I am not sure on the last two questions but I thought I would give it a try. Perhaps I will showcase a few designs and tell how they came about, maybe a drawing lesson or two, who knows? I guess it just depends on how the wind blows.

to be continued...