Paintings lately

I love meeting the families that I get to meet through doing portraits.

I originally went to school to be a social worker so that I could work with abused and neglected children, so I studied a lot about families and how vitally important that little unit is to the development of children and to the overall structure of society.

And then I ended up getting a degree in art and minoring in family sciences and now I get to combine both, celebrating families through art.

I love getting little glimpses into the lives of these beautiful families of all different shapes and sizes and see how they fit together.

I'm so grateful I get to do this!

Some Cute-Faced Families

I've started taking clients again for family portraits after being on maternity leave for a while and I can't even tell you how much I love doing it!

It's so fun to get to know these families who I've never even met, through their photos and try to portray a little bit of who they are through these paintings.

What Color is Christmas?

My incredibly talented cousin, Rachel, runs a preschool out of her home.

She likes to get books from the library to read in her preschool, and she likes to be able to check out books that relate to whatever holiday is coming up, but as expected, most of the books are checked out when it gets close to the holiday that they relate to.

So she decided that she wanted to write her own holiday books so that she wouldn't have to worry about whether or not they would be available.

 She asked me to illustrate the first one, which is about colors at Christmas time.

It was neat to see how the project developed because based on the text, the illustrations could just have a picture of a wreathe or a star but because I love drawing people I threw some people into the sample illustrations interacting with the objects that were being described.

 When my cousin saw that, she had the idea of creating a little family that would be decorating their home for Christmas, so that it would be the same people throughout the whole book and from that stemmed these illustrations.

These are some of my favorites from the book.

A wedding and a cake-topper

This cute couple got married today (the red-head is Adam's brother):

Kyrsten (the bride) asked me a while ago if I knew anyone who did clay cake-toppers and I didn't.

 As we were texting back and forth about where to find little clay people, I pulled out the fimo clay that I used to play with when I was in middle school and started playing around to see if I could possibly make a decent looking clay person.

And this was the result:

Seth is an avid golfer (he's in the golf program in Las Vegas) and Kyrsten likes soccer.

We love Kyrsten and I'm kind of stoked to have someone as amazing as her as a sister now.

Having grown up with no sisters I kind of lucked out with the sisters I've gained from marrying Adam because they are incredible!

The wedding and reception were beautiful.

Ella had the snottiest nose you've ever seen and a rash on her face that I have yet to figure out how to get rid of and she was so tired while we were taking family pictures, I'm pretty sure she is screaming or bawling her head off in every single one.

Awesome.

(Above picture from my brother-in-law, Jake)

 

A Family of Five

This is a family portrait I just finished recently of this incredibly adorable family!

I had never met them before so the mom of the family added me on facebook so that I could go through her photos and get an idea of their personalities and it was fun because I felt like I really got to know them through all of her photos of them.

She takes beautiful photos of her family and captures all aspects of their lives.

Unfortunately I can't take any more commissions to do family portraits like this right now because I have several other big projects I'm in the middle of right now and then I'm having a baby so like I mentioned in my last post I'm setting aside art for a little while.

But it's so fun to do these portraits, I'll miss getting to do this for a little while!

Colorful rings and a green balloon

This is a piece I did for this amazing girl I know who wanted an illustration of her adorable family to give to her husband for Christmas.

She has twin boys named Gray and Nash.

It was so fun to work with Kristin and to try and get the boys to look like themselves.

And this was another piece I did for Christmas that was fun to do.

When I look at a piece I've done it makes me think of whatever I watching or listening to in the background while I was working on the piece. 

That flower dress makes me think of the Christmas music concert that was playing on TV while I painted it.

And the bear reminds me of House Hunters International, which must have been playing while I painted him-- ha!

Another Cute Little Family

This is the Stowers, a very cute family that we know.

When Tayli requested a picture of her family in this style I was so excited because her family is absolutely adorable.

I snagged some pictures from one of her blogs to use as reference as I did the piece and just look at the cuteness of this family:

Little Family

You know you have an amazing husband when he helps distract the baby while you change her diaper and she is sobbing so hard because she has the most awful and painful diaper rash you've ever seen and he is crying big tears right along with that little girl because he is so sad that she is in so much pain.

You know you have a sweet babe when the only time she sits still is when you sing to her and she just lays her head against your chest and listens to you sing.

You know things are happy when Saturdays are the best day ever because you get to be together as a family and even though you don't have any plans, just being together for the day is enough to know that the day will be good.

Mother

Happy Mother's Day, beautiful mother of mine!

The closet is a mess

Our closet should look like this:

Once my cousin was helping me move into my apartment at school and she organized my clothes so that they were all color coordinated and I loved it so much I've been doing it ever since. I know, it's a weird habit, huh? 

But also really cool to look at!

But instead it looks like this:

I took all the clean clothes from the dryer and threw it in a basket with all the clean clothes that were piled in the bedroom and dumped it all into the closet, so at least the bedroom looks clean now.

Instead of cleaning, I have been working on things like this:

Random drawings on onesies

Illustrations for Laura

And Ella is happy because I play with her instead of put away clothes

And Adam is happy because I make him yummy food like this:

Picture and recipe from Our Best Bites

And, of course, I've got March Madness to worry about:

No, I don't watch any of the games, but the winner in the Jones family gets a free dinner so I flipped a coin to help me fill out a bracket. Unfortunately, my chances of winning hugely decreased when Missouri lost, so now I'm rooting for Adam's bracket.

And there are wonderfully dear friends that we haven't seen in so long to see:

 And walks to go on.

So the closet is going to have to wait.

Back before a certain little girl arrived...

So, I did this drawing that was used for a charity organization called Carollama in Provo. They go caroling with llamas and collect food for the food bank-- pretty awesome!

They changed up the image a bit for their posters and t-shirts. 

I secretly wish they had sent me one of their t-shirts because that would have been cool to have one with my illustration on it.

Images from their facebook page