Summer Tastes Delicious

When I was a kid we couldn't wait for "Mr. Frosty's" to open. It was a tiny soft serve stand with those candy eyes for the kid's cones. I'm sure there was nothing special about it, but it was ice-cream.

When I was a teenager UDF (United Dairy Farmer's) was our ice-cream shop of choice. Lucky for impatient teenagers, that delightfulness was open year round.

Now I live not far from some of the most delicious ice-cream ever made. "The Chief" has crazy long lines, but it's well worth it.  And I kind of think it's fun that everyone comes out and hangs around together waiting for their ice-cream cones.

Do you have a favorite ice-cream shop?

What's your favorite flavor? Last year mine was peanut-butter, but this year I'm loving mint-chocolate-chip.

Goldie Locks

Hand Colored with Ink & Colored Pencil

My latest ooak listing. I hope to have some more up tomorrow. The fact is I have a BUNCH of these in my apartment, I just haven't gotten around to editing the photos yet. They all have bright, colored envelopes to go with them, that have sticky closures (no gross glue taste!) and of course they're all adorable.

I did a show back in December where I had a pretty good crowd of girls standing around carefully trying to select the very best of my business cards to take home. Which was a nice distraction while their mom's were mouthing their orders over the little girl's heads!

But of course the guys weren't as excited. One dad looked at a card similar to this one and said, "It's all about the hair isn't it?" His tone implied he'd rather have his team lose the super bowl every year for the rest of his life than deal with my art on his walls, but his wife seemed interested!

Valentine Cutie

This sweetie is all set for candy hearts and roses.

I know a lot of single people are not in love with valentine's day. The dramatic wear black, the bitter post facebook rants, the embarrassed ignore it.

Personally, I delight in valentine's day. It easily wins the classiest holiday color scheme and all the over decor is cute enough to use year round. V-day has the dubious honor of being the only holiday I'll actually be festive for.

Some years I go to parties with friends, this year I'll probably be alone again, sipping pink whipped cream from my white-chocolate mocha. I love it all.

What's your favorite holiday?

Needle in a...

 Sometimes I just have to draw something goofy to break myself out of a rut. When I was a kid I used to draw funny or overly literal illustrations for common sayings (like, a bunch of butterflies chatting at a party - social butterflies), but I decided to just go literal for "Needle in a Haystack"

I did think of another possible illustration for it - have you ever had a Haystack Supper? Around here they serve "haystacks" for fundraisers mostly - it' a bunch of food out in bowls and you pile what you want onto your plate in layers.

We had it at our last office lunch - there were crackers, lettuce, ground beef, nacho cheese, Doritos, pineapple chunks, diced peppers, tomatoes and probably more.

I didn't have all of that mixed together - but other people did.

Mmmmm. Tasty.

Acceptable Addictions

"They're going to hate us, in the beginning, but we'll get 'em in the end. And do you know why?

Because we'll sell them cheap books and legal, addictive stimulants."

 - Tom Hanks as Joe Fox, You've Got Mail   

I have an addiction to reading and coffee. I'll take them individually, but nothing beats the two together. My former roommate and I have a near weekly tradition of going to Barne's & Noble, ordering our favorite drink and reading for as long as our schedules will let us. Or until the shop closes. 

I can also be found most Sundays nursing a double vanilla chai with ghirardelli chocolate and a favorite novel at a local coffee house.

Which is probably why so many of my doodles involve girls sipping mugs of coffee while they enjoy a book.

In Progress - 2

So I saved the previous version of this as a jpg to post online and then I went back and saw that I hadn't saved the photoshop file, just the flattened file. Which would normally mean that I would have to start all over, but I thought I'd experament a little with this one and see what I could do.

It's not too bad, although it did require messing  around with the blending modes more than usual and if I continue to work on it this way I'll have to be much more careful about coloring inside the lines. The way I usually layer means that each part of the drawing has opaque bottom layer that keeps the objects below it from showing through, but since I'm coloring over the line art instead of underneath, that's not possible.

Sub-Sublime

I'm deathly afraid of skin cancer, so tanning beds are not my thing. On the other hand, neither is snow-white skin - especially when it's just my legs. Normally this doesn't matter because I wear pants year round (hence the whiteness), but on the rare occasion that I don a skirt - particularly a short one...well.

So I bought some bronzer, hoping to make my legs glow a bit less. It was "instant", but not. So it wasn't until the next morning, the day of my close friend's wedding rehearsal that my legs matched the rest of me. Except of course the bits where I had somehow gotten dabs of bronzer on my already tan arms.

I spent half the day at the office panicking and looking up how to take bronzer off skin. Scrubbing, of course, I had tried. Nothing happened.

So after work I bought lemon juice and used cotton balls to scrub it onto my skin. It worked a bit, but finally I resorted to what some people on the internet had said would "take the bronzer right off" and others had warned would have a bad reaction with skin - hydrogen peroxide. Well I know it irritates your skin and shouldn't be used in cuts because it can hinder healing, but on the other hand my mom used to use it on us all the time so how bad could it be?

Yeah, I know, you're thinking I got a rash or took off the top layer of my skin or something, but really it went pretty well. It didn't take the bronzer "right off" but it did fade it alot, except for a couple tiny splotches which refuse to fade. It was at least enough to keep anyone from commenting on it.

God Is Bigger Than You Think

Check out my flickr stream to see a bigger, better version of this.

This piece started out as a sketch during youth group, I often do fun things with the message titles and since we were talking about how huge the universe is I added this little girl with her telescope.
I never intended the background to be so grungy - but I just kept adding textures. Almost entirely from Bittbox though the stars are from JoannaStar on Deviant Art.

Hopefully I'll have this available as an 8x10 print in my etsy shop soon.

All Images are property of Melody DuVal, please do not use in any way without permission.

For my day job I do a lot of period illustrations (1930s-1940s mostly). I have (on loan) a battered primer from the 30s that I use to get an idea of the clothing and I also rely on  blogs dedicated to old advertisements and photos. Beauty Is A Thing of the Past has all kinds of great photos from hair dressers magazines that are fantastic in figuring out how to style hair. And Found In Mom's Basement is a terrific source of vintage advertising. I've learned a lot doing these illustrations.

I've also done a ton of Amish illustrations. If you're ever up in Shipshewana, IN you can look out for the Childhood Chuckles, Farmyard Funnies & Thoughts with Thelma book series. The first two are collections of stories sent in by (mostly) Amish people and the Thelma series is a series of stories by a local Amish wife and mother who lives on a diary farm.

All of this is great fun and I adore it. But sometimes you just want to draw something modern.

Clay Chic's Bad Hair Day Earring's

I designed this curly haired girl for Clay Chic's Bad Hair Day Earrings. She makes these huge sterling earrings that are so stunning no one will be looking at your hair. She'll be making hang tags with this image on them.

All images on this blog are property of Melody DuVal. Please do not use with-out permission.

Waiting

My computer has the personality of a moody teenager. Sometimes it's a hard worker, eager to help. Other times, for no apparent reason, it turns surly and refuses to do one thing.

During these times I doodle. Sometimes my doodles are my more interesting art. I don't have to play it safe, get the angles and perspective right. I just draw what I want.

This was drawn in pencil, so it didn't scan very well, but layering some colors on top of the line art and playing with the blending mode in photoshop brought out more of the details.

That's one thing about pencil, you get all these nice, fine, wispy details, but they're not much good for a finished project. You lose them once you've neatly inked the drawing in.

Of course, some times you see them brought out on purpose. A few years back Hot Topic had a great "Alice in Wonderland" shirt that had sketches from the Disney film of Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. And recently, in Target, there were plates, cups, etc. that had sketches of Alice and other animated film characters (all Disney). I loved the sketches, though I didn't care for the added art the designer used to "complete" the work.

This Little Piggy

Some rejected illustrations, they were hoping for nudist pigs

Upgrade?

Signs your computer is too slow. When you have time to sketch and ink multiple characters while you're waiting for your real work to finish saving.

I didn't put a lot into coloring these, clearly, but I thought a little color might be nice after so many pencil sketches.

Any Given Sunday

When I was a little girl some pastors used to tell my mother that I shouldn't be drawing in church or that if I was drawing it should be about the sermon. Apparently my mom thought that could get awkward ("So, how did you illustrate Song of Solomon, Melody?") or difficult ("Well now, that's an nice drawing of predestination, but I think your propitiation could use some more shading."). Or maybe she just thought that dealing with an antsy six year old might keep her from listening very well.

In any case, she didn't make me stop.

Over the years I went from doodling on the back or in the margins of bulletins to sneaking in my own blank paper to brazenly carrying in my sketchbook along with my bible.  Maybe some people think I'm not paying attention, but I can only tell them what I have told every teacher in my life.

It helps me focus.

If I don't draw my mind wanders, drawing keeps me grounded in the here and now. And as you can see, it doesn't keep me from note-taking either.

Art As Expression

I do a lot of drawing and while a small portion ends up in my etsy shop as finished art, I thought it would be fun to have a place to put some of my fun doodles and cartoons.




I have a lot of pent up frustration from waiting in grocery store lines.