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!

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.

Summer Beauty

Check-out my flickr stream to see my latest piece in full!

It started out as just a doodle, but I loved the curve of her hair and her dress. I don't usually enlist outside help for my color choices, but this time I was inspired by Colour Lovers. I hope to have the print available in my etsy shop by the middle of June.

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.

Quick Sketches

Drawing the people around you always elicits a certain amount of paranoia. People know you sketch. They know you sketch people. They also know you've glanced at them no fewer than ten times in the past 60 seconds.

Fortunately there are some settings when, no matter how positive they are they're being sketched - they just can't do anything about it. Classes. Ceremonies. Waiting Rooms. They can't leave. Confronting you is awkward. Tada! Sketch subject!

School's Out

A crafter I met online is doing a project asking people to do a little drawing of school, classrooms, or teachers.

This is my submission.