Featured Artist Of The Week: Lisa Marie from DawdlingDoodles

Funny Cartoon Couple Girl Kissing and Boy Mad by DawdlingDoodles

Do you like quirky, yet pretty art? Then Dawdling Doodles has exactly what you need. Artist Lisa Marie has created a charming series of adorable and sometimes funny pieces of art, that are softly colored and simply beautiful. I had a chance to ask her a few questions a few days ago and wanted to share this interview here with you.

Me:  How long have you been drawing and creating art?
Lisa: Pretty sure I was born with a crayon in my hand. But I’ve been making art professionally for about 5 years now (opened my studio after I completed my MA in Art History). The doodles started about 1 year ago. Mostly in my studio I create fine art portraits and I needed a way to decompress artistically, so I began doodling on scrap pieces of paper. After a while, I had a pile of cartoon images and I figured I would put them to work – that’s how my doodle blog was born.

Me:  Your Dawdling Doodles are charming, and showcase a quirky sense of humor. How did you come about putting them on Zazzle?
Lisa: Thank you! I already had a Zazzle store showcasing my fine art drawings (http://www.zazzle.com/nosesnposesfromalm), hence opening a second store showing silly doodles (http://www.zazzle.com/dawdlingdoodles) was a fun side project at first. But then they became very popular and it just started to grow and grow! Now it’s just part of my regular studio routine.

Cartoon Child with Wolf Drawing by DawdlingDoodles

Me: What is your favorite aspect of creating art for Zazzle?
Lisa: I love seeing where all my customers come from! The idea that someone in Ireland or Switzerland is wearing one of my doodles on a t-shirt makes me smile! And around the holidays, when the store gets really busy, it’s really fantastic to think that people all over the world are giving my doodles as presents! Sometimes I think there’s no greater gift than the gift of humor.

Me: Take us through your process of creating a piece. Do you sit down with a specific idea in mind, or do you let your creativity flow without boundaries when you sit down to create a piece?
Lisa: Heh, ummm……it’s pretty sporadic. Doodles happen when I need a break from some realistic portrait that I’m drawing for a customer. Usually, I just grab a piece of paper and start to play. Eventually, one particular doodle catches my eye and that’s the one I commit to finishing. If I really want to make something pop, I’ll even put it in Photoshop and enhance some details. But I have a strict rule to never take my doodles too seriously. If I overwork a cartoon, it loses that impulsive playful feel.

Me: How can the audience connect with you outside of Zazzle? Do you have any social media accounts or blogs you want to mention?
Lisa: Oh, I’m all over the place! They can find me on Instagram (ArtistryByLisaMarie), they may see my fine art portraits at ArtistrybyLisamarie.wordpress.com, and they can see a new doodle every Monday on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DawdlingDoodles

Me: What would you like to tell an independent artist out there, who is trying to get the nerve up to put themselves out there?
Lisa: There will never be a “perfect time” to start, so just go for it! Really, sharing your art can be one of the greatest hurdles for a new artist. You just have to look the computer square in the keyboard and put your stuff out there!

Thanks for taking the time to answers these questions.

As always, please support independent artists with your purchase. And stop by again next week, when I will feature another exciting independent artist.

Have a blessed day!

Claudia

Taking Chances – A Celebrate The Small Things Blog Post

 

Courage by SimpleStrongWords

Welcome to my weekly Gratitude post – part of Lexa Cain’s “Celebrate The Small Things” blog hop. Why not join us?

Taking chances takes courage. Sometimes it takes moving outside of one’s comfort zone, putting yourself out there, no matter what, even if it means whatever the endeavour it can fail.

I have been wanting to create a design and lifestyle blog for a while. This week I am celebrating my first post upon it. Does it mean that it will succeed? I don’t know, but at least I can try.

Trying new things, and following through on a commitment also takes courage. I celebrate my children’s decision to eat differently, ethically. My daughter is vegan, my son turned vegetarian a few months ago. Both of these choices take commitment and conviction. I am proud of their consciousness of how to live a more positive life.

I celebrate the beginning of September, which always means to me to switch gears toward the Fall and Winter seasons. Even though I love heat, I love the colors and energy of Autumn, and even though this year, I will not be seeing much of that in person (Las Vegas is not known for the foliage, lol), I am emerging myself into the design and creativity that this season brings with it.

What are you celebrating this week? Have you accomplished something that you want to share? Join the blog hop here! 

Blessings

Claudia

A Moment Of Gratitude – A Celebrate The Small Things Blog Post

Las Vegas aerial view taken from a blimp by DanitaDelimont
Poster is available via Zazzle

It is time again to join Lexa Cain for her weekly blog hop “Celebrate The Small Things” You can join this ever-growing list of gratitude practitioners there. Remember, when you look close enough, you will always find something to be grateful for.

This week I am grateful that our move is now in it’s final stages, and we are actually getting on the road on Tuesday. I am looking forward to finally moving out of here, and toward the West, something we all have been looking forward to for a while now. Las Vegas, here we come!

I am grateful that I am getting better at moving efficiently and in a more organized manner. This will come in handy in the near future again, our stay in Las Vegas is limited to about 6 months. So, basically as soon as we unpacked, we are going to re-pack. I better have that down to a science by then!

I am grateful that I have chosen to take the next few days off, and that I am flexible enough to do so. It is so much harder when your schedule is dictated by a typical job. I am glad that I am in charge of my own schedule.

I am grateful that found some baby pictures of my daughter, I did not remember we had. Somehow they got mixed in with some tax papers (I don’t know how that happened), but they are adorable, and put a smile on my face. I can’t wait to tease her with them later on today.

Speaking of pictures, going through all of our stuff, I also came across my own basic training pictures. Now there is something to scare the kids with. Is it a bad thing to be grateful for having been hurt bad enough in basic training to receive a medical discharge? Well, I am, because it brought me to this time and place, something that might have never happened would I have actually been physically able to stay. I guess it is possible to be grateful for torn ligaments and improper medical treatment after all. Was not that much fun when it happened, though.

What are you grateful for this week? I hope you take the time to write a blog post, and join the hop, or create a list in your journal. Gratitude is a practice that should be held sacred by everyone, no matter which spiritual background or the lack thereof  one comes from.

Have a great weekend!

Claudia

P.S. I will not be a part of next weeks hop. Monday will be the last day I will be on this blog until end of June. See you in July!

Gratitude – A Celebrate The Small Things Blog Post

It has been way too long since I have participated in the “Celebrate The Small Things” blog hop, even though I think it is one of the most positive link ups around. So without further ado, this shall be remedied today.

There is so much to be grateful for anyway. We are finally getting over whatever this viral infection was, that the entire family suffered from for almost two weeks. It feels good to be able to breathe, without coughing my lungs out. I am very grateful for that.

My dog (the hyper- allergic one I wrote about before) is getting her fur back! That took a while, but it is all coming back now, finally. She has made such a tremendous improvement since we went all crazy and changed, well just about everything, including me making her dog food from scratch.

I am grateful for the fact that the design part of our business is working well. I got more ideas than I know what to do with (which is a normal state for me), and I am itching to implement every single one of them.

I am also grateful that I am writing again like crazy, not just flash fiction and haiku, but also on the trilogy, but I know better to even try to come up with a publication schedule until after the move. While I do not mind taking on a lot of work, I know better than to overdo what I put upon myself. After all, we still have the transportation aspect of our business to run, and I do homeschool both of my kids.

I am grateful that I have come across so many different cool bloggers over the last  few weeks, and I had a chance to learn so much from them. Implementing these lessons will take me a little while, but that is okay. There is always something to learn, isn’t there?

So, now I am wondering what you are grateful for? What have you come across this week, that made you appreciate the world around you just a little more? Oh, and check out the other bloggers participating in this link up here! 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Blessings

Claudia