Purple Pony Art Blog

I had a blast tabling at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. I have blogged about the show before - there's something for everyone there, even Grandma! Each year the show gets bigger and bigger and this year there were a lot of changes. The one that impacted me the most was that the entire Artist Alley would be housed in the Big Four Building, far away from the main action at the BMO Centre. This turned out to be a great move, as the foot traffic was amazing. I'll write more about the show because I'm still kind of sore and tired from standing, sitting and lugging the show suitcase around, but here's a sample of some of the on-demand pet sketches that I did. They were so popular that I have to snail mail out the ones I couldn't finish. If you want to see more, check out my Instagram (calzephyr77).

A post shared by Christine 🦄 (@calzephyr77) on Apr 30, 2018 at 2:10pm PDT	A post shared by Christine 🦄 (@calzephyr77) on Apr 30, 2018 at 10:58am PDT
A post shared by Christine 🦄 (@calzephyr77) on Apr 30, 2018 at 10:02am PDT	A post shared by Christine 🦄 (@calzephyr77) on Apr 28, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

I made it out to the artist trading card night at the John Snow House, which is the resource centre for Calgary's The New Gallery. It's the former residence of a Calgary artist, John Snow, and a cozy little space to meet and greet other ATC enthusiasts.

I really enjoyed myself. I have traded with most of the other people before and loved catching up. There were also three young ladies there and it was so delightful to trade with them. ATCs are great for young people! And even grown-ups like me. I have to admit I feel very shy testing the artistic waters around town and these nights make it easier for me to get out there by having something in common.

I have two ACEOs left from that night...and these are the ones I brought home:

This is one is my favourite, I have to admit!

I haven't been around much lately and homework is the usual reason. I hope everyone had a good weekend and that the week is off to a good start. I worked from home today because we had a foot of snow!

I'm almost finished up the first assignment for my Wednesday night class. I just have to check the DPI on the images and burn them to a CD. For this assignment, we had to write a proper cover letter, compile an artist's resume, build a slide list aaannnnd take 20 properly lit and adjusted photos of recent work. The quality of the work didn't matter, just the quality of the documentation. Whew! I'm hoping I did it all right as there were a lot of i's to dot and t's to cross.

My laundry area was transformed into a little photography studio with black foamcore boards, lights and my tripod. I took last Friday off to get this all done, but I was retaking photos up until yesterday. I changed my mind constantly about the photos I wanted to use and kept trying different things. Part of the problem was taking a few photos, then running upstairs to pop them into the computer to make sure the lighting was OK. Then of course, when actual laundry was being done, I had to dismantle everything and put it off to the side. At least it forced me to take some pictures of my Fibre 2D projects that I'm sure you're still waiting for! It also gave me a good excuse to take some pictures of ACEOs. Here's one that I did last year:

This was my first time participating in a group mystery swap, where everyone sent in four cards and received four cards. The medium was papercutting or scherenschnitte. These are the ones I submitted.

I need a little sign that says "Make Hay While the Sun Shines" because then it would remind me to do more productive things when our wacky weather is behaving nicely! For instance, I should have taken a photo of this ACEO outdoors on Saturday when I had the chance.

I drew it a few weeks ago at an artist trading card get together graciously hosted by Studio Todorovic at Art Central. Originally it was going to be one horse, but I didn't have an eraser, so I thought I would just go ahead and make it two horses in tandem. I used Copic markers for whole card. This line of markers is just wonderful to use, unlike Prismacolors. The nibs are replaceable and they have no odour.

The original card is for sale on Etsy - I do believe it's the first new thing I have listed in a long time!

I almost forgot to post this here, eek! I'm finally over my dreaded cold, but had a two day training session this week.

Trot on over my art blog on Blogger (where a lot of my friends post compared to LJ) and follow the treasure hunt around to five of my fellow ACEO artists. Read the rules in my post to see how you could win an ACEO from me or one of five other artists.

I hope everyone has a happy Friday...I'll be doing stuff like crazy for our first sale of the season on Saturday.

It's time for the annual trimming of the rose bushes, which is taking longer than usual. One of the bushes is providing too much shade for an ant hill, and last night I had ants all up and my leg :-P The temperatures have been a little up or down, or too hot to do that, or too blah to do this, which is pretty much how the whole summer went!

I ended up cramming as much artsy stuff into one day as I could - I made a rough figure out of Model Magic clay for a future painting, I made an ATC of a friend's lovebird, packaged pink flower magnets for a breast cancer fundraiser, painted the background for a new horse picture and painted nine quarter horse ACEOs along with it. Whew! That's a lot of labour for Labour Day!

This new painting gives me hope that I can finish the acrylic version of Alberta Spirit - I need to pick up some pthalo blue (green shade) for it. I just hate wasting paint, so as the new horse picture involved black, green and blue, it was the perfect time to get started on these ACEOs. I can't wait until they're all finished.

Another Mission 101 thing done! He's also for sale on Etsy. Click for larger.





June 6, 2009 ::: Prismacolor Marker ::: 2.5x3.5"

sighthoundlady and I did an ATC swap this week. Here is Inga, one of her characters:



Inga the Prehistoric Horse ATC


And this should look familiar to my friends, it's a purple My Little Pony. Thanks so much for doing the swap!



MLP ACEO Art card by =sighthoundlady


If anyone else would like to swap cards, just LMK :-) I'm always up for it!

Here's a couple of cuties for Valentines Day. I plan on redoing them in my usual style when I have more time. They are for sale on Art Fire.



February 7, 2009 ::: Acrylic ::: 2.5x3.5"