Category: Holidays

greeting cards, Holidays, Illustrations, kids, Revising Old Work, whimsy

Happy Halloween with jack-o-lanterns

Michele B. Naquaiya

A little girl with miniature jack-o-lanterns. Of course my horse. She needs to light the way into the night. She is painted with watercolor and pencil and various digital textures. She can be found on a poster or a greeting card or a coffee mug. Really? Absolutely.
I wanted to show a little bit of process here. Sometimes an idea goes through many changes. This is a typical example for me of how I like to modify and experiment. Here’s a link to my products with the final design.

happy halloween

This was my original sketch. It has gone through a lot of changes.
Here’s a link to my products with the final design.

Holidays

Have a Merry Christmas to all my readers

Michele B. Naquaiya

I wish everyone a joyous holiday season, whatever their situation may be.

xmas-gvillage-gingerbread-web

Whether in snow or rain or sun, enjoy this lovely time of year.  If you can’t enjoy it for the many reasons people don’t enjoy holidays, don’t despair.  It will be over in a few days.  

alphabet, greeting cards, Holidays, Illustrations, thoughts behind the work

Holiday cards update

Michele B. Naquaiya

CARDS-xmas1xmas-cards-2xmascards-3xmascards-4xmascards-5xmascards-6xmascards--7

The gallery I am in now is new and we are learning what people like and what they want.  So we are happy that customers have been requesting Christmas cards. Living in Mexico has taught me that you have to get used to the unexpected.  Examples would be not being able to get  my favorite art supplies.  Solution:  try and try again and eventually learn how to survive by being very inventive and learning how to make substitutions.  Now that I have a full year of living here under my belt, I can honestly say nothing is easy but if you persevere, you may find as I have, that you will succeed.

I have learned that Mexican people don’t mail beautiful big cards often, or little, or not at all. This came as a shock to me and I got kind of scared when I realized it but, over time, I’ve learned how to fix this situation.   You can discourage me but you can’t kill my persistence.  These cards can be framed, given in person and make wonderful inexpensive gifts signed by the artist.

So here is the first collection with more in the works.  So far the gallery is loving them and believe it or not, this may be a rather new and unusual idea for the art-loving Mexican crowd.  They are an answer for expats to shop here and get what you had in mind and can’t find in general stores here.

I now have an excuse to play with fonts I love and their glyphs, photoshop and printing.  I am using the large HP scanner/printer HP7610.  Adobe photoshop 2018 cc.

The bottom line is that these are all my original artwork.  I do all the painting and drawing,  photography, and digital editing and I also do my own printing.  Why?  I like my own preference for high quality prints, rich colors and luscious heavy ecru paper stock.  These are my way of establishing who I am here in Mexico.  I have to say, for this job, I have worked very hard and now I can continue on this path and I am very grateful people are appreciating the effort.

p.s. the ripples on the photos are sun reflections from the glass top table.