Black White Grey Floral Harlequin iPad Case by wasootch
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It's Giveaway Time!

To show my appreciation to all the fantastic fans of SFCount Designs on Facebook, I'm offering the chance to win my Folk Art Flowers iPad case! (This case is for the original iPad - not the iPad 2) It has never been used, although it was on display at the Sundance Film Festival gift lounge earlier this year.


To enter, just leave a comment (including your name) on this post between now and July 19th. You can also comment on my Facebook page on the discussion board under the "iPad Case" topic for another chance. Each entry will be given a number. At the end of the entry time, I will generate the winning number through http://www.random.org/ and announce the winner on my page.

Once again, thanks so much for your support and good luck!

Thinking out loud

It's no secret to anyone who knows me how much I love my Wacom tablet. Since I got it a few months ago, I've quit using the traditional forms of media almost entirely. This brings me to a couple of questions: Is digital artwork valid as art and will it eventually replace art in conventional media? Because I create all my work digitally lately, I never have a physical finished work - nothing you can hold in your hands. Of course, I can always print it out (or have it printed out), but then is it still an original? One generally thinks of a printed image as just that - a print. Even if it's a one off, it's still a print. Although most of the work I've done lately has been more in the realm of design that's meant to be added to the products in my Zazzle store; I have done a few paintings and drawings that I think could easily stand on their own, but they only exist on my hard drive. How does that impact their relevance? Does it impact their relevance?


At this point, the number of artists that use strictly digital media is probably relatively small, but this is the digital age. I suspect more and more artists will begin turning to digital. After all, who can resist the lure of dozens of different pens, brushes, paints and most any other medium you can think of right there at your fingertips? (Not to mention any color you want without having to blend or deal with the hassle of cleaning brushes.) Will art galleries eventually be filled with artists' work who have never so much as touched a real paintbrush or pencil? Maybe. Maybe not.


All I know is that, either way, I will keep happily using my tablet and hope that my computer doesn't crash.

Another example of inspiration being where you find it.

While my husband and I waited for our entrees to come at a Chinese restaurant the other night, I noticed how pretty and graceful the lotus flowers were on our plates. I took out my phone and, so as to not look completely weird, discreetly took a picture while pretending to be typing a text.





A couple of days later I used one of these flowers as the model for my latest design. I decided on red instead of blue and used the simple watercolor brush in the Corel Painter 4. The resulting image is at left. I only hope I was able to do justice to this beautiful Asian symbol.

Okay... so I cheated a little.

Still in my creative slump, I decided to just play around with different tools in the Painter program as I often do when I'm out of ideas. This time I chose the variable size hose using the nasturtiums setting. After trying a few things that I was not happy with, I ended up simply making a single row of the flowers. I then applied the pen and ink auto painting to them, followed by the detailed watercolor auto painting. So it isn't entirely of my creation, but close enough to call it my own. It looks particularly nice on the mug and t-shirt.

One of summer's pleasures

There isn't much I like about summer. I've never been a "fun in the sun" type of gal. Summers in the south are generally so miserably hot that you don't find me outdoors much between July and the end of September. One of the things I do like about summer is daylilies. I love their bright, cheery colors and their graceful dancing in warm breezes. It's almost as if they know their time is fleeting so they have to show their best while they have the time. (Hmm...maybe we could all take an example from that.) Anyway, it was these transient beauties that were the inspiration for my latest digital painting. I painted it using the gouache brush tool. It was my first time using it, but I like the effect. I've added the painting to a number of items in my Zazzle store.

Sometimes where you start out for isn't where you end up.

Believe it or not, this design started off to be a fan. I created the pleated red damask pattern intending to make it into some kind of fan shape. I tried a few different tools and that wasn't working out so I went in this direction instead. After I had added the pattern with the little love hearts to the bottom half I still thought it looked kind of incomplete somehow. Back to the damask pattern I went using my favorite tool - the kaleidoscope (I'm addicted to kaleidoscopes) - and came up with the pretty, dimensional-looking flower which I placed on the line between the two patterns. This is the note card I made from the design, but I also made a postcard, a stamp, stationery and a "save the date" card of which I am particularly proud. Now I guess I'm glad the whole fan thing didn't work out. :-)

A little bird just flew in

Sometimes I worry that the day will come when I finally run out of ideas for designs. Fortunately, yesterday wasn't that day. I had been thinking about doing a design with a bird for a while, but couldn't come up with anything. While I was watching something on t.v. last night I saw a woman wearing a pin that inspired this. In PaintShop I used one of the preset shapes to create the flower. I found a photo of a bird that I liked the shape and position of and used him as my model for painting in Painter 4. After I finished painting him using a watercolor brush, I sent him over to PaintShop where I used the bucket fill tool to add the pattern to his wing. Then, I cut him out and pasted him as a new layer on top of the flower. After a few more adjustments - voila! This button is just one of several things I put him on. The more things I added him to, the more I liked him. I hope other people like him too.