A little bit of repurposing

I love summertime and all of the loose scheduling that it brings. While I wish I would love to be posting/blogging more regularly, I'm allowing myself the joy of slowing down a bit during this season. I'm an up-early girl normally, but in July I allow myself the pleasure of lingering a little. 

While I'm still thankfully working on commissioned art each week, taking a break from teaching weekly classes in June and July gives me that little bit of extra time time to complete a few pieces that I've had rumbling around in my head. Just things that I'd like to paint or put together. No surprise it revolves around food! One of those pieces was of guacamole ingredients and the other was of floating citrus fruit. I had started the citrus some time ago but never got it to a finished state that I was happy with.

Liking the lime in the completed fruit piece, I scanned the entire painting, isolated the lime and used it for the guacamole print as well.

If you look closely at the pieces, you can see that I've repurposed an earlier avocado painting as well as the lime. Since my background is in graphic design, I'm able to pull those elements out and use them in these lively summer collection pieces. Ahhh Photoshop. I call this, repurposing with no regrets. Watercolor art elements that I've previously painted can work double time for me in this way. Should I have rather taken the time to paint two different limes for these prints? Maybe, but this summer I will happily use that extra time to fish with my son or dig into a good book. Working smart by reusing my own art elements for digital prints is a little bit of summertime simplification. It ranks right up there with chopping up chicken nuggets, throwing them on a big salad and calling it dinner. How about you? What are your summer simplification tips?

You can get these and other fresh-off-the-press cards and prints at the Oviedo Mall Hallmark store this Saturday, July 14th. 

Also if you'd like to learn about creating watercolors, check out my beginner class that starts up in August. I'd love to have you join us!

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