My day job

As I've mentioned here before, I'm one of those lucky artists who is actually employed by someone else to draw every day. (And yet I still feel the need to keep drawing and painting when I get home..) Anyway, I thought I'd (again?) show off a random selection of stuff I've drawn for Embroideryonline.com that I'm particularly proud of:

Also, they are doing "staff profiles" on their new blog. They don't really give you that much info about us staffs, but, hey, I guess it shows that we're real people. Check mine out here. (I didn't pick the questions they asked me.)

Stitchy Art

Back in January I had decided I would start tying to post on this blog every day or so..and look--it's been a week since my last post! (already!) 

Man, this year is going fast. 

I've been so busy lately-- But I've been busy with fun stuff (working on portraits, sewing pillow animals, riding/training Stormy...) I'll post several in-progress photos of paintings I'm working on soon. 

Also, I'm thinking about doing a pillow pet or print giveaway soon. Or a portrait-winning photo contest. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what I want to do first. (If anyone has any requests on what I should giveaway--feel free to comment!)

Anyhoo...since I can't post pictures (yet) of what I've been painting, here's some "art" from my day job. This is a collection I drew a while ago for OESD that just came out last month:

My Day Job

My "real" job (the one that actually pays the bills) is drawing designs for an embroidery company (OESD). It's a lot of fun really, and it gets more and more fun as the market gets more trendy. I didn't even know home embroidery machines existed before I started working here, and now I really really really wish I had one. (Actually I did get a sewing machine for Christmas but it doesn't do embroidery.)
Here's one of my newest designs. It was actually based on customer requests. Who doesn't love the cute and cuddly honey badger? I'm happy with how it turned out so I just had to share:

I do end up drawing more flowers than anything else for embroidery, but I'm the designated animal-drawer here at work so I get assigned (most) of the collections that involve animals. 

horseshorseshorses

Very occasionally, I get to draw horses for work. I'm working on a pack of just horses right now. Alas, it just makes me miss taking horseback riding lessons. Really bad. For anyone who has never experienced jumping on a horse, or cantering really really fast, or riding bareback or falling off and getting back on, or brushing a horse, or having a horse try and use you as a scratching post, or just having a horse come to the gate when they see you coming...you should try it sometime. It's the best... *sigh*

What I do at work

I've truly been blessed with a great job. I sit around and draw for a living. I am an artist at an embroidery company. not the kind you take your little league team's hats to to have their team logo embroidered on, the kind where people buy the designs to embroider on their own stuff at home. (a niche i didn't even know existed before I worked here) There are two of us artists there, we draw artwork in "packs" of 20 or so designs, then hand them over to digitizers, who basically trace them using special software that tells the machine where exactly to stitch and how thick and what direction and when to stop and changethread colors and all that. here are some "before and after" examples of a couple designs from a pack called "Mo' Cuddly Garden"