I was ill since about the last week of June, and only since last week have I been well enough to work on the various projects I had going.

First off was my piece for the Art Sanctuary‘s annual “Variations on a Theme” contest. Here is an edited copy:

An unedited copy was uploaded here, and you can visit the DA page for it here. Much love is given to the people who freely offered their photos up as stock. I’m hoping to do a tutorial here about how to work with table salt and watercolor- I didn’t have any kosher salt on me, so it was… a different experience.

Next are the photo shoot panels for the local fair! The angle I took the photo at skews them a bit, but thank god they’re finally done! The unpainted places are where the hole is going to be, so people can put their faces in. That’s also why the heads are strangely shaped. I later put on text, but didn’t get a chance to take pictures of that stage.

Here’s some progress shots.

I’m thankfully doing a lot better now, and I count my blessings in that I rarely *do* get sick, not counting, say, allergies. However, when I do get sick, it’s often something stubborn.

I’m still getting used to WordPress (if this is Tumblr where you’re reading this, HI), as well. I still haven’t figured out a way to place links on the side so I can give shoutouts to great people, and I desperately miss the theme I had on my Posterous website. Unfortunately, a WordPress version of that theme has never been made, and the creators have no plans to do so. I’m hoping that I eventually find the perfect theme; so far, it’s just been ‘this’ll do, for now‘.

Just in time for spring- flower prints!

I bought a sample pack of paper from Twisted Limb Paperworks from a shop in Bloomington last Christmas, after falling in love with the quality and uniqueness of each piece. As an experiment, I glued some prints of my flowers on them, making them sort of floating frames for my watercolor prints. They turned out so well that I’m now selling them on Etsy! I wanted to link to the company in my description, but it was against Etsy’s rules to link other websites in descriptions, so the shout-out will have to be here instead.

The first pictures I took weren’t as good as I liked, so I just updated them using some good ol’ photoshop elbow grease magic. Maybe later I’ll do a tutorial so that other people can use photoshop to enhance their own Etsy paper products.

WordPress has been behaving thus far, except I can’t find a plug-in yet that wants to play with my super secret livejournal account. The main annoying thing is all the spam comments! I have to keep logging in to moderate them- if you comment on here and I accidentally mark you as spam, I apologize!

This will also be my first real post using the repost system I have set up, so expect some bugginess until I figure out what I’m doing.

So I have a new blog, as Posterous is shutting down. Hopefully wordpress will play fair with Facebook!

http://todayiconversedwith.tumblr.com/post/40175920240/whitney-mattila#.UPbzeWeNGKI

Can’t believe I forgot to blog this. I was interviewed by a wonderful owner of the ‘Today I Conversed With’ tumblr blog. Go ahead and take a look, and make sure to look at the other inspirational entries from various creative people!

<br>Cat Dragon by ~matildarose on deviantART

Just got my second daily deviation via Deviantart today! For those unfamiliar with Deviantart, every day they pick several pictures (called deviations) in different categories to showcase. To get chosen is a great event! It’ll take me a while to sort through all the comments and look at everyone’s galleries; there’s so much talent on this site that it can be such an inspiration!

<br>Happy Gnu Year! by ~matildarose on deviantART

I now have an etsy page.

Still getting the hang of it, but if anyone has any suggestions on what they’d like to see from me, leave a comment!

Second in the Macaw series:

<br>Macaw 2 by ~matildarose on deviantART

While I love how easy Deviantart makes it to set up prints, I wish there was a quality check. Too many people upload artwork that isn’t theirs as prints, often due to misunderstanding things like copyright, fair use, etc. I’d go to another POD site, but there just seems to be so many, and DA is a gallery I maintain due to the amount of people I follow and gain inspiration from there.

A friend of mine has just published a book he’s been working on for a while, called Fear Itself.

Set in a world that’s a mix of fantasy, western, and post-apocalyptic concepts, it follows a man named Judiah as he sets out on his first job from the Church.

I’ve been familiar with his writing through roleplaying and through the writing I got to read of his, and I’ll just say: give it a read and see what you think.

Click here for information on where to buy, including Nook and Kindle.