It's all about the art

Candice here :)

At the moment I'm focusing more on my art.  I'm having a break from writing for health reasons.  I've started doing my piggy art again.  In fact, I did another piggy last night.  I've also uploaded a couple of piggies to the website.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I sold something with a piggy design and now I'm thinking that I should be doing more piggy art.  I find this to be a good thing because I love drawing piggies.  I guess it's because they're my favourite animal and I'm a bit piggy obsessed. :)

Over the next few months I'm hoping to have the business up and running.  I'm going to try really hard for that.  I'll be spending plenty of time making products.  Damian will hopefully be helping out occasionally with the product making too.  A lot of products have already been done.  There are just a few items that need to be made.  Damian was handling most of the product making before but now I will be.  Instead he will probably be the one shipping the orders.  I'm really excited to see how well it will all go.

Anyway, I didn't have as much as usual to say.  Hopefully there will be more next time. :)

Ugh sick!

Candice here :)

You probably noticed the title says I'm sick, and I am.  I'm on antibiotics for a chest infection that is being persistent.  I'm hoping that it will be over soon but it seems to be the time of year for getting sick considering it's cold.  Unfortunately being sick means I can't work as fast as I'd like.  At the moment I'm planning a collection of short stories.  After that I'll be finishing off The Frozen Danastri and then I'll be working on the short stories again.  These stories are a series of stories about gemstones, so they do have a theme to them.  Not sure how I'll go with the short stories because I'm more used to writing novels.  The idea of trying to write something short seems difficult and I'm hoping that each short story is about 5,000 words each.  So that's what's going on with writing.

Damian's art seems to be going well.  At the moment he has been working hard on Cafepress and that site seems to be a lot of work.  Then he'll be working on products once again.  He's already done a fair few of them.  Most of the stuff is simply things that need to be printed.  Once all the products are done we can start selling them on Etsy and going to markets.  I hope all our art sells well and next year, hopefully we'll have books to sell as well.  Another thing that needs to be done is the digital store.  We'll be selling some digital products as well.  Most of them are done except for the calender.  

So much to look forward to and hopefully everything will be up and running in the next few months!

Well that's it for today :)

Plenty more artwork to come and writing too!

Candice here! :)

I've been busy doing art and creating a large backlog of artwork to upload.  This is so I can spend the next couple of months writing with no distractions.  I really need to get this book done so I can hopefully have five books done overall by the end of the year.  Of course the business will definitely be up and running long before I start publishing them.  I'm hoping to have ten rough drafts complete by the time I've finished with the writing course.

As for my art.  I'm hoping to do more traditional art.  I've started doing paintings and have already done one.  I work with acrylic painting and am finding these is lots to learn.  I'll also be doing more drawings.  Eventually I'll be selling the originals, although not for a while yet.

Damian has been very busy doing art too.  At the moment he has been focusing on realism rather than abstract.  His realism seems to be getting better every time he does a picture.  He works with graphite and has been drawing a lot of animals and a few illustrations as well.  I love his realistic style as it has a real sketchy feel to it.

I'm also hoping that we will have the business up and running in the next few months.  We are thinking of offering lessons in portraiture as well with both me and my husband teaching.  But first I have to design the course.  I'm going to pick up where I left off last time with it, so I've already got something to work with.

Anyway, that's all for now :) 

Art merge

Candice here :)

As you would have observed already.  Me and Damian have merged both our art onto my website.  We did this because it's hard to run the business with two separate sites.  However I'll be the one doing the blog entries, unless of course that changes in the future.  We hoping to have the business up and running in a minimum of two months time.  Damian is working full time on the business in getting it started.  I'm also helping when I'm not writing.

I'm really enjoying doing fairy piggy art.  I do really like piggies, as they are my favourite animal.  I've also noticed that there is very little pig art on the internet, so maybe I've found my niche with that.  I'm planning to do a piggy painting soon and am a little nervous about how it will turn out because it has been so long since I last painted.

This week I'm intending to do a lot of writing.  I really need to get moving with the writing if I'm to finish the book in the next couple of months.  So far, I'm a quarter of the way through it.  The Frozen Danastri is an interesting book.  There is the threat of eternal winter in it.  I'm finding that the cold can be interesting to write about, after all snow is fairly pretty right?  It seems to give the book a more magical feel.

Damian's art seems to be going well.  At the moment he is working on a picture of a steam punk horse and implied that he may be doing more steam punk style works.  At the moment he has been adding shading to his newer works and working with pencil more than pen.  He has sometimes been blending a bit of realism with his digital abstract work.  

Anyway, that's the update for today. :)

Hopefully starting the business soon!

I didn't update for a month and sorry about that.  I'm hoping that me and my husband will be able to sell art soon.  In maybe a few months time.  We will hopefully be adding an Etsy store and a store for digital downloads.  The art will feature our illustrations of my novels, my piggy art and my husband's animals and flowers.  Unfortunately the books are still a way off being published.  My husband Damian decided that he isn't going to be doing writing after all and is going to devote his time to making products.  This will free up more time for writing for me, which is both good news and bad news.

I'll be spending a lot of time writing over the next few months, so keep watching the word count ticker.  I'm still working on The Frozen Danastri and things seem to be going well with it.  I'm hoping to have it finished before July.  If I work hard at it then I'll be able to get it finished.  Hopefully there isn't any disruptions to my writing.

I've finally decided on a direction I want my art to take.  I'm focusing on doing illustrations again as well as doing fairy piggies.  I've discontinued the fairy cats and fairies.  I want to focus on art that I enjoy doing the most.  Soon I'll be uploading another illustration and another piggy picture.  This time the piggy will be a realistic one and it is mostly finished.  I'm working in a variety of mediums these days with digital, graphite and acrylic paint.  Not sure how well the painting will go because I haven't done it in years.

Anyway, this was a long overdue update. :)

Still writing after all

At the moment I'm doing my course and small amount of writing at the same time.  I'm back to working on The Frozen Danastri.  I'm hoping to get to at least 20,000 words done by the end of the month.  I found that I couldn't stop writing altogether to focus on just the course.  So for the rest of the month I'm doing both. (So keep an eye on my progress bar)

I haven't been doing much art lately.  Although I probably should be doing some.  I did do a cover for one of my husband's novels that he is going to start writing soon but I can't show it yet :p.  My husband Damian has gotten back into writing and I have been helping out with his website: www.damianswritings.com

I'm hoping to get The Frozen Danastri finished over the next few months and then do Stevric the Prince.  The book about Stevric is going to turn out longer than the one about Minira, which was a surprise.  By the end of the year I should hopefully have done five books to do with The Dawnshield Legends.  I want at least ten done before I finish the course and start publishing.  I also want to do a series of short stories to publish along with them but not sure how many of them yet.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be updating again soon! :)

Another rough draft done!

I completed the rough draft on Friday but didn't have time to update until now.  That is the third rough draft I have done so far with these novels.  That means there is seven more to go before I started editing them.  I'm hoping to get two more of them done this year.  Probably the second book in the main series 'The Frozen Danastri' and one of the novellas.  I'm thinking that I might do 'Stevric the Prince' but not sure yet.

I'm giving myself a break for a week and then I'll be doing school work for the rest of the month.  Not looking forward to that as much as I find the writing to be more entertaining.  But school work is a necessary evil.  (I do know that some people really enjoy it).  

On the more personal side of things, I have been doing a lot of cleaning and organising as well as baking.  

I've been taking a bit of a break from art.  I did about 24 pictures in two months.  So I definitely needed a break from it.  

I'm really looking forward to when I get writing The Frozen Danastri again.  Anyway, time to celebrate having completed another book! :)