farah aria studio

Mousies, Meeces, Mice...

I tend to doodle mice...

 

...a lot...

Island Girl ~ pen, ink, watercolor, vintage book page

 

"YUM APPLES!" My Latest Book!

"YUM APPLES" Illustrated by Me

Published by Lee & Low / Bebop Books

I'm a little late in celebrating! This is the book I started this time last year. Apples apples apples. I must say I was tired of drawing apples when this project was finished. But it was a joy to work on with Colorbridge Books editor Bernette Ford and designer / art director Edie Weinburg for Louise May of Lee & Low publishers! It is always fun working for Bebop Books (an multicultural educational line of books of Lee & Low pub.) with which I illustrated "Ice-Cream Money" a few years back! I hope to work with them again.

This book was illustrated entirely digital in Photoshop.

"Save the Sea Turtle" New Designed Poster

 

"Save the Sea Turtles" by farah aria by farah

I've added my "Save the Sea Turtle" art to my zazzle store and also my cafepress store available as prints or posters! I also sell 8 x 10 inch (art 6 x 6 inch) archival prints in my Etsy store where 10% goes to Defenders of Wildlife.

CELEBRATE EARTH DAY! 1,000 Ways to Love the Earth!

 

“1,000 Ways to Love the Earth”

Free and Green Earth Friendly Art and Music!
A Place to Share How to Care for the Earth!

Children's music artist Daria, and I are partnering up with other wonderful women and organizations to celebrate Earth Day. We are sharing free and green earth friendly art, music, and activities for children!! Won't you join us in contributing too?

Please visit "1,000 Ways to Love the Earth" to contribute your stories and ideas on what you do to care for our planet. Get a completely green cd free from Daria and many more lovely gifts! Find out how you can become a partner!

You can find my free art giveaway here:

FREE AND GREEN! ~ "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" Free Art Download and Drawing Giveaway

I hope you will join Daria and me to celebrate this Earth Day!
Much love and peace to you and the world!  ~ farah and daria

 

FREE AND GREEN! ~ "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" Free Art Download and Drawing Giveaway

 
 

 Free "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" Art for Printing 

 

My gift to you is a free 8” x 10” PDF of “Celebrate Earth Day” for limited personal use on your home computer & printer!  Earth friendly art saves precious resources by not using packaging, and saving gas by not shipping. Receive your gift by sharing your earth friendly art project for kids under “EARTH DAY ART PROJECT FOR KIDS”.

 Think of found nature items, and recycling everyday items.

• Please include your name, last initial, city, state and country to your art project post.
• Pictures of the completed projects will be posted and earn extra entries into the drawing. (see below)
• After posting your project. Send me an email so I can email you the art PDF.
• I would love to hear how you plan to use my artwork if you’d like to share :o)

"CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" Poster Art for Your Blog!

Would you like a copy of "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" for your blog? After posting your idea on “Earth Day Art Projects for Kids” - send me an email with your name, email address, and blog/web link, and I will email you a web friendly 3” x 4” jpeg to feature on your blog or website to celebrate Earth Day! 

Drawing for Framed "Earth Day" Print

All contributors to “Earth Day Art Projects for Kids” are entered into the drawing for a framed archival fine art print signed by the artist. Winner has the choice of any Earth Day related print from my "Farah Aria Studio" Etsy shop. "Save the Sea Turtles", "Children Around the World", "Small Hands Change the World" or “Celebrate Earth Day” with or without text in case you'd like to enjoy the print year round. Winner picked randomly from all entries. Drawing held and winner notified April 25th!

 Would you like to earn more entries?

1. Entry per child and parent who submit an idea together.
2. Classrooms receive 3 entries.
3. Send a photo of your child, family, self, or classroom with the finished art to be posted on my blog and receive an extra entry.
4. Create your own “Celebrate Earth Day” Poster! Then send the picture for me to post and receive 2 more entries!!

Want to order a "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" poster or print now?

• “Celebrate Earth Day” Poster of all sizes, or canvas art are in my zazzle shop.
• My cafepress has posters, framed prints, postcards, greeting cards, and notecards. 
• All archival fine art prints can be found in my etsy shop.

Get Ready to Celebrate Earth Day! ~ April 22, 2011!

 
New Art to Celebrate Earth Day!! 

It's never too early to start celebrating Earth Day! I wish we would treasure the earth all year round! But at least we can gear up and start celebrating early!

This year I am proud to be partnering up with some amazing women to create a wonderful site to celebrate Earth Day with children! Check out my post: "1000 Ways to Love the Earth"

The art for my “Celebrate Earth Day” Poster was create in the square format as a CD cover for my good friend and children's world music artist Daria’s new earth friendly CD “Daria Sings for Earth Day”. After it was finished, I altered the art to create our "Celebrate Earth Day" Poster!

I tried something a little new. I wanted the art to have a natural collage feel, yet still use my children around the world image. Here is the process as it evolved. I started by creating the background “collage” by scanning bits of paper collected in my treasure box of interesting stuff for art journaling! Crumpled brown packaging paper becomes my background. A coffee sleeve turned inside out becomes the border. Cream netting from a deteriorated vintage book, overlaps a scrap of bright green handmade paper, and ridged textured material, from the same vintage book, is put into the collage. A pink scrap of handmade Japanese paper becomes my hearts and trim. Bits and pieces of other  recycled brown papers and all the pink and green poster border is copied and pasted many times from those tiny scraps to create the borders and lettering! The earth elements are from photographs, the starfish from a trip to Monterey, California, a seashell from Santa Barbara, and the leaf and flower from my back yard. Even the art, my "Children Around the World", was reworked, recycled and reused for this piece. I used digital manipulation keeping the elements on different layers in Photoshop C3 to move around and play with. The Earth is a new piece I painted on my IPAD, on the “Artrage” drawing and painting application, using a "pastel" paintbrush. I then emailed this art to my laptop, and opened in Photoshop and added it to the composition. What a fun way to work, using these materials over and over!

Kids, parents and teachers!

Make your own Earth Day Poster! See “Earth Day Art Projects for Kids” for ideas how to create an Earth Day poster and contribute earth friendly art ideas for kids! here

FREE AND GREEN ~ Art Gift

My gift to you ~ free digital versions of my “Celebrate Earth Day” art! Plus information on my fine art print giveaway! here

Want to order a "CELEBRATE EARTH DAY" poster or print now?

• “Celebrate Earth Day” Poster of all sizes, or canvas art are in my zazzle shop.
• My cafepress has posters, framed prints, postcards, greeting cards, and notecards. 
• All archival fine art prints can be found in my etsy shop

"Toulouse Woman" ! Vintage book painting!

This painting was inspired by the art of Toulouse-Lautrec.
A very Parisian lady!

This painting is printed on Somerset watercolor textured premium archival fine art paper. It has a wonderful watercolor texture.

The original art was painted with watercolor, and Indian Ink, on book page from a 1925 copy of Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES in French. I then scanned the original and worked in collage and making the black line work more prominent digitally. 
 

Mice of the YA - YA Sisterhood!

"Mice of the YA - YA Sisterhood!

This was a fun picture to paint! I love these two mousies! They are sisters and best friends! Paper dresses and painted with acrylic paint on a 6" x 6" wood canvas! It is also available as a fine art print on watercolor textured archival paper!
 

La vie est un voyage. ~ Life is a voyage...

"La Vie Est Un Voyage" ~ Life is a voyage makes me think of foreign travels, listening to different languages being spoken, and letters from distant lands. Inward journies, memories, and dreams.

I started with a page torn out of "Girls Who Became Famous" a vintage 1886 book.  Page 203 "Elizabeth Barett Browning". I then drew, with a brush, the girl, with Pelikan's "Brun Brilliant" (or brilliant-brown) ink. I love the luminescent brownish-red color! She was then set aside for a while. One day I picked her up again and added a wash of sepia ink to tone the page, and a blush of red watercolors for her cheeks and lips. A few days later I drybrushed some ochre toned acrylic onto her skin, and rubbed most of it off with a cloth, and sanded a bit for texture. Hmmm...what next? She sat again for a while.

I searched through my treasure trove of book pages (some vintage) with many foreign languages. Oh the beauty of those different shapes, those mysterious words! I mounted the vintage page with her portrait onto a wood cradled canvas and collaged some of those delicious torn words onto the page. Ah! I'd forgotten about the tiny envelope that held vintage postage stamps from France! I then added those, and a wash of sepia to tone the page again and unify all the collaged elements. White acrylic paint was added for details, and then a wash of red acrylic ink to stain the border and wood sides of the canvas. To fill in her russet hair I used the bold brush like Faber-Castell PITT artist pen, with a wonderful

The original 5 x 7 painting is up at Etsy. I also have a print the same size. I love the soft subtle muted rose of the print, which is softer in person than in the pictures.

waterproof Indian Ink. At last I brushed a thin coat of acrylic varnish to protect and seal it all off.

La vie est un voyage. Life is a voyage. Enjoy the journey!

Love to hear what you think.