ArtOcrat's "Flights of Fancy" series of bird prints

For the past few months I have been working on my "Flights of Fancy" series of bird prints . This series is going to have 20 really colorful and vibrant bird prints. Below you can see the 6 I have completed already.

More prints will follow soon!!

2 Flamingos

Blue Bird


Bird On a Branch

Summers Bird

Early Bird

Monday Morning Blues

A recently completed commissioned portrait project

The client wanted a surprise birthday present for his lovely wife. He proposed that I make a really colorful portrait of her!! (I know, how very sweet!! ). I was working on a tight deadline of just 4 days. And instead of taking a print and sending it by mail, I was going to e mail him a soft copy.

This made the project quiet unique. Sending out a soft copy has serious disadvantages. Selling of multiple prints without my knowledge was the biggest one. But, it had the advantage of being totally eco friendly or green. No gas burnt for shipping! Yay!!

I'm going to explore this business model further, in the later posts.

So here is my process, with lots of pictures.

This is the lovely wife and my subject.

I chose shades of brown and green with a dash of blue and red for the portrait.
I just love a riot of colors!

After the hair I drew out the eyes.
I use Wacom's pen tablet to sketch directly on my mac. And I love it to death!

Then I filled out the rest of her face and the other side of hair.

And then the neck and shoulders.
By this time the blue and green had started bothering me a little bit.
So I experimented with a new mostly red color palette.

It didn't pop out as much as I would have liked it to.
So off to the drawing board again.

I went back to the original face. Changed the eyes to a less scary brown, and turned the hair red.
Now it had the pop I was looking for.

The client like the last version too and printed out a large 60cm X 60cm poster!


And here is the very happy wife with her very own custom portrait.
A very satisfying project indeed. :)

More about no shipping business model in the next post.

Achieving Sustainability The Etsy Way

Earrings and Cuff links upcyled from bottle caps from COOB Originals
Note - Gift boxes are hand crafted using upcycled cardboard too!

Glasses and coasters made from recycled glass bottles from YAVA Glass


Soap dishes and Business card holder made from recycled records albums by Retired Records


Really cute Robots and Sculpture made from recycled materials by Reclaim 2 fame


Purse and Accessories made from recycled juice pouch by I Luv MoJo


Dolls made from recycled and cast-off materials by Hasenpfeffer

Sculptures created by material from landfills by Pacific Artworks

Get Inspired!
Buy Sustainably!!

Another cool find - EcoUsable's Stainless Filtered Water Bottle

I'm always on the look out for great products that help me reduce my ever increasing recycling and trash pile. And if I find something that is also good for the environment, made locally and mange to save me some money in the long term its jackpot!!

'Ech2o' - EcoUsable's new stainless water bottle with a built- in filter is one such really cool product. It is such a wonderful step toward eliminating single use plastic water bottles.

The bottle is made of food grade stainless steel, is non-leaching, BPA-free, reusable, lightweight, and taste-neutral. All parts are made of FDA approved materials and are environmentally safe.

The Ionic-Adsorption Micro-Filtration System is an entire water filtration plant within a portable bottle. The patented Ionic-Absorption Micro-Filtration reduces up to 99.99% of contamination.

For all the people out there who want to do their part to stop the plastic water bottle epidemic this bottle is a pretty attractive solution.

Another cool product - Conserve Cleaning Tablets

Baumgarten's Conserve has launched a new line of household cleaners sold in tablet form. It requires 75 percent less packaging and reduces the impact of shipping because the products have 85 percent less “water weight.”
Consumers purchase one bottle and a four-pack of tablets, and the tablets dissolve in water when ready to use. The available products include a glass cleaner, multi-surface, bathroom and odor eliminator.


By shipping cleaners without water, Conserve is able to save 7.5 pounds per bottle. By only including one bottle in a package that provides four uses, Conserve can also ship more cleaners in a single load.

The cleaners themselves only use ingredients approved by the EPA’s “Designed for the Environment” program.

Conserve claims that its products also save money, costing 40 percent less than the national brands of cleaners.

“We are able to achieve these cost-savings for consumers because our products have eliminated the heaviest ingredient in household cleaners: water,” says David Baumgarten, vice president of Baumgartens. “Conventional cleaner equivalents would require eight trucks versus just one for ours, not to mention all the equipment, time and energy needed to load and unload those trucks.”