Blue

I use green or blue as the main color in a lot of my illustrations. Most of the time this is the natural choice because there's either grass/trees or a sky in the background. I am the one in charge of the colors in my work, so maybe I should paint more yellow or purple skies?

I love this illustration because of the use of the colors. There's a lot of blue here, but it's just there in the background and you focus on the warmer colors instead. I also love how rough this is painted. I love illustrations with rough brush strokes, but for me that's very difficult to make. Even if I try, most of my illustrations end up with a more polished look.

How Paula Starts Her Day

My day starts off with a bang--when I hear my husband close the door, leaving for work! I don't usually get up until he's gone, as that gives him some alone time in the house and office (which we share). Once I'm up, my first activities in the morning revolve around housework. I create a semblance of order by making sure the bed's made, cleaning the kitchen and starting some laundry. None of that takes much time and I'm rewarded with the instant gratification that I've already accomplished something! Once these things are done, I head to our spare bedroom (which is our office/my studio) to check email, the morning news, and allow myself a bit of time to read up on my usual sites and blogs. While I'm doing this, I multi-task and eat breakfast. Once fed and up on information, I, too, look over my to-do list (or write it up if I didn't do it the night before) and get crackin'. Anything on the list with a star is a must-do for that day (usually deadlines and bills!). I also start planning out the daily meals as I'm working in the morning, as I usually take a break around noon to walk to the market and pick up miscellaneous groceries.

And that, my friends is my morning routine.

How Holli Starts Her Day

Like Anette, I have a routine too. It's not too exciting though.

* check emails first thing
* check out several websites (mainly entertainment & news)
* hop of twitter and face book to see what I missed
* start twitting, replying and re-twitting
* check out all the blog in my bloglines (comment on some)
* then start checking my list of things I need to do to-day

So TODAY, I need to finish up a website layout (just the design in Photoshop, not coding), it's woogie wednesday so we need to make art, and then finish some little characters for my licensing work.

Also, if you're interested, I documented a "day in the life" here. How do you start your day?

How I start my day

Most of us have a routine of things we do at the beginning of our workday. Here's what usually happens after I turn on my computer:

*checking e-mail
*reading several online newspapers
*thinking "oh my, I have to get some work done!"
*looking at the to-do list for the day and start working to get the things I've written down there done (I usually have written down too many tasks for each day, but that's another topic...)

Fairies

Lately I've been playing around with some ideas for greeting cards and stickers. One of my ideas is a series of fairies like these.

Monkeys

Who doesn't love monkeys? And when I was contacted by Pleasant St. Press to illustrate a funny rhyming book about a monkey and his buddies breaking out of the zoo I couldn't resist. The result was called "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" written by Jean Cochran.

i love you monkey

A little monkey I created this morning for my daughter's lunch box note.

Paula's Take On "Monkey"

I like drawing monkeys, and fortunately I just received samples of a project I finished up that has a monkey on one of the covers. This was done for a series of three books, accompanying workbooks, and a CD for Happy House, based out of Korea. I have a post on my blog about this project if one is interested in seeing more.

Monkey

Here's a little monkey I painted with acrylic paints last week. I haven't used my acrylics for a while so it was fun to sit down and work with them again - and I'm happy about how the colors in this illustration turned out.