About Me

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Hi, My name is Irene Owens. My greatest passion in life is Art. I love drawing portraits, painting whimsical pictures and illustrating for children. I also collect children's books and hope to one day get one of my own picture books published. I have a shop on Etsy where I sell my prints, hand painted pendants and mirrors. In this blog you will find artists that inspire me, brilliant handmade creations and my own art. I hope you enjoy my posts.

Sunday 29 April 2012

Koi Pond


Just came across this painting I've done a couple of years ago. This was an illustration for my "Enchanted Garden" book and I remember spending HOURS on it. After it was finished though I decided it didn't quite fit with the rest of the illustrations and I've done another version of it. I still like it a lot and so I thought I'd share it with you.


Acrylics on watercolor paper

Prints

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Stupid Hat

This little sketch was inspired by silly hats that some Mums (you know who you are!) put on their babies. I have to admit, I have put a hat with bear ears on Riley. Guess we have to make the most of dressing our kids while they have no say in what they're wearing.
Color pencils and a bit of acrylics on tinted card
 
prints

Monday 23 April 2012

Ice Cream Seller

Go on, admit it, at some point in your life you wanted to sell ice cream. Just so you could eat as much of it as you wanted. I know I did. When I was about five (and then again last week )

The model for this painting is my lovely son Riley and the inspiration for his outfit came from an episode of Man v. Food. If you don't know it, it's basically about a guy traveling America and eating hideously giant portions of food. In that particular episode he was visiting an old fashioned ice cream parlor and the owners of the parlor had this hilarious middle parted hair and big mustache. As soon as I saw it, I've brushed Riley's hair this way and even though my husband said it bordered on child abuse, he laughed as much as I did.
Anyways, here's Riley selling ice cream (very reluctantly).
Acrylics and color pencils on watercolor paper.
 
Prints

Thursday 12 April 2012

Mouse Princess

I have finally overcome my fear of watercolors! Apart from white acrylics this picture is ALL watercolor :) Wasn't that scary after all :)

Emilia Dziubak

Discovered this incredible artist today. So interesting and varied, I thoroughly recommend visiting her blog
These are my favourite illustrations.










Monday 9 April 2012

Little Snow Girl


"The girls set off holding Little Snow Girl's hand, but as soon as they got to the forest and saw all the berries, they forgot about everything else and ran off in all directions, picking berries and hallooing to one another. They filled their baskets with berries, but lost Little Snow Girl in the forest."
I've joined a children's illustrators club on DeviantArt and was very excited about my first assignment. We had to illustrate a small paragraph from a story and they don't mention whih story it is so that you can use your imagination without any bias. When I read the paragraph, this is the image that popped into my head and I've tried to paint it as best I could.

Acrylics, watercolor and color pencils on paper.

Sunday 8 April 2012

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everybody! Hope you are enjoying your break, wherever you are, hope the weather is nice and there's plenty of chocolate :)

Bunnies are painted with acrylics on watercolor paper


Wednesday 4 April 2012

Peter de Seve

I've been a fan of Peter de Seve for a long time now. Just love his sense of humour!

Sunday 1 April 2012

Lovely Acorn

I'm not sure if this is a tiny pig or a giant acorn... all I know is that this is a very happy pig :)