Melody Lea Lamb's Miniature Art: September 2011

Sunday

My Third Run For The Critters

I've just finished running my Third 10K "Run For The Critters" today, Sept. 25, 2011!

My first Run For The Critters was inspired by grief and gratitude. When my mother passed away in February 2010 after a long slow "dwindling," I worked out my feelings of loss by running on our country roads. As I was out running one morning, a month or so after mom passed away, I was suddenly bowled over by a strong sense of gratitude. I was grateful that I could still run at my age, that I could run in such beautiful countryside, I felt grateful for so many things. I wanted to give back somehow. Then an idea hit me: I'd run for the critters. I could set a goal of running a six-mile race while raising money for animal charity! That is exactly what I did. In September 2010 I raced in the George Coope Memorial Road Race Run Adams MA. I won 2nd place in my class, and raised $1500 for animal charity!

I was so thrilled, inspired and empowered by the success of my Race For The Critters that I did it again. On May 29th, 2011 I ran the Memorial Day Lenox 10K and raised $500 for the critters. Today I ran a third Run For The Critters called the Brock Trot in Lenox, MA.

The Run:

Picking up my number pre-race.

The cool green T-Shirt (my son loves it)!

Waiting for the race...any minute now.

We're off!

Finished! I beat my personal goal of running 6.2 miles in under 1 hour 13 minutes.

The two charities who will receive the funds I raised today are, Fieldhaven Feline Rescue and Old Dog Haven

Now, off to train for Run For The Critters Four!

Friday

My Top Twitter Tips

There are a gabillion "Twitter Experts" out there these days (I am certainly not one), but I want to share seven of my personal Twitter tips as an artist, for making the most of the social network platform:

Tip 1: Tweet about what's important to you, what you're passionate about!
Tip 2: Interact, listen, respond, and care about what people are saying. That will bring you quality followers. Re-Tweet (RT) others valuable tweets!
Tip 3: Be sure to have a clear Bio & Avatar (the little picture of yourself), otherwise how will followers know you and why would they follow?
Tip 4: You can recommend people ANY day not JUST #FollowFriday (Follow Friday is a tradition where people tweet people they believe are fun/interesting to follow on Fridays) How about #FollowNow, (a daily recommendation of fellow Tweeters)?
Tip 5: Find a service like TweetDeck (my favorite) to help you organize the Twitter stream into columns of friends, new followers, mentions, etc.
Tip 6: Make sure you leave enough characters and the end of your Tweet so that people can re-tweet you. A Re-Tweet (RT) is a great compliment!
Tip 7: Automated welcome Direct Messages (in my opinion) to your new followers is more a negative than positive touch.

So, there are my Twitter two cents!

Ive been on Twitter for a few years and the number of rewards I gain from Twitter on a daily basis always inspires me. I've found Twitter to be a powerful business tool, a source of great support, and my favorite place to greet the morning as well as my way of relaxing at the end of the day. When my mom was in her final days last year, I reached out to my Twitter friends with a aching heart, and received hundreds of sincere, supportive messages from my online friends. My Twitter family helped ease me through a painful time, especially since the day mom died I was 3,000 miles away from her, my brother and sisters.

I've met some people I consider true friends and with whom I chat daily. A few months ago I shared with you a little painting titled "Tufted Titmouse" (above in his new role as a greeting card). This little watercolor was based on a reference photograph by my Twitter friend MikeyBoy50. The painting I created from MikeyBoy50's photograph is one of my favorite pieces of last year! The following month, my friend FredCuellar purchased the original directly from my interaction with him on Twitter. Later my friend JoyIsLife contacted me on Twitter and requested a custom card fashioned from "Tufted Titmouse"....now that's some outstanding business results from my daily "tweeting"!

The Tufted Titmouse greeting card above can be purchased on Zazzle by clicking the image, or here, as a Giclee Print in my Gift Shop

Happy Tweeting!

Wednesday

Art Give Away

As a way of introducing a new art product line I've just created, I am giving away this small matted ACEO print.

I now offer these matted and sleeved ACEO prints in my Etsy shop. These little prints can be kept as is in their little archival sleeves, or placed in a 5 x 7 inch frame to really make a nice statement for your decor.

The rules for winning the matted print are:

Get My Monthly Newsletter

Once you've added your email to my mailing list, hop back over here and post a comment.

That's it! I'll then draw three winners from my list of names and ship off this little work of art to those lucky winners.

September 25th Update:
The winners ARE: Amber Hernandez, Inspired by Ian, and Casey Shannon Studio

Congratulations! Please send your mailing addresses to melody@vgernet.net with "Chipmunk Miniature Art" in the subject line.

Thursday

Tree Frog Mini Painting (ACEO) Complete

I finished my newest tiny art piece today! Meet "Happy Tree Frog". You can see the step by step, work in progress of this tiny painting, here

Happy Tree Frog is my interpretation of a Red Eyed Tree Frog. These little fellas are amphibians (animals that spend part of their lives under water and the remainder on land). They live in lowland tropical rainforests in Central America and northern South America and are nocturnal. They rest on the undersides of large leaves during the day. Red-Eyed Tree Frogs simply make me smile and in my opinion, are an amazingly beautiful gift of nature!

Remember, the"watermark" of my name and the image of the penny does not appear on the original. The penny is to remind you of the paintings diminutive size.

This is an original, a little (3.5" x 2.5") India Ink, colored pencil, and some white acrylic painting by me, Melody Lea Lamb. He is available to purchase right here from my blog:Or find him here on Etsy.

This small painting is an ACEO (Art Cards Editions and Originals) ACEOs are miniature art pieces done in the standard trading card size of 3.5 x 2.5 inches. These are small paintings that fit into readily available card sleeves and pages, they can be stored in an album, framed in a group, or given as a unique gift.

The special charity which will receive 15% of the proceeds is Field Haven Feline Rescue

Wednesday

Twitter's Follow Friday Phenomenon

I see Twitter (especially "Follow Friday" or #FollowFriday or #FF) as an opportunity to create waves, or expanding ripples of positive energy. I joined Twitter about two years ago and have slowly begun to learn how to see it as a wonderful supportive community. As you select individuals to follow and begin to actually interact with people on Twitter, you find that it can be a pretty amazing "Twittersphere" or community of great contacts. I believe a good recipe for your "Tweets" on Twitter is:

* 90% Sincere interaction with people, "Re-Tweeting" (meaning to repeat some one elses great information) RT-ing others art, sales, pictures, great news, etc. Sharing intriguing links and information is also most welcome on Twitter.

* 10% Self Promotion

On Fridays there is a Twitter phenomenon called FollowFriday (or "followfriday, or #ff which is the "hash tag" code on Twitter) it's a chance to recommend your favorite people for others to follow. For me, FollowFriday has become a labor of love. It brings me joy to recommend another person, add a few brief highlights about them, and "pay it forward" by bringing them more followers on Twitter.

So come Tweet with us on Twitter's #followfriday!

Me, on Twitter

Enjoy!!

Miniature Frog Art (ACEO) Work In Progress

I've begun work on a new miniature painting (ACEO, a tiny work of art only 3.5" by 2.5") this week and am going to share the WIP (work in progress) with you.

The surface I use for my miniature art is 10 ply Cotton Illustration Board. The board is 1/8” thick (about 10x thicker than a sheet of printer paper) and has a slight “tooth” (a bit of roughness that allows pigment to adhere).

The Ink drawing

Once I have the composition for my miniature painting all worked out, I gently draw out my idea on the Illustration Board in pencil. I then carefully ink in the painting. For years I used very expensive and temperamental Rapidiograph technical pens, but have since discovered Sakura Micron Pigma pens. These great little disposable technical pens have many different size nibs (points) and use archival ink which means the pigment will last for generations.

I consider my ink drawing the “bones” of a painting. The ink is permanent and will show through all my consequent layers of colored pencil, so it needs to be exact!

Background washes

The next step in my painting process is laying in washes of color. Here I've used diluted India ink.

The layers of pencil

The bulk of the little painting is going to be layer after layer of translucent colored pencil. The pencil I use is called Prismacolor and has a waxy-buttery quality. I add colored pencil layers, slowly and gently, leaving some of the paper peeking through which gives the painting a nice grainy look. Often I layer until the pencil becomes more like paint that I can push around and blend.

Enjoy and keep checking back to this post for more steps to "Happy Tree Frog"

Update, Saturday Sept 10th:

Today I think I am finished with the leaf my little frog is sitting on. Happy Saturday, everyone!

Getting closer...

Sunday

My Favorite ACEOs

Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite miniature paintings I've created over the last few years. The first two are my most recent ACEOs (miniature paintings)