The Art of Shawna Apps
“Your work is too soft.”
“You need more contrast.”
“You know what would make this piece better? Differentiating between your lights and darks more.”
Those comments and so many other variations on them came from my professors and classmates in college, whether I asked for feedback or not. Critiques, working in class….I’d hear them all the time.
Continue reading ““Too Soft””Just as a warning, there might be a theme for some of these newer pieces. When I started relaunching my business, we happened to have our annual Apps family vacation fall smack dab right in the middle of it. And when we stayed on a beautiful river and as an artist I am obsessed with clouds, sunrises/sunsets, and all things landscape and of nature, we can just say that there were a lot of photos taken as inspiration for future pieces (including Serenity Bay!).
While we were on vacation, I was asking some of our family members what kinds of things they’d like to see me do. The #1 response? Another blue heron…
Title: Harry
Continue reading “New Piece Alert: Harry”It has been a hard couple of years. When the world feels like it’s imploding with a global pandemic and life as we know it changing almost overnight, I shut down. My family became my Number One Priority.
My husband, a teacher, took over my drafting table to use as his desk for remotely teaching his students, and my youngest took over my work table for his studies. I was bouncing around, helping all three kids stay on top of their lessons and work, keeping the house running, trying to not panic and just be a support for my family.
And after awhile, it happend: I no longer saw oil paintings when I looked at the clouds. I didn’t see watercolors when a bird landed on one of my veggie plants. Our resident backyard bunny no longer made me want to draw. After an amazing start to 2020, I was devastated. My world was upside down, and to lose my passion for art? I couldn’t process that.
I mean, it got to be so bad that I almost got rid of all of my supplies and converted my studio over to an office and workspace for the family. I couldn’t even look at my work or a tube of paint.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021. I was outside doing something, and I looked at the sky and thought to myself, “I wonder how I would paint that cloud.” I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t believe it, it HAD to be a fluke. I brushed it off and kept going about whatever I was doing.
A few days later, it happened again. And then again. And again. After two weeks of feeling inspired, I decided that I was going to slowly start working again: planning out supplies I needed, making a list of pieces I wanted to create, laying down some boundaries because if this was really happening, I wanted to do things different. I spent six weeks working tirelessly behind the scenes, planning, purchasing…up until my relaunch date.
October 1st, 2021 I relaunched my art business, and I am SO EXCITED!
This month I have *finally* finished book four of the Boathouse Mouse series…
…I’ve done an original watercolor painting…
…and an original oil painting…
…and finished a drawing I started before I walked away.
All of those will be launching or being revealed soon, so I hope you enjoyed the teasers 🙂
I cannot wait for what’s to come, after almost two years away, there is so much in my brain just wanting to come out on paper and canvas! Stay tuned for some hopefully awesome pieces!
Thank you so much for sticking around!
Hey there little guy! Welcome to the family!!!
This pencil drawing has been in the works since OCTOBER. I started him for the documentary that Stephen and I collaborated on, and then he got pushed to the back burner. Well, he’s been staring at me for long enough from the corner of my drafting table, so I made it a priority to get him finished this week.
As you may know I’m letting go of my funk and getting out of my comfort zone, and with that comes pursuing new opportunities…or even certain opportunities again.
A few years ago I had some pieces in a gallery exhibit at Dansville ArtWorks as well as some of my jewelry up for consignment there. It was a great experience, but I never took part in it again. I don’t know why, there was nothing that prevented me from doing it again, I just…didn’t.
I still followed them on Facebook, and I happened to see them post about an exhibit and they were looking for artists. It was a space theme, and I just so happened to have a piece PERFECT for it. I sent in my application, dropped off my art, and I’m back in the gallery!
My youngest and I went to the opening reception together. My older two kids had opening night of their musical, so my husband attended that as he couldn’t go Saturday (which is when I went), so it was a great time for a date with my little guy!
I swear, it’s so weird seeing my art on a gallery wall. Ryan never made it to see my work at the last exhibit, so he thought it was cool seeing one of his favorite pieces of mine on the wall, too!
Because the reception was on May 3rd, May 4th is Star Wars Day (May the 4th (force) be with you!), and it was a space themed exhibit, they had Darth Vader and Chewbacca there!!!! Ry absolutely loved that, and Darth Vader said he’s his new apprentice.
The exhibit runs through June 29th, and every time you visit you can enter to win a Boba Fett blaster signed by Jeremy Bulloch, the actor who played the original Boba Fett! You can find more information about the gallery and the amazing work they are doing here.
Do you have a favorite Star Wars character?
Hellooooo blog!
You may notice I haven’t been around in awhile, and it’s not because I shut down my business, pushed it to the back burner because of the hair business, nothing like that at all.
I’m just in a funk and have no idea how to get out of it.
There’s a lot going on with my art that I just don’t share. But in order to fully understand where I’ve been and what’s going on in my brain, I have to share some of it.
This piece has been a long time coming!
My thoughts behind that is two-fold: first, I’ve wanted to draw the Hogwarts castle for a really, really long time. And second, this drawing has been on my shelf as a commission for a YEAR.
Now I HATE making anyone wait for anything, especially an entire year. But this one was delayed for a lot of reasons: finding the right reference image and then having it sent to me the day before my phone decided to lose EVERYTHING on it, not being able to find the perfect reference image again, me selling and buying a house, and then still not being able to find the right image again. But, it was found and I had the drawing in hand ready for delivery less than a week later.
Is it really over???
I know I’ve said this a lot, but man, it feels like the challenge just started, yet somehow it feels like it went on forever.
I was so tempted to surprise you all and do one more week of the challenge to do some of the top requested drawings that are left, but my family is home on vacation this week and as our youngest has a birthday this week as well, that had to be my priority. I promise to get to that list soon though!
On to the recap!
What I learned:
The biggest thing I learned was that taking almost a year off from working is not good for me mentally. Every time I saw the boxes for my studio and office still in the sunroom waiting to be unpacked or my future office/studio still in shambles, I’d get more frustrated, anxious and agitated. Every day that I got to do a drawing, I felt all of that melting away. Yes, my boxes are still there and the office is no where near finished, but I had my joy back.
Continue reading “Drawing a Day Challenge 2018: What I Learned, How It Went”
HELLOOOOOOO END OF THE CHALLENGE!
I have to be honest, when I finally sat down to work on the drawing this morning, I almost started to cry. Part of it is just exhaustion from all of the work that goes into each day’s drawing, but a lot of it is I’m going to miss it so much! Thankfully I have a great project lined up to keep me busy 😉
But here he is, the final drawing of the challenge and last piece to the Hogwarts House Mascot series:
Happy 2nd to last day of the challenge!!!!
I decided to just finish out the Hogwarts House series; half of the series was already done, and I know I had some people very anxious to have the series in print, so it made sense to finish it now. Continue reading “Drawing a Day Challenge 2018: Day 24”
Back to the Drawing Board 