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MY NEW RETRO SIXTIES POP ART SERIES MEETS THE DIGITAL ERA WITH A BIG BANG, A BOO & A TWANG!

I’ve started a new series of pop art illustrations I’m calling the Duo Series inspired by some of my favorite art from the sixties.  I grew up surrounded by graphic images like Peter Max’s wonderful iconic works, got invaded by Blue Meanies and the Beatles in cartoon form on the Yellow Submarine album and animated film, and I was weaned on Walt Disney features.

The cartoon images and bright colors were one of the first – and strongest – influences of my own personal art style.  Maybe I never grew out of my love for coloring books and comic books, but I love doing a linear illustration and then filling it with color and I love the playful approach to creating art.  I’ve done just about every style and used every medium out there over the last half century but, given the choice, I will produce work that reflects the times I grew up in and the style of art that I still love today.  This means colors from across the spectrum, playful imagery, humor and a slight touch of the psychedelic fringe.  I am a product of my environment!

Embarking on this series I knew I wanted to recreate some of that retro sixties style but I also wanted it to fit within the “pop art” genre of common every day objects being depicted.  I decided I could do this by creating one retro sixties style cartoon graphic then merging it with silhouettes of iconic objects from this era.  I started with a fun and classic Pop Art Sky Illustration and carried that over to Pop Art Guitars, silhouettes of classic guitars like a Fender, a Gibson, a Martini and a Les Paul.  Then, with Halloween fast approaching I was asked to do a skull drawing for a tattoo and that became the second Duo of the Series – Big Bang Black Hole Pop Art and Pop Art Skulls!

All of my work is created for Posters and Fine Art Giclees as well as t-shirts, cards, cups, aprons and even skateboards and shoes and you can purchase all these designs on those products at The PopArtDiva Gift Gallery.

You can also license these images for your product or marketing purposes by contacting me directly.

DANCING MARTINIS

Original 8′ x 10″ Acrylic on Watercolor Paper

$125.00 Plus Shipping

Dancing Martinis was the first sketch and the first Martini Art of the series.  It was also the one that defined the style of this hand painted watercolor series.

Contact Me to Purchase “DANCING MARTINIS” Original Art

ALSO available on Posters, Tees, Cups, Cards & Other Gear at The Martini Diva Boutique

QUIT SCREWING AROUND AND GET ON THE STICK!

Original 6″x12″ Acrylic on Watercolor Paper

$125.00 Plus Shipping

Contact Me to Purchase “GET OFF THE STICK” Original Art

(For some reason when I looked at this leaning martini glass I kept imagining an olive hanging off the rim instead of in the martini itself so I went with it and created this little cartoon illustration!)

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OLIVE A MARTINI, PLEASE

Original 6″x 10″ Acrylic on Watercolor Paper

$125.00 Plus Shipping

The color scheme of this painting uses the tension of opposites on the color wheel – a palette I enjoy using a lot.  In order to tie the red-violet martinis in with the yellow-green background, and also tie in the orange of the olives, I made the confetti dots these colors as well as darker olives and greens.

Contact Me to Purchase “OLIVE A MARTINI, PLEASE” Original Art

ALSO Available on Posters, Tees, Cards, Cups, Aprons & other Gear at The Martini Diva Boutique

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PURPLE NURPLE MARTINI

Original 6″x 10″ Acrylic on Watercolor Paper

$115.00 Plus Shipping

The background here had a lot less of the confetti look so I went with bubbles and swirls here.  I love painting bubbles for some reason, lol. BTW, there really is such a thing as a Purple Nurple Martini at The Martini Diva!!

Contact Me to Purchase “PURPLE NURPLE MARTINI” Original Art

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PRETTY IN PINK MARTINi

Original 6″x 12″ Acrylic on Watercolor Paper

$125.00 Plus Shipping

I was going to paint the martini here with greens – the opposite colors palette – but with the little bits of blue in the background I decided to stay in the pinks and violets, using analogous (adjacent) color hues for a change.

Contact Me to Purchase “PRETTY IN PINK” Original Art

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CREATING THE MARTINI ART ORIGINALS:

I started this series just this last Sunday with a bit of a plan.  I wanted backgrounds done in abstract wet-in-wet watercolor style background to incorporate tonal qualities that would create a depth of field from slightly different hues from the same area of the color wheel.  Different tone and saturation of the colors would create a visual effect of close-up/far away visually.  I am very fond of complementary and split-complementary color palettes, I find them more dramatic and interesting than analogous colors, as well as more complex visually.  I’ll even get into Triadic andtetradic color schemes though they can be very tricky.  ( Here’s a great tutorial on Color Schemes you might enjoy.)

This type of background is messy work – you wet down the whole sheet and start throwing color on, adding spatters and dropping in some salt for little spots of texture.  These also added a confetti look and that is what took me to the style I ended up with.

Originally my plan was to give the glass area a transparent wash of white and then outline the glasses in white – but the white didn’t show up strongly enough against the light to mid-tone backgrounds.  At this point it was close to the end of the day and I had to stop painting – it made it a very disappointing day for me.  BUT I have learned over the years that a fresh day and a fresh look often solves painting problems and, sure enough, Monday morning I looked at the painting below and realized that I could paint a border around the glasses using the background tones only darker.  This would pop them out from the background and be a dark enough contrast to the white glass and outline.

From there the confetti look of the spatters took me to enhancing the “confetti” feel and then adding the fun swirls coming out of the martinis for movement and a whimsical touch.  I then added a few more little dabs and dots around the swirls for “effervescence” and to bring in the colors used in the cherries and olives.

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FLYING HAIR MARBLES – SOLD

These two paintings were a new take on my usual rainbow coloring of the Pop Art Divas Series.  I wanted to get away from the rainbow coloring of the hair and go a little more neutral for a change.  Even I can get tired of too much color believe it or not!  I found that I really like this look and might continue the series in this style since I’ve already done a good number of the rainbow haired divas.

CHEEKY HEART

Original 5″x7″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas Board

$95.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “CHEEKY HEART” Original Art

DIVA WITH BLING

Original 4″x6″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas Board

$75.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “DIVA WITH BLING” Original Art

FAIRY EARS – SOLD

HEART WINKS

Original 4″ X 6″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas Board

$75.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “HEART WINKS” Original Art

WAVY LADY

Original 4″x6″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas Board

$75.00 Plus Shipping

Contact Me to Purchase “WAVY LADY” Original Art

MIDNIGHT DIVA  – SOLD

MYSTICAL MELONIE

Original 6″x8″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas Board

$105.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “MYSTICAL MELONIE” Original Art

*I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.

Care: Dust lightly with a soft cloth, most are standard frame sizes and frames can be found to fit but you can just set the canvas up on a small easel or plate holder!

As you can see I love lots of color, most of my Pop Art Divas have been rainbow haired.  I decided that I needed to concentrate on one area of the color wheel for a change and went with blues, greens and purples on this piece.

Lady Wings The Blues has a bit of a Pandora quality to her – I think the curls in her hair positioned themselves just right to give that impression though it wasn’t any plan.  As I’ve stated before I don’t plan these at all when I start the sketches, I just allow them to happen “intuitively”

LADY WINGS THE BLUES

an Original 8″x10″ Watercolor and Acrylic Painting on 200# D’Arches Cold Press Watercolor Paper

$175.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “LADY WINGS THE BLUES” Original Art

(I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.)

Care: Lady should be framed and mounted under glass to protect her delicate sensibilities – watercolor divas are susceptible to UV and moisture damage!!!)

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Sleeping Beauty was one of the watercolor original paintings that I didn’t finish 2 weekends ago. Well, it was almost finished when I did that stupid thing an artist can do every once in a while, I tried to change something mid stream. Watercolor is a very unforgiving medium, it doesn’t like change – unless of course the change was it’s idea! Those of you who work in traditional watercolor techniques know what I’m talking about.

I had to put it aside that Sunday because it was getting late and come back to it this weekend.  I turned it into an opaque watercolor because I had to cover up my mess on the face – the only area I leave white of course – and use an opaque Titanium White for the skin tone.  It actually gave me an opportunity to try out some new modeling ideas using soft grays and I really liked the effect.

I also took the opportunity to color some of the stars in the negative space.

Mistakes can often lead you down a new road you might not have traveled and help you out in the end by improving your work.  Anyway, Sleeping Beauty turned out lovely and is one of my favorites. I really like having the face coming in from the side and off-balance like this.  You’ll note that I rarely do a centered piece – usually I find them uninteresting and boring in design.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

an Original 8″x10″ Watercolor and Acrylic Painting on 200# D’Arches Cold Press Watercolor Paper

$185.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “SLEEPING BEAUTY” Original Art

(I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.)

Care: Electra should be framed and mounted under glass to protect her delicate sensibilities – watercolor divas are susceptible to UV and moisture damage!!!)

Series: Pop Art Divas, Original Watercolors

I like stars and use them a lot in my art, especially in this series of Pop Art Divas Originals.  If you take a look at this style of pop art cartoon done in the sixties you’ll see a lot of stars – check out the great cartoons done for Yellow Submarine and, of course, take a look at Peter Max’s work from that era – stars are all over the place.

I actually sign my first name – which is Terri, by the way, lol – with a star and have for decades.  For some reason I left it off the logo for PopArtDiva.com – maybe I’ll add it next time I do a redesign – maybe not, lol.

But the stars are showing up all over the Pop Art Divas – it’s part of the genre to me and this is my first Star Diva with a few simple stars in the background and one as a beauty mark by her mouth.

STAR DIVA

an original 6″ x 10″ watercolor and acrylic painting on 200# D’Arches watercolor cold press paper

$175.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “STAR DIVA” Original Art

(I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.)

Care: Electra should be framed and mounted under glass to protect her delicate sensibilities – watercolor divas are susceptible to UV and moisture damage!!!)

Original 8″x 10″ Watercolor Pop Art Diva

When I saw how this Pop Art Diva’s hair just flowed into a design element of its own I made the decision to keep this painting simple and make it  all about the movement of the hair.  I added a simple heart to Tallulah’s cheek and some colored stars to the background and that was it.  There’s something so lovely about the waves and how they are the star of this piece that any more embellishment would have been redundant here.

I named her Tallulah after the actress Tallulah Bankhead who was known for her hair sweeping over her face to create an air of mystery.  This became an homage to my love of old black and white film noir.  If you’re too young to know who Tallulah Bankhead but like old movies you need to Google her – quite an interesting woman.

Tallulah

an 8″ x 10″ original watercolor and acrylic painting on 200# D’arches watercolor paper

$185.00 Plus Shipping*

Contact Me to Purchase “TALLULAH” Original Art

(I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.)

Care: Tallulah should be framed and mounted under glass to protect her delicate sensibilities – watercolor divas are susceptible to UV and moisture damage!!!)

I managed to get six paintings done this weekend, Cat Woman is one of my favorites and it was entirely unplanned.

I don’t make any plans for these paintings when I draw them, I just start sketching and let the drawing take me where it chooses.  Sometimes I see something in them right away that names them, sometimes not.  Cat Woman immediately made me think of a woman wearing a cat mask though I hadn’t planned the face design that way, I just followed the natural contours of a woman’s profile.

The cool thing about this particular piece is that you can hang it either horizontally or vertically because of the orientation of the head.

CAT WOMAN

an original watercolor and acrylic painting on 200 # cold press watercolor paper and is 8″ x 12″ in size.

$185.00 Plus Shipping*

(I ship by Boxed Priority Mail – if you live in the U.S. the total shipping cost is $12. If you live outside the US I can figure your shipping costs once I have your address.)

Care: Cat Woman should be framed and mounted under glass to protect her delicate sensibilities – watercolor divas are susceptible to UV and moisture damage!!!)

Contact Me to Purchase “CATWOMAN” Original Art

Sorry for the lousy photo – I shot it pretty early this morning and the light sucked, lol. But here’s 5 more sketches I’ll be working on this weekend.  Yes, you do see a Martini in there – I couldn’t resist.  I love doing martini art and produce quite a bit for The Martini Diva Boutique.

This is just a quick post to show you what I’m going to be working on for the next 2 days.  Check back on Monday to see and buy the finished paintings!  Remember, this is the only place you can buy an original one-of-a-kind work of art from me now that I no longer do art shows!

Okay, now to painting! Yes, I ate breakfast so I don’t have to take a break though I may nibble on a few chocolate kisses.