Join COLOR THEORY and become a coloring master.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m thrilled to present to you my most popular art and coloring course COLOR THEORY, and it’s now available on Udemy.

LEARN TO COLOR LIKE THIS!

Understanding color isn’t just an art form, it’s science, and it dates back to antiquity. Upon completing of this course, your coloring will get a facelift. Those who see your new coloring pages will assume you went to an art university and know all the secrets of the masters.

The four long lessons that make up this course are presented in many short segments.

PRICELESS CONTENT

In this course, I will teach you University-level material, and A LOT of it. I went to an art University in New York City to get my degree in fine art. There, my class on color theory lasted four months, and the content was applied to the rest of my art journey until graduation.

I’m offering you the same level of education, all packed into four easy-to follow lessons, with course material that you get to keep.

After completing this course, you will never stress over picking colors again. You will gain confidence in your art that only comes with knowledge and practice. You will learn everything there is to know about the science of color, including various color models, ways to group colors, value, saturation, tints, tones, shades, mood and how to set it. 

Together we’ll study the works of masters for reference, and review your own creations. Together, we’ll make YOU a master.

SO! If you’re ready to step up your coloring game, I’ll see you in class. 

Learn from me and thousands of professional instructors for free!

I’ve been teaching art and coloring for years. You may be familiar with my free art and coloring tutorials on YouTube, or my university-level art courses on Udemy, or perhaps you’re a patron subscribed to the Coloring Club or the Doodle Club tier.

Or you may be completely new to the Lisa Mitrokhin universe. In either case, you will be delighted to discover that you can now take my How to Color Skin Tones and a few other courses for free on Skillshare.

Click on the image to go directly to this course

But wait, there’s more! 😀

When you use this LINK to join Skillshare, and my course, you get a WHOLE MONTH free of Skillshare use.

That’s INSANE!

There’re thousands of amazing, professional, and knowledgable creators on Skillshare. I personally use it all the time for my own research and education.

So, what are you waiting for?!

JOIN!

Follow me!

Take my course. Leave me a kick-ass review, and enjoy the endless knowledge offered by Skillshare.

I’ll see you in class.

Join a DRAWING CLUB

Do you like to sketch, doodle, and draw? Would you like to mingle with other doodlers, and learn from a professional artist along the way? Great!
Join The Doodle Club. as one of my Patreon tiers.

WHAT IS THE DOODLE CLUB

The DOODLE CLUB is a monthly subscription to a virtual classroom, with advanced content that I never share on YouTube or other public platforms.

Every month in Doodle Club I share a newly recorded drawing video, with emphasis on free-hand technique. My pre-med background and general obsession with anatomy allows me to dive deeper into the structure of my subjects and explain WHY something looks the way that it does, rather than only presenting a set of step-by step instructions. When I teach how to draw big cats, for instance, I want my students to be able to draw ALL big cats in any situation, not just to be able to copy one of my drawings.

Video lessons are recorded and uploaded for students to watch as webinars on their own time.

“I’M JUST A BEGINNER. CAN I JOIN?”

Absolutely! You are welcome, you’ll have a great time and learn a lot. In my lessons, I focus on approach above technique. This is a place to learn to let go, to loosen up your hand, and to learn to see objects and subjects in a different light, which will allow you to draw more freely on your own. This is a great place to get started if you don’t have much experience.

You will see noticeable improvement every month. The longer you stay, the more you will learn.

“I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DRAW, WILL I BENEFIT FROM THIS?”

It depends on how advanced and how comfortable you are. Are you a pro who can draw anything, free-hand, and then perfect it to look photorealistic? If so, you probably already know everything I teach here.

If however, you draw often and you draw well, but your proportion on animals just seem off, or your portraits don’t really resemble their real-life models, or you would like learn to be able to draw more without the aid of photography or relying on tracing – THIS CLUB IS FOR YOU.

HOW TO JOIN

Simply click on the button below and select the Patreon tier called Doodle Club.

I’ll see you there!

Master SKIN TONES with colored pencils

If you like to draw or color and want to take your skin tone colored pencil work to a whole new level – my SKIN TONE MASTERY course on Udemy is for YOU!

In this 3.5-hour course I will teach you my technique to achieve cream, peaches, caramel, toffee, and espresso skin tones. Each section (or lesson) focuses on a new skin tone and contains several short video lessons, as well as coloring pages to practice on, and my personal color charts.

GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT AND KNOWLEDGE

The color charts that I designed for each skin tone are one of the most desired elements of the course, but even that’s not the course’s greatest value.

To prepare you for all the skin tone coloring possibilities out there, I teach you how to make your own color palettes for ANY skin tone!

Every step of the way I will guide you with visual demos, my choices of colors, my shading and layering technique and much more.

For each skin tone I offer my own personal, already proven, color chart that your’e welcome to use on your own coloring.

But that wasn’t enough for me. I want to teach you how to make your own artistic decisions, so I will also teach you how to build your own color charts for any skin tone you may wish to color.

In addition to printable charts and games, every lesson comes with two versions of a portrait illustration, making a total of 10 unique coloring character pages for you to practice on.

INKandescence 2021: Steampunk

This is a collection of my hand-drawn pen and ink illustrations, based on Inktober 2021 prompts. Inktober is a yearly word association drawing game played by thousands of people all around the world.

This year I approached Inktober in a unique way: I offered my audience a chance to actually appear in my art as characters. For instance, a colorist named Crystal Miller booked the first day with an assigned word (prompt) “Crystal,” and she volunteered her two girls to be featured. I drew the kids growing out of a crystal cluster. In this way the entire book was created with actual people (and in some cases their pets) as characters. 

WATCH THE VIDEO FLIP-THROUGH

The trickiest part was to make every participant somehow reflect their assigned word. Some people knew the exact prompt they wanted, while others just gave me a general idea of their self image, and left me to make it work with the available words. As an extra challenge I set out to do the whole collection in a steampunk style. 

For every day of October, I released a photo of a drawing, done in markers and fine-liners. That is thirty one drawings. The photos below are of my original drawings and a teaser for what will be inside the colorable published book. Enjoy the pics.

GET THE PDF DOWNLOADABLE BOOK HERE:
GET THE PDF

GET THE BOOK IN PRINT HERE:
BUY PAPERBACK

One lucky collector may also purchase the original bundle of signed drawings. Read all the offer details HERE

ORIGINAL INKANDESCENCE ART

Nights And Mares dolls 2017-2018

Nights And Mares Toys is my line of unique and unusual dolls, skulls, and taxidermy displays. In this article I will focus only the dolls. Some of these characters are figments of my imagination, while others are very specific commissions. From elegant ladies to wild winged shape-shifters, each of my creations is made with all of my heart and all of my craft.  I take into account every possible little detail, including undergarments that will never see the light of day, nail polish, individual hairs on the eyebrows, jewelry that actually sits in pierced holes, etc.

Nights And Mares is a strictly no-kill workshop. Every taxidermy element, every feather, or bone, or tooth, or wing or hoof, are specimens that I gathered from local roadkill or natural farm deaths. I live and work in a rural part of Chile, and there is no shortage of animal remains if you know what to look for.

Lenora

PERSONALITY: Leonora is a porcelain-skinned beauty and she knows it. Her skin is flawless, with tiny freckles like intricate constellations, ruby red lips, and half closed eyes.

DESCRIPTION: Lenora’s face was an absolute joy to create. It took days of delicate painting with the tiniest of brushes to get her skin tone and expression just right. What took even more time and required even more tiny detail was her dress. Hand made from three types of cotton fabric, chiffon, lace, ribbon and leather, her dress is light weight, elegant and perfectly fitting. Underneath she has black lingerie and red high stockings. She wears long black lace gloves and a matching ribbon on her black and silver hair. For jewelry she wears only a black lace choker and a simple silver cross on her neck. Even her fingernails are individually painted. Her tiny boots are handmade from leather, plastic and adhesives, with hand-painted tiny gold buckles. She is a picture of perfection.  She stands perfectly balanced on a wood cut stand, with a soft felt base. Together with the stand she measures about 26 cm tall.

CURRENT HOME: Among dolls and curiosities. USA.

Hel

 

PERSONALITY: One of the three children of Loki and Angrboda, Hel is the ruler of the land for the dead that did not die in battle. In life, Hel was a beautiful and polite girl. Well, at least half of her was. Her other half was rotten and withered like that of a corpse. Hel is well mannered and elegant. She has nothing against living people, but she prefers the company of the dead. Her kingdom “Hel” is not a place of punishment, it is a great hall that provides a sanctuary to all those who did not die fighting. Her hall is for women, and children, and the old, and the sick… for all of us who will most likely not go to Valhalla.

DESCRIPTION: My Hel is a tiny marionette. As she hangs effortlessly on her strings, she appears weightless and elegant; polite, but a bit of a tease. The half of her face that is alive is innocent and radiant, like that of a gullible child. The side that is dead is void of all expression of life, but it is neither evil nor scary, it is simply dead. Death is a part of every life, and Hel wears that side of her without hesitation or embarrassment. She knows that were are all already dead and she does not judge us for it.
In the hands of a handler, however, Hel can move her arms, wrists, knees, and bow her head, in a playful manner.

She is hand crafted and constructed from wood, plastic, discarded doll parts, copper wire, and cloth. Her arms are made of wood from the forest by the river where I live – hand carved and polished to match her size and personality. Her face is sculpted and painted as well as lacquered for protection. Her hair cut, colored and styled in various shades of blue, purple and black. Her dress and undergarments are tailored and hand stitched to present a cute but daring little girl.

Hel’s lacquered, black, wooden handle is lightweight and easy to use with one hand or both. The strings are threaded through tiny holes and anchored by shiny black beads. On their other ends, the strings are attached to Hel’s joints. The attachments are easy to remove should the owner chose to replace the strings, lengthen or shorten them, or move them to different joints on the body. As a matter of fact, she does not even have to be a marionette. Many of the strings can be removed and she she can be hung as a display doll, or sat, or laid out, or otherwise posed, should one find the strings unsightly or the movements unnecessary.

Head to toe she measures 28cm. Arms outstretched, fingertip to fingertip she is also 28cm. With her current strings from handle to toe, the whole assembly is 66cm.

CURRENT HOME: Home of a doll and taxidermy collector. USA.

Purslane

PERSONALITY: This girl knows exactly what she likes and she will stop at nothing to get the perfect accessory to make her feel like “herself”, even if that accessory is a new face.

DESCRIPTION: Purslane is a remodeled doll, with a hand painted face, handmade garments and haircut, and a collection of unique accessories picked especially by Lady Purslane herself. In her hair she wears ribbons as well as real animal vertebrae. Her right ear is actually pierced. She is wearing earrings, a chain and a choker around her neck, and bracelets and anklets of stainless steel as well as leather. Her outfit is made of silky fabric, lace, leather, velvet and fishnet. She stands effortlessly on a wooden base, which is lined with black velvet. Her attachment to the base is virtually invisible. She appears to just be casually standing on it on her tiptoes. Purslane’s head, hips, arms, elbows and wrists move in almost all humanly achievable directions, but she prefers this pose the most. Her actual hight is almost 25 cm, but with the base she stands the full 30 cm.

CURRENT HOME: Among other collectable dolls. Australia.

Aiden

 

PERSONALITY: Aiden is a shapeshifter. She can be all girl or all bird, but she prefers to display her favorite parts of both. In her most comfortable moments she takes advantage of her highly functional bird feet, while also enjoying the dexterity of human hands. She displays her magnificent wings every chance she gets, and while her face can pass for a human girl, it always maintains an owl-like stare. She is a quick and silent hunter. Her small fairy size limits her kills to field mice and road lizards, but that keeps her satisfied. She prefers to come out at night, but is stealthy enough to hunt in daylight as well. Make no mistake, however, she is no beast. In her human form, Aiden is a very clever and well-spoken young lady, when she needs to be.

DESCRIPTION: Aiden is my most unusual OOAK taxidermy doll to date. Her body is constructed out of various plastic doll body parts, hand painted to give her a new face an personality. Her plastic doll’s legs gradually transition into real talons from a roadkill bird that I collected not far from my rural home. Her magnificent wings also come from a road accident avian victim, combined with feathers from my personal chickens and peacocks, and shaped to look like what I imagine angel wings look like, but also predator wings. She wears a tiny pelt dress made of hand-tanned rabbit fur, also roadkill. Her hair is styled and died to reveal several shades of grey, blue and black and well as silvery white. Her face, body and feet are lacquered for protection and for aestheticism. The delicate sheen gives the face a feel of some kind of a sentient porcelain.

Aiden is a wall display doll. She is permanently mounted onto her picture frame.  Above her head is a crown of costume jewels and a vertebrae from a small mammal, possibly a weasel of a cat.

It was a rare alignment of all these roadkill parts that came to me around the same time, plus the inspiration for this particular doll face that made the creation of Aiden possible. This is why an Aiden replica (honoring my no-kill taxidermy code) is virtually impossible. I can create other winged dolls, but there will be variation in wings, fur, and talons.

Her dimensions are: across or wingtip to wingtip = 43cm, lengthwise or top of the frame to bottom of feet = 43cm, depth or from wall to tips of the wings = 17cm. The doll herself, from head to talon = 26 cm.

CURRENT HOME: I created Aiden as a personal companion for myself. She lives even now in my home studio. However, she says that if the right new human comes along, she would be willing to travel, and see other parts of the world.

If you suspect you may be that human, you can view her complete profile and details here.

Patches

PERSONALITY: Playful, innocent, easily engaged, but also easily bored.

DESCRIPTION: Patches is a commission puppet. I was asked to a create a clown marionette based on a drawing of a clown that I did a while back. I chose to make the boy version of that clown. The name was selected by the client. I had a name a personality to work with. Everything else was up to me.

Patches is made almost entirely out of hand-carved wood. His creation took two weeks and a lot of patience. You can read the full story of his creation here.

He is one of my largest dolls. When standing on the ground he comes almost up to my knee, which makes him roughly 35 cm (measurements get tricky when hats are involved)

CURRENT HOME: USA

Harebrained Jane

PERSONALITY: Jane is an enigma.  She is silent and reserved, but not shy. Better to leave her to her own thoughts, and no matter what happens, DON’S ASK ABOUT THE RABBIT.

The original painting inspiration

DESCRIPTION: Jane was a commission. I was asked to create a doll based on a very odd painting of a girl with a rabbit on her head. The painting was childish and charming, and as strange and unrevealing as Jane herself. It was not at all obvious from the painting whether the rabbit was real or not, dead or alive, or if the girl was even aware of him. I replicated the face and the costume as accurately as was humanly possible, while also making Jane a bit older and more elegant as was requested, and making the rabbit more toy like as requested. I think the tiny silver jacket with the fringe collar was the most challenging part to make.  It was quite a rewarding experience all the way to the end.

My older version of Jane with a toy rabbit for a hat.

When I was ready to present the photos of my creation to the client, who has been very eager to chat but who still hadn’t paid me even a deposit on the piece, I was suddenly unable to reach him. When at last he replied with some awkward excuses and explanations, it became obvious that he was just a tourist client. Tourists happen in my profession. They are people who like the experience of being served. They enjoy ordering the commission and seeing it come to life at their bidding. They go through all of the emotions and the actions of a client purchasing an art piece, but they never intend to pay for the work and when the job is done they leave. I’ve been burned by tourists before.  I did not, however, feel like my time was wasted with this creation. I loved making Jane and was sure that her right owner would come along one day. So she did. Not a month later, Jane was spoken for.

CURRENT HOME: With her real human owner.

Tooth Fairy (original)

PERSONALITY: Tooth fairies are somewhat of a pest in this neck of the woods, yet a fully preserved specimen is very hard to come by. Apparently they go off to some magical place to die when it’s time. This one is quite fresh and well preserved. She has all of her limbs and wings, and most of her teeth. Found already dead, rigor mortis setting in quickly, she was clutching a tiny fairy skull. I believe that in life she was a prankster, as most tooth fairies tend to be.

DESCRIPTION: The Tooth Fairy was the first doll I made. She is about 14 cm tall and the entire display in a frame is 34 x 24 cm. I sculpted her from discarded doll parts and various adhesives. Her face is entirely reconstructed, new eyes set, teeth added, warts hand planted. Her wings are two peacock wing feathers and two chicken feathers from my own birds. She is a framed, wall mounted display.

CURRENT HOME: I can’t recall if she flew off to Europe or the Netherlands, but she did go in the same box with Harebrained Jane.

 

Tooth Fairy (copy)

About a year after the creation of the original Tooth Fairy, I was commissioned a look-alike. The second version of the Tooth fairy is identical in size, color, and character, but with minor variation. The most obvious difference is in the wings. This version has fuller, rounder wings. They are two tail feathers from my pet peahen, and two wing feathers from exotic pheasants I met at a local botanical garden.

Tooth Fairy (baby)

PERSONALITY: As infants, tooth fairies do not yet have a sense of humor or the cunning of adult fairies. Baby fairies, like baby everythings, are innocent, naive, chubby and clumsy.

DESCRIPTION: My tooth fairy is becoming a recognized character among Nights And Mares followers. I have had multiple requests for the four armed, feather winged, small blue creature holding a tiny skull. She has to have spiked black hair and warts on her face, mismatched eyes, and a signature ear to ear smile full of tiny teeth. The tooth fairy is always framed as a wall display. This one meets all the requirements of my blue tooth fairy, but it is a baby.

CURRENT HOME: My home studio. Available here.

Layla

PERSONALITY: Layla is an angel trapped in a doll’s body. She is slightly disoriented by the transformation, but her angelic nature does not allow her to despair. She is gentle and loving, a little bit spaced out most of the time, and always reaching out to the heavens.

DESCRIPTION: When I began working on this doll, I didn’t know what the result would be. I had to listen to what she was telling me. Laylah wanted to be an angel. An unusual subject matter for me, but the doll has spoken. Laylah’s face took two full days to paint and polish. I tailored and hand stitched her dress and head-dress, and I also hand made most of her jewelry. Her wings are real bird wings, having once belonged to a male quail (native to central Chile) that I found dead several months prior. The wing preservation took about a month.

Laylah is an upright decorative doll. She stands on a small wooden block, finished with a soft felt base, as most my doll bases tend to have. There is slight play to her position, but only slight. Both of her arms move freely and her head tilts just a bit if desired.

She is an exceptionally detailed doll, with much character in her face and eyes. She seems to like to raise her left hand a lot, almost in a blessing manner. Laylah is the name of a angel of conception and childbirth. To me she is the guiding spirit of the birth of inspiration.

CURRENT HOME: Home of a doll collector. Australia.

Rosemary

The original drawing of “Human Nature” is an adult coloring page that appears in my book Nights And Mares – Femme Macabre. Rosemary is the one in the womb. This is the page colored by Laurie Gregory, the current owner of Rosemary.

PERSONALITY: Rosemary is a sweetheart of a baby. She is quiet, gentle, and likes to be held.

DESCRIPTION: Rosemary is a very unique creation in that she has a canine skull grafted onto her human head. The original concept for this doll was called Human Nature, and it was a human baby with a wolf head. I have a set of illustrated characters who are a human/wolf family. The idea being that part of human nature is a beast – something primordial, simple, honest, logical, but also formidable and impulsive – a wolf.

Since there are no wolfs where I live, but there is no shortage of roadkill feral dog remains, I used a dog skull and a babydoll. I work with skulls a great deal, but this is the first time I combined my skull work with my doll work. The preparation of the skull was pretty standard – a month of water treatment, cleaning, bleaching, removal of all the teeth for a thorough cleaning of the holes, resetting of all the teeth back in their places, gluing of the jaw for immobility, and finally painting and lacquering. Grafting the skull onto a baby doll’s head was tricky. It took several days, a great deal of sculpting of the connection points. I wanted the hollow eye sockets to have very realistic interior, very deep set, but without leaving the entire head hollow. The result was actually quite cool. The elongated dog snout protrudes from a baby-like skull structure and the giant hollow eyes sockets actually look like wide eyes of a very disturbing baby. I was quite pleased, and for the final touch I put a pink pacifier into one of tooth gaps.

Rosemary is a soft stuffed doll, with hard plastic hands and feet. She wears an adorable pink onesie with little cat designs, she has two large black buttons and some black lace ribbons here and there. Around her head, she wears a little pink ribbon to mach her outfit.

CURRENT HOME: With a surgical technician at a labor and delivery unit. USA.

Mab

PERSONALITY: Impulsive, unpredictable, with no insecurities. Being a fairy, Mab is a trickster. She is always looking for a new scheme.

DESCRIPTION: Mab is a mutant color-changing forest fairy. She is a commission doll. My client gave me a personality description and a color scheme, and told me to go crazy. Crazy I went. Mab has a whole other baby face on the side of her main face and a smile that is shared by both. While I couldn’t make her actually change color, I gave her a very pleasant gradient of purples, violets and fucsia. Mab would be fashionable if she wore clothes. She, however, does not. Her feet naturally morph into high heel shapes, and her short hair is styled into something that resembles my own short messy hair. Her wings are peacock wing feathers. She stands locked into a pose, looking like she is just about to do something, possibly crazy. She stands about 28 cm tall.

CURRENT HOME: Wales.

Fay the baby troll

My usual use for this size bird feet – talon amulets.

PERSONALITY: Fay is a bit mischievous. She looks small and sweet, although a bit crazed, but she has the reflexes of a feral cat and the appetite of a full-groun troll. She mainly feeds on birds, but small rodents will do as well.

DESCRIPTION: Fay is one of the smallest dolls I have ever made. She stands only about 10cm tall. Her dress is made of rabbit fur (personally tanned by me), and feathers (collected from my aviary). The blue ones are tiny neck feathers from my pet peacock. In her hand, Fay holds a bird foot – evidently all that remains from her latest meal. The foot once belonged to a local thrush. Usually I collect the dead bird feet to make charms, pendants or earrings, but it seems that Fay needed this one.

Fay was a surprise gift doll that I made for a good friend of mine here in Chile, so I actually get to visit her very once in a while.

CURRENT HOME: Chile

Susie May

PERSONALITY: Psycho.

DESCRIPTION: Susie May is a very unusual doll. She doesn’t have the typical wide eyed, smooth skinned face of most of my other dolls. She was a commission with very specific instructions. She was to be made to look like a doll from the 2002 film May. In the movie, the main character, May, has a doll named Susie. This doll has a very distinctive white ceramic face, a burgundy leather dress, straight brown hair, and she holds one arm behind her back. In the movie the doll, Susie, never leaves her glass box. My client didn’t want the glass box, but she did want some kind of a stand or a support. Instead of a box I put my version of the doll on to a hand crafted black wooden stand, equipped with what looks like a red leather back support, framed in black – very reminiscent of the original box.

Sculpting her face and making it look like rough ceramic was tricky. Mainly because my doll was much smaller than the one in the movie. Her very specific dress was also a challenge, but after some trial and error I finally achieved the leather look and feel as well the identical shade of burgundy.

The doll is called Susie May, and not just Susie, because she has attributes of May as well – mainly her long human legs. My doll is a morphing of Susie and May into one creature which, if you have seen the movie, is quite fitting.

CURRENT HOME: USA

Bone Collector

PERSONALITY: For a feline creature BC is surprisingly lacking in stealth. This is why she is not a hunter, but rather a gatherer – a gatherer of bones. Stumbling through the forest, stepping on every possible branch and twig as she goes, the only things left for her to collect are scattered bones. She doesn’t mind though. BC has an exceptional collection of razor sharp teeth. They may be tiny, but there are 200 of them. Eating that canine vertebrae is no big deal for her.

DESCRIPTION: BC has a body of a recycled doll, while her face is constructed from scratch, hand painted and lacquered. She is a feline humanoid, and has a cat-like face with a surreal set of tiny teeth, a pair of cat ears and a cat tail (made form real raccoon fur scraps). Her hair is a deep violet color and so are the stripes on and around her face. Her dress is hand-made from several different fabrics. It is decorated with tiny leather belts and she even has little metallic skull and bones badge. The bones she is holding are real animal bones – two feral dog and two rabbit vertebrae to be exact. She sits on a tree stump. It is dried and lacquered, and finished with a green felt base.

In her sitted position BC is only about 18 cm tall.

CURRENT HOME: In a home of a skull and taxidermy collector. USA

Deathica

PERSONALITY: A bit timid, but very bright. Deathica is a great workshop companion. I enjoyed her company in my studio very much.

DESCRIPTION: Deathica is not a doll that I made. She was sent to me for a make-over. Not much work was needed. Just a new dress, and new hair and makeup. The client provided me with the name Deathica and asked that the doll be made up to look a bit more gothic, but not scary or gory. A shade paler skin, with my signature shiny lacquer finish, and some deathly purple shadows around the eyes did the trick. New eyebrows for a more engaged expression, and a bit of a licorice tone on the lips that once held a pacifier.

Her hair was cheap synthetic and not very densely filled. You could clearly see her scalp, which made her look like an old lady or a cancer patient. I did some hair magic (artist’s secret) and gave her a full head of fluffy dark hair, and a cute haircut that frames her adorable face.

Her dress is vey simple, using some of my favorite fabric. Hel has a dress from this same fabric, and so do I personally. She has a clown-like Elizabethian collar with a single oversized button.

The new and improved Deathica was very well received, and I am told that she has a much happier doll energy now.

Here are her before and after shots.

CURRENT HOME: USA

 

I am currently working on a duel marionette commission of a very special famous couple, another elegant glamor girl doll, and a two-headed baby sister to the tooth-fairy. To see my creations as they happen, please visit and follow Nights And Mares Toys. If you wish to purchase any of my current or upcoming creations, my ETSY store is the place to visit. The inventory there is constantly updated with new dolls, toys and curiosities. Please feel free to reach out to me via Facebook or ETSY with commissions or restoration projects. Even though I live and work in Chile, I ship to clients all over the world. My dolls and curiosities have already gone out to many of the States, Canada, Several countries in Europe, the Netherlands, and Australia.

Making Patches the puppet

Patches is a commission marionette based on a clown drawing I did some time back. I was a given a name and a style, and asked to create a dancing clown doll with a vintage feel and lots of personality. I decided to make a child Patches. I tried to imagine what the clown from my drawing looked like when he was a little boy. I thought it humorous that he was born with clown face paint.

Patches is constructed from wood, plastic, copper wire, various fabrics and a bunch of different glues and adhesives, oh yes, and strings of course. His face and hands are the only plastic parts, the rest is hand-carved wood. The face is grafted onto a head that fit his size and personality. It is of course hand painted to match the character.

The first thing I made was the face. Naturally, I needed him to have a personality above all.

 

The next step was to gather the limbs. Thankfully I live surrounded by an acacia forest, so there is no shortage of wood. I carved, sanded, and polished the perfect size limbs.

 

Setting of the joints is the single most important part in building a puppet. It is crucial to set joints securely, and allowing for free and smooth movement. For the head, I did not want complete rotation. I wanted front to back movement only. For that reason I set two hoops in the neck.

 

As I connected more joints, I had to wait for glues to set. I used that time to carve and polish more limbs.

 

The really fun part began with the assembly of the body. Watching my puppet come to life as he gained more limbs was truly fascinating.

 

I soon discovered that puppets are dramatic. Patches did not share my enthusiasm for limb attachment, and spent most of his time laying around and rolling his eyes.

 

He did however perk up when I began introducing clothes. These are his undergarments.

 

He got especially excited about socks.

 

But… he is a child after all, and dramatic displays of boredom soon recommenced.

 

Pants! Ooh, I got his attention once more.

 

Nope, never mind. Waiting for wood glue to set on shoes bore him nearly to death. Even his adorable oversized hat didn’t seem to cheer him up.

 

Total boredom.

 

This could be kind of exciting. After days in the workshop, we are in a new room. What’s this all about? Did you say … strings?

 

Yay! Strings!

 

Yay!

 

At last Patches is complete and content.

 

I even got some smiles.

 

Now it was time for his first walk alongside his creator.

 

That was a success.

 

The controls on Patches are a single, easy-to-maneuver handle. Ideally it requires two hands to operate complex moments. While one hand holds and directs the puppet, the other can pull on individual strings for finer movements of the doll’s arms and hands. The corners that maneuver the knee strings are extended. That way a knee string can be wrapped around the tip for a leg to remain lifted, while other maneuvers are being performed. There are two back strings and a head string. In a natural configuration, Patches holds his head up high. For him to bow his head, the back strings need to be held, allowing for the head to gently fall forward.

 

So ends the story of a girl and her clown. Well, not hers anymore I suppose. Now it is time for Patches to be wrapped in purple papers and bubble wrap and be sent to his forever home.

 

I hope you enjoyed this story. To view more of my creations, please visit and follow Nights And Mares Toys on Facebook. If you have an idea for a doll or a puppet, I am happy to take on new commissions. Please send me a private message here.

Creating a romance novel book cover

When Callystin Collum approached me about painting her main character Sarah for a paranormal romance book cover, neither of us suspected how magical our working relationship would become. Before accepting the job I wanted to introduce myself and explain a little bit about how I work and where my inspiration and skill come from. I explained that I am a self-taught, life-long artist, who just happens to also have a classical art university degree which I hate giving any credit to. I described briefly how I work one-on-one with my commission clients, and how after ten years of working as a high-end exclusive tattoo artist “my style” is always primarily “my client’s style.” While my artistic hand is clearly recognizable no matter what work of art I create, the actual feel and mood of any creation is governed by the desires of my client. If I wasn’t able to adjust to various required styles I wouldn’t be much of an artist. Mentioning my tattoo career is alway hit or miss when talking with new potential clients. Some people still harvest very narrow and negative stereotypes about this art form, and about all those who participate in it. As always, I was prepared to be uninvited from this project based on my work history, but I was pleasantly surprised by Callystin’s response. She was very excited to hear about my experience in creating tailored tattoos for people all over the world, saying that she wanted to hire a tattoo artist to do her book cover since before she even completed the manuscript. Naturally I was intrigued and now it was her turn to tell me about herself, her book, and her characters.

It turned out that Cally’s main character Sarah was in need of a custom-made tattoo from someone with experience in just that craft. The tattoo is so significant in this book that it’s almost its own character. Cally didn’t have to do a lot of talking for me to have enough mental images to begin my work. She simply shared with me three of the 662 pages of her novel, and I knew everything I need to know about what Sarah looked liked and enough about her personality to portray that through body language and choice of clothing. One of the advantages of working with an author is that they tend to be quite articulate. After all, the readers have to see her character in their minds just as clearly as I was about to see her on my digital drawing page (for a more technical description of my digital painting process check out my article How I Paint Digitally). Cally had a few basic requests about composition and pose. She imaged Sarah with her back turned to the audience, which is a reasonable choice for a character with a meaningful full back tattoo. However, I felt that the requested glance over the shoulder was not enough to show Sarah’s personality. I wanted to reveal more of her face, so I took a chance and painted a wall mirror that would show a little bit more of her gentle girlish features with a daring splash of curiously, and also to show where her eyes are pointing (the next part of the arrangement I was to work on). Even though Cally did not imagine a mirror in the composition she fell in love with the concept and picked one of the three versions I provided her with. The version she selected, which is also my preference, is the one where the mirror reveals only suggestions of facial features, but not in full photographic detail. This book is clouded in mystery after all. Suggestions would work better on this cover than straight up full focus hyper details.

Now that I had Sarah’s body, face and hair painted and approved by Callystin, I moved onto the most important part – the tattoo. Sarah’s tattoo is complex enough for an artist to design for a real back. It would be a challenge to tailor it for a fictional 1200 by 2200 pixel painted character. I had to approach it the same way I would a real tattoo. Having read Cally’s description of it over and over again, I drew a fully detailed cat-o-nine tails whip with a braided leather handle and cherry blossoms scattered all around. I then wrapped the design around my character, curving and blurring it to match my painting style in this piece. Actually, the most time consuming and complicated part of the process was the amount of distortion I had to apply to my otherwise flawless and highly detailed tattoo design in order to make it look realistic in the given light and remaining true to my brushstrokes. The application of the tattoo to Sarah’s back was a week long project. After submission, Cally requested a few edits and adjustments, specifically in relation to individual tails and their direction, the placement and color of specific blossoms, and clearly readable text “Never Again”. After another few days of edits we arrived at the tattoo that we both agreed was perfect. The only final adjustment she asked for was the removal of visible scars from Sarah’s back. I imagined that most of Sarah’s scars would still be visible, if not for any other reason but for the reader to see that she has them. Cally had a very firm and specific request to remove the scars, explaining to me that the whole reason for the tattoo is to hide the scars all together. The audience does not need to know the full scar story from the cover. They will find out while reading. After discussing the technicalities of actually covering scars with tattoos, we came to an artistic agreement and I cleaned up Sarah’s back, while Cally cleaned up some textual details on the matter.

My next subject of interest was something that my author described as optional, but I immediately saw as inevitable. While Sarah is an obviously attractive young woman with an enticing full back tattoo, this is more than just a romance novel, it is a paranormal romance novel. I felt that the paranormal part was important to at least suggest visually. This is where Sarah’s glance direction comes into play. I specifically painted her looking down and at her hand, in order to have a platform to introduce a mysterious supernatural hand inviting her into its otherworldly haze. Now it all comes together. Now we know what seduces Sarah’s curiously. It is this human, yet animal-like, hand in the mist. This was probably my most favorite part of the project. I wanted the pale beastly hand to appear as mysterious as possible, revealing nothing of its character yet teasing the audience into having to find out. I wanted the viewers and the readers to be as intrigued by the hand as Sarah is.

Now that the mysterious hand was done and approved by the author, I moved on to polishing up the details on the image as a whole. This is a part of any digital painting where I create a lot of new layers, each with very minute but vary valuable information on them. I spent a full day on making sure that my light source was consistent, the parts that needed to be in focus were clearly in focus, while the ones intended to be blurred were sufficiently blurred. I played with darkness, contrast, definition and saturation on my fused layers, and of course scanned the entire image for imperfections, artifacts and inconsistencies. After a couple more back-and-forths with Callystin, we were ready for formatting.

Formatting a book cover is surprisingly more complicated than people realize. Correct resolution is the single most important factor. You don’t want any detail to be lost in the print. Color balance is also essential. The printed version has to look exactly as the digital version does on the screen. Finally, sizing mistakes are unforgiving. Depending on the publisher’s format demands, you have to make sure that your full cover spread, plus the spine, will not be cropped even a millimeter off from the desired layout. In order to achieve this, one must know the exact thickness of the book’s spine, which is calculated by multiplying the number of double sided pages by the paper thickness. To do this you must know the paper your author has chosen for her publication and her manuscript length according to paper style and size. As Cally was making last minute edits and adjustments, the thickness of her book spine also kept changing, sometimes by a fraction of a millimeter, but every pixel counts when it comes to professional formatting. I think for Cally, this must have been the only frustrating part of the project, understandably so. Well, good things come to those who work hard, and in time we worked out all the nagging technical details and the Fayhted Contender was ready for publication.

After three weeks of work and collaboration, Cally and I have become good friends and discovered that we share many similar views and opinions. I suppose it only makes sense, since we were able to work together so smoothly and quickly, understanding each other’s visions and motivations.  This has been an incredibly rewarding artistic journey, but in the end nothing could have felt better than receiving my own copy of Fayhted Contender with a personal inscription from the author on the first page. Reading someone else’s novel with my art on the cover took some getting used to, but since this book is so easy to lose yourself in I soon had no trouble forgetting about the cover art and following Sarah on her journey.

 

Callystin Collum’s Fayhted Contender is available on Amazon in print and in kindle versions.