Me and Mr. Bee » tina illustrates

Augie’s pet portrait and Monarda in the garden

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:53:32 +0000

Late this spring I purchased a bare root Peter’s Purple Monarda online (read “ebay”), it looked a bit sad on arrival but I planted it in the garden and hoped for the best. The summer was brutal and the Peter’s Purple didn’t make it, and with it being hard to find in local nurseries I gave up on trying it again. Luckily, Daphne Richards, who talked about Mojito on Central Texas Gardner (Thank you, Linda!), said she had some extras to dig up and give away from her large Peter’s Purple. Daphne wants to raise awareness for this bee balm and make it more readily available for central Texas. I jumped on the chance to try Peter’s Purple again after seeing how beautiful it looked when established, and painted her a quick portrait of her Augie Doggie as a thank you gift.

I’ll keep track of the Peter’s Purple, and will share more garden photos soon.

Mirrors illustration completed

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:49:24 +0000

Finally! I’m sure David is as relieved as I am to have this piece finished. We can move on to some new collaborative pieces that hopefully won’t take two years to complete. Related posts: so close to finishing mirrors new illustration, mirror mirror even cats are nerds New illustration, portrait of Rosie illustration, design, and [...] Related posts:

so close to finishing mirrors

Tina Poe Illustration — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:47:01 +0000

Where did this year go? How can it be June already? The days are passing me by way too quickly but I have been trying to find little pockets of time here and there to work on the Mirror illustration and it’s pretty close to being completed, though I still feel pretty embarrassed about how long it has been sitting around unfinished. Here is a small detail crop of one of the finished sections, a little teaser to hold you over for a bit longer!

starfish vendor sketch

Tina Poe Illustration — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 04:21:51 +0000

A quick peek into my next illustration project, I haven’t figure out all of the details yet, but I’m planning on more of them.

finished fawn

creature of the night

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:43:51 +0000

A genius tumblr blog was featured on Drawn the other day called Meowoodle. It is a simple blog where illustrators and designers can submit doodles of their cats.

What could be better? Nothing! I painted a quick doodle of Mojito, my ~~little~~ big creature of the night, my loud meowing shadow with glowing yellow green eyes, my baby. I sent it in as a submission and hopefully will see it on Meowoodle soon.

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Portrait in the sun

Tina Poe Illustration — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 04:48:51 +0000

Last time we went hiking, I took a photo of David as he turned his head up toward the sun. He hated the photo, but I thought the expression was fantastic and it served as a good reference point for this quick gesture portrait.

He has been drawing me pretty regularly, so I wanted to join in and paint him more often too. I had also downloaded a new brush set by Chris Whal that I wanted to try out. Overall, not a bad little quicky that scratched my creative itch today.

bird portrait

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:14:04 +0000

I babysat a Cintiq 21UX this weekend. And by that I mean, I tested it out and played with it all day long. I working on a small painting and saw a big improvement in painting speed in a short amount of time. It was a lot of fun working with the large 21 inch screen, but I didn’t have a good place for it so it took a while to figure out a comfortable sitting position. My neck hurts a bit, but I’m still looking forward to testing it out further.

my Frida

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:10:07 +0000

I started and finished a quick painting today, redoing Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser“. Redoing a famous painting was this week’s Monday Artday challenge. And since I had recently watched Julie Taymor’s Frida and was so moved by the film, it was an easy choice.

I learned that the earrings she is wearing in this painting were given to her by Pablo Picasso… jeaaallloouuus!

Adrien Brody in The Darjeeling Limited

Happy January

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 04:50:23 +0000

I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to the new year. January is a great month, full of hope and promises! I promised to paint more than I did last year, and when Moj heard this he requested a new portrait. I couldn’t refuse him, of course. I finished a quick one, seen above, it’s aptly titled “Portrait of a Giant”.

low blood sugar

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:01:06 +0000

If I don’t eat at regular intervals, David is usually the one who has to deal with my hysteria until I get fed again. It’s like Gremlins, except instead of not feeding after midnight, you must feed me every 4 hours. Ggrraawwrr!

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rusty at drawing

Tina Poe Illustration — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:47:02 +0000

Recently I went to a life drawing session and boy did I feel rusty.

David has been going more recently, and his drawings are looking great, so he suggested that I go with him when ever I can. I’ll need to go a lot more often to rebuild my drawing skills. This one was a 18″x24″ study, prisma color pencils on purple charcoal paper.

family portrait

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:26:51 +0000

My team at work set up a wall where everyone posted photos of their family. I thought it would be a great idea for me to paint a family portrait for the wall instead of posting a photo, and it WOULD have been great if I had finished the painting within a reasonable amount of time.

Instead, three months later, I finally get around to finishing it. I did most of the painting work in one day, which is sad because I dragged my feed for so long.

David gave me quick sketch, and I started laying down color, and working on David’s face.

I then took my ridiculously long break from this painting, came back, reworked the poses and added more elements. Finishing in one day was exciting.

This piece is posted on our illustrated portrait studio website, as well as the Red Tie Studios blog. I also added it to my illustration portfolio.

neighbors are relieved

Tina Poe Illustration — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:16:27 +0000

Our neighbors were so excited to see that, before we left for vacation, David and I pulled up all of the weeds from the mailbox bed that had been growing for years, and planted several mirabilis jalapa.

We also mulched and placed small river rocks for a border. It looks about 100x better than weeds. The seedlings came from my one mirabilis jalapa that I started from seed in 2009. The one that I thought died in the frost of 2010, that one came back and grew even larger than before, and produced many seedlings in the spring. Pulling up the seedlings isn’t fun, but easy and I tolerate it because I adore the little blooms. Their color is like candy for my eyes and the smell is just as sweet.

Speaking of four O’clocks, I saw them everywhere while on vacation in Istanbul. There were many different colored ones and even broken colors, but I didn’t detect as much of a scent on them as mine has.

I learned to properly deadhead my roses recently, and they rewarded me by growing like crazy and blooming up a storm. I should do this more often!

My rainlilies have been blooming more often than I’ve ever seen them, which makes me excited and giddy, and some of my daylilies are still blooming on and off.

Quick rundown on news from the back garden:

the tomatoes are slowing down now because of the heat, but I snapped some photos of the ones I picked
The new catnip is growing well with large leaves
the mints (spearmint, chocolate mint) are still growing (in pots) though their leaf size is smaller than before which seems to be a trend when I grow mints
Rosemary plants, lavender, and salvia greggi look great but no blooms (salvia greggi bloomed last year)
My grass circle was looking good before my vacation, but now is overtaken with weeds, I don’t even know if any real grass still lives
Elfin thyme died in the pot while I was on vacation
Morning glories and moonflower vine grew like crazy, I even saw my first moon flower!
I got a hibiscus that I need to re-pot, but it’s looking good and growing
The meyer lemon lost all leaves and fruit while I was on vacation, but with the rains it put on all new leaves again, it’s starting to bloom now
Black potato vine looks like it needed more water than what it got while I was gone, but they are alive
Lemon thyme and English thyme, look okay in pots, but aren’t thriving
Lemon balm is growing well
As is lemon grass
Lemon basil isn’t growing that well, I suspect the moonflower and morning glories are creating too much shade
Mexican Oregano is also growing slower than I had hoped
My other oregano is spreading but I’d like it to get fuller
Black and Blue salvia is doing great
Bronze Fennel died completely

I wish I had a lower failure rate, I seem to kill too many plants that I buy.

tomatoes in may

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:26:25 +0000

Before I get to the garden photos, welcome to the new blog url! Yay, woohoo, streamers, and balloons! though I hope that the move was for the most part seamless and that you didn’t even notice (except for updating your RSS feed).

On to the greenery, sweet cherry tomato.

Green zebra, my favorite this year.

Tomatoes, three Buddha, a bee, and a peek at our new AC unit.

Planted a lemon balm after none of the seeds germinated.

I went lemon crazy and got some Lemon Grass, my cat LOVES to chew on this. Now I have to learn to cook with it.

Did I mention that I went lemon crazy? Lemon basil, Mrs. Burns.

I saw mexican oregano in other people’s gardens and I fell in love. I got this one and it started blooming right away.

I picked up another oregano but it didn’t have a tag. I thought it was Greek Oregano, but now I’m not sure, it grows very low to the grown with fuzzy leaves. I’ll post a better photo of it soon.

I admired Black and Blue salvia for a while, David picked it out, I was glad. It’s been blooming all over, and we’ve been spotting several different types of butterflies in the garden recently.

I had some catnip that I placed in a large pot (next to the bee, next to the Black and Blue salvia) and it’s been stunted. It hasn’t died or grown, for months! I don’t know what to do with it. Instead, I bought another and it’s been growing great, my darling cat is happy now.

Pretty shot of the sweet potato vine Blackie.

new plants and new garden design

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:22:07 +0000

In the first week of March, this year, I went out and got two new tomatoes (sweet cherry and green zebra) to put in my Earthbox. Around that time, I also picked up a bronze fennel, and a meyer lemon tree that was full of blooms and several fruit. My dream was to be overflowing with lemons at any given time of the year.

I’ve been taking photos of the garden regularly, and I’ll try to blog about all of them in order. It’ll be helpful to me, keeping track and being organized, while allowing me to go back and compare how things have failed or flourished.

I planted 3 small Mexican feather grass, one of which died promptly. I potted up the Meyer lemon so that I could move him in during the winter. It was covered in fragrant blooms and several baby lemons when I purchased it, but I wasn’t gentle enough when repotting because he dropped all blooms, the fruit, and a large percentage of leaves. It took several weeks of me worrying before new leaves start growing again.

Nothing had quite woken up yet, in the garden, so it was time to get to work. Inspired by garden design portfolios I found online, and with all of the free/found rocks that I had gathered over time (minus the one bag or two of marble chips that I bought), I started creating more shapes and structure to the garden. I picked up some elfin thyme to put between the flat stones (some died, one piece lived, need to keep trying).

The garden bees that I created out of bowling balls were happy, placed in their new surroundings. I added some lanterns on shepherd’s hooks for height. The Buddha statues sits on top of the birdbath now, the birdbath that had developed a crack and I never saw any birds using it, even when there was any water in there. I picked up two lovely Buddha busts and placed them around the herbs, for now.

Whenever I drag David to the nurseries with me I feel guilty and encourage him to pick out some plants that he thinks look interesting. He usually only likes succulents or things he can eat. But this time, he picked out two ‘Blackie’ Sweet Potato Vine, that we put up on the fence. They look great and have already put out violet flowers. Speaking of things to eat, the mint that I got back in 2008 looked pitiful, unrecognizable, and smelled bland. I was afraid to really taste it, worried that there was something horribly wrong with it. Or what if another plant had started to grow in that same spot. Once upon a time I had dreams of being able to use tons of fresh and dried mint in the kitchen… I bought another plant and placed it in a large pot, hoping that it will do better this time. Also not doing great, the catnip that I placed in the same sized pot as the new mint. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong.

sketchbook drawings from sxsw: people

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:17:53 +0000

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sketchbook drawings from sxsw: learn

Tina Poe Illustration — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:21:09 +0000

Related posts: sketchbook drawings from sxsw: people sketchbook drawings from sxsw: brand sketchbook drawings from sxsw: workflow sketchbook drawings from sxsw: positivity disappointed in drawings Related posts:

sketchbook drawings from sxsw: brand

Tina Poe Illustration — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:21:46 +0000

I attended some of the panels with my coworkers from Dell. I saw several of my friends at SXSW, and made sure to meet new people as well. Related posts: sketchbook drawings from sxsw: workflow sketchbook drawings from sxsw: positivity sketchbook drawings from sxsw: people sketchbook drawings from sxsw: learn hi, my name is Related posts:

sketchbook drawings from sxsw: workflow

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:22:17 +0000

At SXSW, some of the panels weren’t as interesting as some others. I took more time to draw during those, if I didn’t sneak out and go to another panel. Related posts: sketchbook drawings from sxsw: brand sketchbook drawings from sxsw: positivity sketchbook drawings from sxsw: people sketchbook drawings from sxsw: learn disappointed in drawings Related posts:

sketchbook drawings from sxsw: positivity

Tina Poe Illustration — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:22:43 +0000

I attended SXSW interactive this year, for the first time. It was a great experience and I made sure to capture parts of it in my sketchbook. One of the conversations that I attended, Get What You Want, Whatever It Is, wasn’t about design, digital or anything interactive, the subjects covered were positivity, luck and happiness.