As a mother to three rambunctious, anti-whimsy girls, I have always felt obligated to counteract their innate Gen Y doom-and-gloom attitudes with an overly chipper, colorful, playful art style, replete with cartoony characters and moose dressed up as ballerinas.
For a great many years, I painted murals and furniture and, together with my favorite aunt, ran a craft business selling whimsically painted children's furniture, fleece hats and blankets in fun patterns, and other hand painted odds and ends.
These days, instead of painting, I create digital graphics in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Originally I made all of my graphics in Photoshop - marinating each and every piece in tooth-rotting levels of adorableness - but in more recent years I've switched almost entirely to vector images in Illustrator. My girls consider me technologically illiterate, but I have spited them by mastering these two challenging programs and teaching myself how to create highly detailed, beautiful images with just your everyday mouse, rather than any fancy gadgets like a Wacom Tablet. Plus, it helps being married to an IT guy who can take care of all my technical woes with minimal scoffing and eye-rolling.
I keep using the word "whimsical", which might feel a bit redundant, but I honestly can think of no better word to describe myself or my work. The weirder, the better, I say. I like to make bugs with big eyes and personalities, pugs dressed as doctors, moose doing ballet! I like colors-- bright and vibrant and eye-catching. Most amazing of all, however, is that other people share my love for the whimsically weird.
Starting up my digital store in 2008 was tough. Real tough. As a painter with little technological knowhow, I was rather baffled by the intricacies of this digital age. I had no idea how to run an online shop or make digital versions of my art to the level I desired, and those first few years were a difficult transition. It's only thanks to my own dogged determination, a boatload of research, and the budding community of likeminded whimsical characters online that I eventually got my feet under me and have made this shop the success that it is.