Anchor and Kiss Kiss

A few recents from this week with Kiss Kiss (2nd image) available now in the shop

Found

© Leigh Viner 2017

I hope you're all having a wonderful start to the week! Snuck in this piece today between a few commissions and the start of a fun project which will reveal itself in time of course ;)
Also want to let you know that I'm having a summer sale in my shop, 20% off all prints with code { SUMMER20 } so take advantage until Friday.

xo

Art inspired by Elle US January 2017 Image by Terry Tsiolis

Slate

© Leigh Viner 2017
Inspired by Prada Spring/Summer 2017 Campaign by Willy Vanderperre

Air

© Leigh Viner 2017

"Air" Inspired by Vanity Files, Marie Claire April 2017

Mending Rapture

© Leigh Viner 2017



A feel good, (because the sun finally came out ) and a bit of a lazy Sunday with work involved, if that makes much sense, but doing everything today at a snails pace. Closing up last weeks projects and to do's in order to feel refreshed for Monday. I will say that the only obstacle as of late really is the suffering of seasonal allergies, the worst. Never had them until this past few years, any tips and tricks to ease the suffering are most definitely welcome.

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend! ;)

Citrine

Happy weekend everyone! I am unfortunately starting mine off with a lingering bug of some sort,.. ugh, but as long as I take things slow and go and maybe nap here and there it's not so bad.
In the meantime, I have a few pieces of new art from this week that I worked on between some commissions, starting with this piece, "Citrine" inspired by Celine's Fall editorial in T-Magazine.

Essence

© Leigh Viner 2016
Oil and pencil on paper. Inspired by Model Vivien Solari. / Prints available here.



Brand new oils can only compare to a bag of candy for me ;) The results of such.
I hope you're all enjoying the long weekend!

Sweet Fault - Sketchbook Series

© Leigh Viner 2016 Available here

So many wonderful things are happening at once and a bit of stress, but good stress! As I wrap my head around it all, I will share as it all comes together, but new work, big opportunities and just getting things put into place is how my next few weeks will be heading.
With that I am thankful for the few extra hours added to my schedule as my daughter has wrapped up her school year and we are officially on summer vacation. Life is good.

About You - Sketchbook Series

© Leigh Viner 2016



Until recently I have never really thought about selling prints from my actual sketchbooks. I usually just share mostly on Instagram but have been getting some requests and thought, why not! So look out for more to come along as a separate category in my shop.
This one above is available in my shop now.
I am feeling a bit overwhelmed this week due to breaking my phone. (Things could be worse I know ) but I really have come to rely on it for so many work related things, so until the replacement arrives I have been adjusting with a half ass working phone that freezes up when I need it the most. Still though I have managed to use snapchat, my latest social addiction. You can follow along here if you like, I am still getting into the rhythm, showing my goofy real life stuff, along with interests and work. Just all those little moments of each day.

Until soon xo

Figure 4

© Leigh Viner 2016

Another part of my Figure series just added to the shop today. This was inspired by an image that I found via some very old archives from a blog that has now been deleted, so will have to do some digging for the source and update. Regardless you never know if I created from it back then what it would have looked like, but happy to revisit it and find the inspiration again with a fresh take.

I hope your all having a wonderful week so far! X

A Collective Sense

© Leigh Viner 2015 Shop
Inspired by Mia Wasikowska for Interview Magazine August 2014

Sitting here working in slow motion due to a horrible sinus cold, it has been ages btw since I have been sick and trying to get through the day as normal as possible is becoming impossible, but as long as I make time for rest early tonight I will feel somewhat balanced,.... hopefully.

This past few weeks though I have finished a handful of projects for others, snuck this personal one in and now I can (finally) begin some larger scale pieces that I have been dying to start!! Sick or not I am painting!
I will share as I finish, but also the process and #BTS on Instagram of course.

XO

From One Thing To Another

© Leigh Viner 2015

Coming soon, a new style of prints from my travels starting with NYC that was actually sparked by an article I read today in the current New York Mag, ( posted below ).
I love how inspiration can come from anything and everything unexpected.

After Midnight - I Miss Last Night Already by Jay McInerney

"I am a lifelong insomniac, so it was inevitable that I would make New York my home. Even if I don’t venture out late on a given night, it is a great comfort, at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., to know that I can, that there are others out there on the streets, working and playing, restless and questing for love, drugs, food, sex, or cash, that the streets are bathed in yellow light. Elsewhere, midnight is the end of the night, but in New York, it’s the middle, if not the beginning. For some of us, the possibility junkies, the city is far more welcoming after dark, vivid and electric, inexhaustible in its store of potential pleasures. The night is egalitarian in a way that the day is not. By day, New York is segregated into professional ghettos, but at night the boundaries are loosened. The city becomes more cosmopolitan as the tribes mix; the lawyers doff their ties, and the nocturnal dandies don their makeup. After a day of drudgery, the office intern lies down for a nap and emerges, hours later, having metamorphosed into Cinderella.

Not every night is eventful, of course, even the ones you were most hopeful about. Still, especially when you’re thinking about nightlife in the past tense, it’s hard not to romanticize what happened, even, or maybe especially, if you weren’t there. I’m sorry that I missed New York in the ’20s, during Prohibition. (The lure of the forbidden is always more compelling than an engraved invitation. Who wouldn’t rather be an outlaw, really?) But the greatest era of nighttime in New York is always the one that coincides with your own youth. The darkness never seems so rich in promise as it does when you’re in your 20s.

When I arrived in the city in November 1979 — one of its most mythologized eras, I know, but it was mine — the death of the disco age had just been sealed when Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were busted for tax evasion. And what replaced Studio 54 and Xenon was grittier, more egalitarian, and, to our minds, way cooler and more authentic. It was a kind of punk reaction to glitzy disco, although elements of disco, including a pervasive pansexuality, were subsumed into this new order. Punk had been invented on the Lower East Side a few years before I arrived, and in late ’79 it was still possible to hear the Ramones in CBGB, or Talking Heads at the Mudd Club, or Iggy Pop at the Peppermint Lounge. They were places where a wide-eyed aspiring writer/New Yorker fact-checker dressed like a preppie could rub shoulders with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Lou Reed and David Byrne, Jim Carroll and William Burroughs, as well as the drag queens, club kids, and drug dealers who were the glue of the scene.

It’s easy to glamorize the decay now, but the city was teetering on the edge of the financial brink; bankruptcy had been narrowly averted, but jobs and affluent white people were still fleeing for the suburbs. A heroin epidemic was ravaging the poorer neighborhoods of the city, creating a wave of crime that spilled over everywhere. The whiff of danger had become the scent of the Manhattan streets. You quickly developed a sixth sense, and you tried to keep it turned on even as you got obliterated on alcohol and drugs.

I suppose this era was probably almost finished by the time I had a book party for my first novel at Area, the sprawling Tribeca club with art installations that changed every six weeks and legendary coed bathrooms that were the scenes of epic orgies. The fête was arranged by a party promoter — a phrase that was brand-new to me then. In 1985, not long after my party, Rubell and Schrager, having served their prison sentences, took their show downtown, opening a huge club in the Palladium, a former concert hall on East 14th Street. I remember showing up after midnight for the opening, joining at least 2,000 people on the sidewalk desperate for entry. Where the hell had they all come from? It felt like the end of something — if only my 20s.

I can’t help feeling the night has been tamed, packaged, and commodified in recent years, that the downtown I was part of has become a kind of brand. Perhaps that was always inevitable in a place that’s the world capital of money. Or maybe the real scene has moved elsewhere, to Bushwick or Ridgewood or somewhere that trend-piece writers haven’t yet discovered. I suspect that young people still venture out after dark in New York City with something more propulsive than cash — and with the same sense of wonder and hope that we did."

Bearer

© Leigh Viner 2015

Hello everyone! I hope your enjoying the weekend! I have a new piece here that I just added to my shop inspired by the gorgeous Fei Fei Sun which I found on the inspiration rabbit hole that I dive down daily on my Pinterest. It is endless in such a good way.

xo

Neva 2

© Leigh Viner 2015 Available here

An updated version of an archived piece I did awhile back. Sometimes it just needs to be put aside until it feels right to visit again.
I hope your all having a wonderful Monday.

Meanwhile

© Leigh Viner 2015

A new piece just added to my Shop for you.
I hope your having a wonderful weekend. Mine, long naps on the couch with open windows and a unfortunate headache that is lingering, but hopefully going back to the couch with some soup and a few hours of the Grammy's it will finally go away!

Until soon xo

"Shadow Opus"

© Leigh Viner 2014

Agnes Obel - Brother Sparrow


In the mood for simplicity on this piece, saying as much with very little. I will be adding it to my shop very shortly. :)

Aurora

Hello everyone! I hope your having a fantastic weekend. Wanted to share the newest edition to my shop from an archived piece that has been updated for the shop.

Also I will be heading to the humidity of Austin shortly and cannot help but think about what to do with my hair... I know so important, but really in the grand scheme of it all, a bad hair day can effect my entire day. I have naturally curly hair, which gives me options that I appreciate as I get older actually instead of looking at it as a bad thing as I did most of my childhood, but when visiting high humidity places it begins growing sideways in an uncomfortable and annoying manner, add heat to that and I just want it out of the way. I have not yet found a magical product that will keep my hair from misbehaving, so yes an up-do will have to do. Here are a few of my inspirations I will be taking with me.


Pinterest


LeFashion


Pinterest

Maddalina

© Leigh Viner 2012

1:00 am in the morning and starting what I will finish as a long awaited post tomorrow (today now). I am in the middle of what comes a few times a year at being absent from my blog, which is really hard, but necessary because running my business of getting out prints on time for Christmas is definitely a priority as is all the Holiday organization of finding the perfect gifts for everyone. But I had to sneak in a new piece, as I was inspired to do so after just recently and finally watching La Dolce Vita oh and Belle de jour a few weeks ago, sure to come up with something artistic from that as well, a bit obsessed with the sartorial greatness that was in each scene with Catherine Deneuve.

I am assured and confident in the fact that foreign, classic films seem to be my favorite all time movies to dive into when time permits.

Inspiration from Anouk Aimée's character "Maddalina"

"Counting Roses"

© Leigh Viner 2012

I shared this piece almost finished last night on my Instagram with my inspiration and as promised I have her all ready and in my Etsy shop (Prints) but if you would rather have the Original, it is also available over here. Or you could have both ;)

Holiday Prep

© Leigh Viner 2012

Behind the scenes getting my shop(s) ready for the upcoming holiday rush and Black Friday of course.. Is it really here already? The best part I am pulling out a few Originals from my archive and making them available for you this Holiday season. Many more will be added this week and they will have their own home here at leighviner.bigcartel.com. Also some new photos and illustrations will be popping up in my Etsy shop as well.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! xo