I was recently commissioned for a custom point shoe princess. It is a christmas present for my friend's 15 year-old daughter who is a real ballerina. Using a photo from one of her ballet concerts, I re-created her in my point shoe style.
Tinkerbell is the littlest of all the ballerinas. She has a lot of sass which gets her into trouble sometimes. She's got awesome style with her leaf inspired costumes and perfect ballerina bun. Her weakness is that she gets easily jealous of other dancers and forgets how talented she really is. In reality, when she gets on the stage, she is the star of the show, spreading magic and joy over the audience in her graceful flight.
As a little girl I've always loved ballerinas, and now I am inspired by my amazing nieces who are growing up to be such beautiful dancers, so I'm starting this new illustration series called Point Shoe Princesses. This is the second princess in the series, Cinderella (released in 1950). She has been my absolute favorite princess since the time I was a young girl. I've always admired her ability to stay so positive, kind, and hopeful in times of terrible trial.
Each princess will come with a description of their ballerina personality that will hopefully inspire the little ballerinas of the world. After all, the most beautiful princesses and ballerinas are lovely inside and out. `
- The Story Smith
**This is simply just fan art that I do in my spare time, using my own resources and is my own personal expression and has no affiliation with the Walt Disney Company or any of it's affiliate companies.
So I'm super excited to launch my new website design. I've been working on this for a couple weeks (which is why I haven't posted lately). I really wanted to reflect my personality and whimsical style and also update with better UX (user experience) design.
First I found a really awesome code template to help me out, it's called Marquee. I love the parallax features and the ability to use images as the page headers. It's modern yet simple and neat, and also leaves room for lots of customization.
Next was on to the page titles. I really love watercolor type, so I played around lots. My watercolor is a bit rusty, but I gave it a shot and made some titles for the pages. It turned out to be a little easier than I thought and I had a lot of fun. So here are some of my paintings I made to use as the headers,and on the new homepage.
My lovely painting area/ dining table. It's pretty small, but I love it!
After I finished painting, I took the paintings to the scanner and polished them all in my computer and sized them up to the right sizes (While of course watching my favorite Disney movies). I colorized the type the way I wanted and added them into my previous illustrations and backgrounds.
I decided not to use the illustration above in the final design, but I thought it would be fun to show here anyways.
So I guess now you can browse around the site and see how it all turned out. I'm really happy with the results. I also updated the design of my resume, which you can find on the About Me section. A new graphic design page is on the way under the work section and hopefully I'll be able to put some of the projects I'm doing for Disney soon!
Enjoy!
- The Story Smith
Old Site:
New Site:
Snow White as a ballerina is kind and gentle while she quietly helps her fellow dancers learn. You'll often catch her whistling the music while she joyfully cleans her performances to perfection. She wishes to someday star in a famous ballet concert aside her handsome prince, but in the meantime she uses her dance to escape the fears and threats of her evil stepmother.
As a little girl I've always loved ballerinas, and now I am inspired by my amazing nieces who are growing up to be such beautiful dancers, so I'm starting this new illustration series called Point Shoe Princesses. I've chosen to post them in the order that their films were released, so naturally, first is Snow White, released in 1938. Each princess will come with a description of their ballerina personality that will hopefully inspire the little ballerinas of the world. After all, the most beautiful princesses and ballerinas are lovely inside and out. `
- The Story Smith
**None of the artwork or anything you see on the blog has any relation or affiliation with the Walt Disney Company or any of it's affiliate companies. This is simply just fan art that I do in my spare time, using my own resources and is my own personal expression.