About

One artist sharing the joys and exasperations of making art.

My name is Emily, although you may know me better as the Painted Sylph.

I have always been, in some capacity, an artist. I knew early on that I loved to create. Art was a passion of mine throughout middle and high school, and I even took some college-level courses before I graduated. During this time, I especially loved working in oils and graphite pencil and favored a realistic style.

But, being a practical person - with, I might add, a very skewed view of art as a career - I decided it was impractical for me to go to an art university or get an art-related degree. I attended university and majored in Spanish (with minors in French and Linguistics - shoutout to all my other language nerds!). Although I enrolled in one watercolor class for non-majors, overall art took a definitive backseat as free-time dwindled and I began to focus on other things that I would need to do to succeed in the so-called “real world.”

After graduating from university, I left the state of Michigan (where I was born and raised) and moved to Boston, MA. I was still struggling to get back into art as I navigated a new city and had my first full-time jobs. While I was there, my now fiancé gifted me my first drawing tablet in 2019 - although, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t use it all that much.

I returned to Michigan in early 2020, when COVID-19 decided to make an appearance. Quarantined and jobless, I finally returned to art. It was a blessing to find this old friend again. I joined Instagram and began to share my art publicly for the first time in a long time (or ever, really, unless you count having my drawings displayed in the high school hallways as “public”). I found a wonderful community and a motivation to create that had long eluded me.

That bring us to present time. I continue to make and share art in both traditional and digital mediums. For my traditional art I like to work in watercolor and ink (alone or together), although I’ll experiment with just about anything 2-D. For digital pieces, I work on my XP-Pen Artist 12 digital tablet in Photoshop. My preferred subject matter is whimsical fantasy, something I have loved since I was little. You’ll find fairies, mermaids, and elves, often drawn with lots of spatters, sparkles, and questionably rendered clothing (I’m working on it).

Put simply, art is a journey - a journey that is often non-linear and riddled with highs and lows of joy, exasperation, self-doubt, comparison, successes, learning, stress, and a million other emotions.

I want you to come along with me on that journey.

Community is something that has truly inspired and motivated me as an artist, which was completely unexpected for a little introvert like me who will bend over backwards to avoid making a 30-second phone call. Because of this (community, not crippling introversion), I wanted to start a blog where I can share my experiences with other artists. Hopefully, you can relate to the struggles, learn something, or at least find a little bit of entertainment. I am not a professional artist, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I’ll hope you’ll join me on this weird journey we call “art.”