#470

I have some great news! This week, I sold my first ever piece of art! It was a commission for a friend, and she was more than generous in her offer for my skills. I can’t show you the piece I sold, but I will show you what I bought.

My partner and I always agreed that any money I earn doing art should be invested into art supplies, and I certainly lived up to that. In hopes of future commissions, I bought a large pack of artist quality pencils, which will assist in furthering my art skills.

I put off buying expensive supplies, as I wanted to be sufficient enough to feel I’ve earned them. Selling the piece of art was my first set of proof to myself that I earned a level up in my supplies. I am still getting used to the high pigment and easy blending of the pencils, but it is certainly a nice change.

Along with the pencils, I recieved a free mandala colouring book. I usually wouldn’t use high quality pencils for colouring, but this book has thick, textured drawing paper, which was ideal to try my new pencils on while I was thinking of things to draw.

I also picked up some Canson drawing paper, for special pieces of art I want to do, a colourless blending stick, to go with the pencils, a potluck paper pack, two needle felting kits, and a grass growing kit for my cats. 

This journey towards being an artist that sells art been exciting, scary, happy and exhausting, but I am eager to keep going, even if I take it slowly. Art is my passion, I’m going to do it regardless of whether it takes me places.

I art, therefore, I am.

#469

Some of my skills include copying images or techniques, quickly learning, and forgetting to blog on a regular basis.

It’s Pokémon fanart time!

Today I drew all my favourite Pokémon onto a card the same size as my phone, so I could use it in the case, like my last image I posted about. I mainly wanted to practice my colouring, and thought I’d be practical at the same time, as I was struggling to think of other images to put into my phone case.

The technique I used for this drawing was lightly sketching with a mechanical pencil, blocking in colour with my alcohol markers, then shading and adding detail with coloured pencils. I used both Copics and Touchfive brand markers, as I haven’t bought a complete set of either, so I needed colours from both. As for the pencils, I was trying to practice using Prismacolors, but I only have a small amount, and used them in conjunction with some nice Crayola pencils. These brands are very different to each other, and I’m used to working with harder pencils like regular Crayola and Faber Castell sets, but I’m looking into buying a nice set of Prismacolors, so I can move towards making some higher grade pieces in the future.

I’m also trying out some new techniques in the digital arts, and hopefully will get some pieces done to show you and perhaps go on some shirts.

Gotta learn them all!

#468

Ohh pretty colours!

I dedicated today to making an image that I could turn into a phone case image. I ordered a clear case to fit my phone, so I could use my own pictures, on paper slipped between the phone and clear case. I have to wait until I get the case to cut out the photo holes and whatnot, so I have to wait before cutting it out. In this time I can scan it in incase I need to print it, or could clean it up for online printing. I used my touchfive markers to colour, and as you can tell, I need more purple colours. I should really have begun the gradient from red to blue, but I didn’t plan very well. I added a bit more variation using coloured pencils, so they looked more cohesive, and added some gradients on each critter.

Doodle, dudes.

#467

Being an adult is hard. 2/10 Would not recommend. Sure you can eat cake for breakfast, but at what cost? 

I would, however, recommend being creative. I was looking for ideas in a sketchbook I have with lovely thick, textured paper, and wanted to do some watercolour in it. I found an old sketch that I could work on. I cleaned up the lines and fixed some of the features before colouring in the image. The leaves came after I dropped the paint brush loaded with blue paint on her shoulders. They’re poorly hidden, but I could go over it properly, given the inclination. 

Life’s hard, go draw.