#473

Hey everyone! I completely forgot to blog there for a while, as I was doing some secret projects and commissions. But today I have a great reason to blog today!

I got a photo light box for taking pictures of my crafts. YAY! Now I can look all professional like on my blog. It came with a white and a black foam background, and it plugs into the computer usb to light up. The light is a great cool colour and shows the colours of the objects closely.

The box is foldable for easy storage, and did fit together with magnets, but I was a bit wary of the magnets near the computer, which I have to plug it into. I cut the magnets out, and used glue dots and pegs to keep it together until I can find some Velcro to glue onto it.

Good thing I have so many things to photograph.

Stay snappy, my sheeple 🙂

#472

Hey, everyone, how are you? I’ve had a bit on my mind lately, but today I actually remembered to blog. I was doing some paper mache after being inspired by YouTube. I started by covering a polystyrene ball for a later project, and it developed into coveing a lightbulb, a small container, and creating a vase for fake flowers out of card.

Here, it’s upsidedown.

It wasn’t a good idea to start a messy project so close to a house inspection, but I was inspired, and couldn’t resist. To be fair, I have a few messier projects in mind, so this was fairly safe on the list.

I try to keep you guys up to date… But no promises, heh.

#471

Hey guys, I have been pretty absent lately. I know because Facebook told me I haven’t posted in a while. The only reason for my absence is that I didn’t have much to say. I still don’t, but I have plenty of pictures from playing around with my new pencils.

Phew. That’s a lot. At least I’m getting used to them. I have a load of ideas to use my pencils on in the future, so I’ll try to remember to post more often. 

Until then, keep calm and colour in.

#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. 

#466

Tiny bottles in the mail! Yaaay!

I bought these online to make some things out of. They are small and light, so will make great necklaces. They came with little eye screws, so attaching them to things will be easier, as long as the corks are glued in well.

Another package arrived with a 2mm mechanical pencil that I’ve wanted for ages. I hadn’t gotten around to buying it in the art shop, so I decided to get one online. It worked out cheaper, so that’s good. It’s smooth, dark and solid so will be great for drawing. It also came with twelve refill leads so I might never need more. No matter how much I draw, I hardly ever use up pencils, as I have so many, they each share the load, evening it out.

While watching drawing videos, this week, I saw someone lining their drawings with coloured ink and a brush, which urged me to try the same. The only coloured ink I could find was some old calligraphy ink in red and turquoise, which had come in a magazine set. As it turns out, these inks were water soluble, meaning they reactivate and bleed when water comes into contact with it. This was a small issue, as I wanted to use watercolours on the pictures, but I used this to my advantage, incorporating the blue into my design of the mermaid above. I wanted to draw a mermaid at some point this month, as in the drawing community online, May is known as Mermaid, and is the time to draw them. I’m not crazy enough to draw one every day in the month, like many others do, so one is enough for now.  Perhaps I’ll put some waterproof coloured ink on my list of things to buy one day. My mermaid isn’t quite finished yet, and the photos are more green than the piece is, but I like it so far.

Keep swimming, my fishies.

#465

Hai guys! I’ve been absent for a bit lately due to the unfortunate system that is our current internet and my unfortunate health issues. Fortunately, we will get better internet soon, and my virus is going away so I’ll be left with only my usual illnesses… Yey.

As for the arts and crafts, I have continued my creativity through this tough patch, and they might need disinfecting.

My main source of inspiration was in the form of a YouTube video by Monique Renee about how to draw faces. Despite doing some life drawing classes, and creating characters since primary school, I still watch these instructional videos to see how others work and learn new ways to break down objects into shapes. I hadn’t seen a tutorial with this method in it before, and after sketching a few versions, it is an effective method for creating a good looking face, that you can vary easily to create different people. (Although this isn’t a problem for me, I have more trouble drawing the same face twice.)

Here are some of my attempts using Monique Renee’s method of drawing faces in various stages of completion.

You can find the Face tutorial here.

I miscalculated the amount of time I hadn’t blogged for, and have a bit more to show you, but I have forgotten to photo it all. When I remember, I’ll try to show you guys all the things, but I think I’ll end it here for tonight.

Thanks for watching! Bubye!