29 Faces Challenge

It has come to my attention that there is an art challenge upon us, starting TODAY! Auuggh!

Anyway it sounds interesting enough: 29 Faces Challenge.



The month of May will be a month of practicing with portraits. I have embarrassing sketchbooks from high school that are nothing BUT pictures of people. Haha, to be specific, I have one that is entirely winged people. How embarrassing. I didn't even notice that until after it was completely filled up.

The point is that this should be a fairly simple challenge. I don't normally like the challenges that shame you into doing something every day (nanowrimo anyone?) because sometimes I just don't want to do it, and when you don't want to do it, it ends up crappy anyway and not very useful. It sounds like a challenge that would be very easy to cheat, actually.

One face. Every day.

BRING IT.

journal post 4/30/12

Monday.



Monday is kind of like my "saturday" but it still reeks of Monday. I'm so super unfocused and out of it! I'm supposed to be doing laundry and making cake right now! 



So this journal layout is pretty much just some papers put together along with some sharpie doodles. I did this while I was on the phone, actually.

For an hour. Oops.

Well there is always time to do something. Even if it's not laundry, or making dinner, or cleaning the patio, or going to the clinic, or baking a cake.

Ooh this might be one of those days where I make some extra cake and put nutella on it. You know, for eating.

STRAWBERRIES!

Pitcher part 2

I added a bit of detailing this morning. There was some struggle with it despite the fact that wavy fabric used to be one of my favourite things to draw in high school. I think I've lost a lot of patience since then.



Added a few 3D elements to it. I'm feeling kind of "done" with it today, unless I catch a second wind with the background and table. I'd like to see it framed sort of taller and narrower than it is right now. :/

Step by Step - Pitcher part 1

I started a new painting today, though I don't have a working title for it yet (that usually comes later). I took some care in the pencil drawing. The one thing about sketching details first is that they tend to disappear, even under transparent mediums like watercolour! Ha. 

 

I started by filling in flat blocks of colour (with a bit of shading but not much). I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about colour combinations and I will probably regret that!

I consider this to be the "ugly" stage. It's easy to look at the flat colours and blobby shapes and want to quit right away! If you ever feel like you're forever stuck in the "ugly" stage, usually a bit of contrast will fix it. The dark shadow on the crow's tail is appealing to me already, so we'll need more of that.

Later :3

Journal Post 4/24/12

With this page I was working from one of Kira's videos on Journaling Deep called "Dreamy Collage". I found it difficult on the right side because the base of that page was a magazine ad. Magazine pages don't take paint very well!


Well actually I found it difficult because I'm so "low energy" today. It's one of those grey, rainy days where the cats spend the whole day asleep and I can't even muster the will power to take out the trash. Or paint. Or journal.



But I did pass my driving test yesterday which is cool because it means I have the green light to save up for a car and go wherever I want. It's lame because those things sound so "adult" that I'm not sure I'm keen on having all of that responsibility!



What do you do on grey, low-energy days? Do you sit back and enjoy them, or do you just feel lazy?

Journal Post 4/23/12

I'm almost through the scrappy journal!



 I'm very glad it's so peaceful and sweet outside. The tree has fresh new leaves - the window privacy is nice! haha. Maggie is outside catching flies. I am relatively calm, which is great because another driving test is scheduled for this afternoon.



 Failing actually kind of takes a load off.



My fingers are so messed up from work that it hurts to type and paint and click things!

Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it.

Newsletter Peek

There was probably a better way to do this that didn't involve cutting a newsletter into pieces and resizing them and posting them as images (lol)

...

Sometimes I get questions about what is in the monthly newsletter to which I answer: "It's kinda like an extra blog post."

So to answer this question in further detail (albeit clumsily), here is a peek into what ends up in subscribers' inboxes:







If this is something you may be interested in,
feel free to sign up on the side --------->