Coloring Tools

Continuing on my theme of drawing items on my crafting table I drew this still life of a couple of acrylic ink bottles and a watercolor palette.  My drawings are not refined at all, but I'm really liking the feeling I'm getting from them. I am learning that you don't need a lot of detail.. You can have a style that includes lots of detail, but I am seeing in the drawings from others that less detail also has impact.

I haven't been good about practicing drawing in my sketchbook.  In fact the inside of the sketchbook hasn't seen the light of day all week.  I've been doing my little craft room sketches directly on the index card, coloring them and then calling it a day.  Gonna get back to that sketch book this week!

Watercoloring Tools

I quickly drew up this image of my watercoloring brushes in the can that I keep on my worktable.  I wanted to draw something more complex than just one item today.  I'm not completely unhappy with the drawing, but I could have captured the shape of the can better.  And, the watercoloring is really sloppy.  I think I will redraw this tomorrow, but on a nice piece of watercolor paper and little bigger. That way can use better watercoloring skills and add better shadowing.  I didn't add any shadows where things are overlapping..it was just too small for my skill level.  Can't wait to try again!

Freeform Flowers

One of the concepts I am learning is "suggested" shapes.  I don't think that is an official term, but what I mean is just putting color down on the paper to suggest the form of a subject.  So with this  in mind I just took watercolors and made approximate shapes.  I didn't think that had enough definition so I added the line work with a Pitt artist pen and I got exactly what I was looking for. I'm look forward to playing with this concept some more.

Drawing Tools

Alright, it was fun playing with my free form Tie Dye image and my Mosiac, but it's time to get back to what I set out to accomplish...improving my drawing skills.  I decided for the next week I will draw some of the tools I use in crafting.  Above is a pencil and eraser.  I don't actually use a Pink Pearl eraser (it is mis-named...it never erases anything...just tears the paper!) but it is so iconic I wanted to draw it.

Next I tackled scissors:

Not bad, but I didn't quite get the detail I wanted.  I'll have to keep sketching the scissors in my sketchbook. I do like the style of the Pitt artist pen with the watercolor.  It gives it a nice illustration quality.  I've always been drawn to line work...I remember loving James Thurber's illustrations even when I was in junior high.  It's a style I would definitely like to develop further.

Mosiac

I saw this image on Pinterest and knew I wanted to try a similar technique.  Because the index card is so small there isn't much room for a lot of detail unless you work with teeny tiny pieces.  These small pieces were challenging enough!  I assembled the blue pieces on one card and then cut the waves so that I would have trimmed edges.  I also assembled the green on separate card, but pre-cut it to the size I wanted so that the edges would be free form. I like the colors against the black and white of the torn book pages.  I would call it a success!

Tie Dye Watercolors

I've had a  busy working week and I been doing some multi-tasking when it comes to my daily ICAD assignment.  I try to visualize what I want to while I'm getting ready for work and then I run into my craft room and execute my idea as quickly as possible.  This morning...Tie Dye popped into my head while I was brushing my teeth. Don't know what made the vision happen but I ran to the craft room, grabbed the watercolors and had this done in about 5 minutes.  For such a simple card I actually am happy with it.  In the past I would have had trouble with muddiness, but I'm learning patience (letting the paper dry before adding the next color...using the iron to hurry it along) and I have also learned that when working with the index cards you cannot add too many layers of color before the paper breaks down and everything looks gray.

Round and Round

I've seen some really bright, translucent colors on some of the ICAD cards that look especially wonderful highlighted with black line work. I thought I would try to experiment with that today so I put what I thought were some bright acrylic colors on a palette and painted stripes of colors.  They were deeper than I expected.  Then I just added some white acrylic wash over that and layered on some circles cut from patterned paper over that and outline everything with black marker.

 Nothing was happening the way I wanted.  I tried coloring over the circles but it was boring so I retraced with black pen again and still was underwhelmed.  I then colored over than with white acrylic and that was better but everything just seemed flat and uninteresting. Finally I took black and gray watercolor pencils and shaded under the circles and added some contouring to the circles. I finally got something I could live with but am disappointed that I didn't get at all what I set out to achieve. I think I'll head to Joann's to see about getting some cheap fluorescent craft paints and water colors so I can try again.

Where the Heart Is

I wasn't at all happy with how my birdie turned out yesterday.  By the way, I decided her name is Florrie. She did not have the impact I wanted her to have so I gave her another appearance today.

This time I cut her out of some patterned paper and glued her on some ripped book pages, which were on top of a patterned paper reminiscent of lined paper for learning handwriting.  Since I'm supposed to be working on drawing and handwriting right now I thought I would be using that lined paper to write something. After I glued Florrie to the card I suddenly wasn't very happy again.  I just can't seem to give her the impact I want. I didn't want to start over because I only had an hour before I needed to leave for work.

I rifled though boxes and file folders looking for bits and pieces that I could add to the card to get some impact.  At first nothing was coming so I cut some shapes out of last years ICAD cards and glued them to the right of Florrie.  Still nothing happening for me. Now I had two separate compositions and time was ticking away.

I remembered a calendar hanging out on my desktop and found a picture of the US Capitol with rose bushes in the foreground. I cut out the foreground and glued it to the bottom of the card and suddenly I knew that Florrie need a house in that rose garden.  Yay....creative juices started flowing again.  I painted over my shapes and cut birdhouse shapes out of cardstock.  I drew on woodgrain so it wouldn't look so plain.  I need a hole for Florrie to get into her birdhouse and because she is not an ordinary bird she needed a heart shaped hole.  And the words just popped into my head at that point.

I ran to the computer, typed and printed the words, glued them (that was tedious), and added black trim around all the elements, photogrraphed, uploaded to Flickr, grabbed my lunch, my car keys and got to work in time. Unfortunately, left the fridge slightly open and the dirty blender jar on the Vitamix. Oh well, it's all in the name of creativity right?

Shopping Day

A few days ago I drew a darling, sweet, whimsical bird in my sketch book and knew I wanted to get her onto a ICAD card.  Here's my sketch:

Today I blended acrylic inks directly on the index card and after letting it dry I splattered more acrylic ink on. I'm happy with how the background looks. I penciled in my whimsical bird and outlined it with a white Uniball pen. I have a love/hate relationship with that pen! I love how white lines look against a bright or dark background, but I can't seem to get a pen that doesn't clog, skip or dry out. So my lines did not come out beautifully smooth. And, I didn't like having my bird transparent, either. I colored within the bird with more acrylic inks to give it more weight against the background and then went over the white lines again to clean them up.  I like where I was going with this idea, but didn't like the execution. I didn't even draw my birdie the same way. And my lettering...well...if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Even if you are speaking of yourself!  I'll be trying this idea again.

Bright on Black

I decided to take a break from drawing for ICAD today. I checked some of the blogs posts that I've saved for inspiration and come across this one from Peony and Parakeet.  I really like all the bright colors and white highlighting against the black background.  I did mine differently than she did. She watercolored on a piece of paper and then painted over the watercolor with black watercolor, leaving "windows" which she highlighted and doodled around.  I painted my backkground first, then glued on shapes cut from ICAD cards from last year. After I let everything dry well I added white highlighting from a Uniball white pen and some bright Orismacolor pencils.  I like the feeling of this.

I did do a little drawing today. I walked out the exit of Trader's Joe today and there was a women sitting on the bench, under an advertising sign, looking at her smart phone with an expression on her face that said she was feeling very joyful at that moment.  I immediately thought that would be a nice scene to sketch and made a mental note to try to do that later in the day.After I finished my ICAD card I opened my sketchbook and sketched this.  I didn't capture her expression well, but the whole scene looks fairly accurate and it is a good check for what areas I need to work on.  I can immediately see that my perspective needs work and creating  realistic facial expressions.

Singing Myself Happy

I was still disturbed about work this morning but after I vented about it to my husband I went into my craft room and started to sketch my bird from yesterday onto an index card. I got so involved in the process of sketching, refining and coloring that I was soon lost in my work and my heart was singing. When I first finished the bird looked lost sitting on his branch that was hanging out in space with lots of blue space around him. So I drew his branch out to the left side of the card and that was an improvement. I added the notes because he looked like he should be singing and I liked that result, too, but, the right side of the card still looked barren.  I went to my computer and looked for quotes about singing birds and Bingo! I found a quote that explained my morning. There wasn't a song in my heart but I got to work on something I loved (I sang anyway) and now my heart is truly singing for two reasons. I really love how my little bird turned out. And because I can't believe how far my drawing has come in just a couple of weeks!

Angry Eyes

I had a tough encounter involving work today.  It was playing on my mind all day and I tried to push it out by sitting down with my sketch book and work on drawing birds. I started drawing birds one day last week and ended up making silhouettes of birds on a wire for my ICAD card, but I wasn't satisfied with what I learned about drawing birds.

Today I printed out an pretty Audubon type colored drawing of bird to use as my model.  First I traced over it, paying attention to little details such as the curve along the back and the placement of the legs under the body. Then I drew the same bird a couple of times without tracing, erasing and redrawing until I thought I had a pretty good facsimile of the bird.  Then I opened another JPEG of a bird in a different pose on my computer and drew that one without tracing.  What I learned from drawing the first bird helped get the shape pretty quickly of the second bird.  I was very happy with what I drew. But...

I was still miffed about my work situation, even after I had a nice lunch with a friend.  When I got home from lunch I pulled out my drawing tools to work on birds again but suddenly an image of angry eyes popped into my head.  I grab a index card and started sketching a close up of my eyes.  I then used watercolor pencils and water to color it.  My eyes didn't turn out looking angry (I don't think!) but I really like how the card turned out.  I even managed to make hair look a little realistically curly. The best part was the process of creating the card soothed my angry soul and I'm just down to a low simmer now!

Busy Weekend

I had the weekend off from work, but it was a busy weekend without much time for being creative.  I did manage to get two cards made for ICAD.  The first I made after I saw two bottles of Cholula Hot Sauce sitting on our breakfast table.  They are very colorful and the bottles have a nice shape.  I drew the bottles in pencil first, then went over the pencil with a Pitt artist's pen.  Tonight when I finally had time to relax in my craft room I watercolored it.  I still need to figure out that shadow thing!  All in all, I'm pretty happy with the result:

After I finished that I decided to watercolor a flower from my imagination.  I already had the watercolors out so I just got right to work without sketching it out first.  I didn't get the petals the way I wanted them but there are some aspects that I think I was pretty successful with. I wanted to  be able to get some depth in the leaves and petals and I think accomplished that on a few of the leaves by using good shading on the undersides.  I wasn't really successful on the petals, but it gives me something to work for now.

Birds on a Wire

I had so much success turning beginner's sketches into my darling little Chester on Tuesday I though I would take a stab at birds for my drawing attempt today.  I did the same thing, using the technique out of my Drawing Lab book.  I just wasn't getting the proportions or shapes right so I searched for bird images on Google and did a few more and did come up with a pretty cute whimsical bird.

I was ready to put that bird on today's ICAD card but then I spotted this in google images:



That third line of birds spoke to me and I could envision a line of birds sitting on a wire on a moon lit night. So I drew and redrew and until I had the shapes I liked in my sketchbook.  Then I created the background on the index cards using acrylic paints, a stencil (thank you Ingrid!), rubbed on metallic acrylic and some Perfect Pearls misted on top.  Then I penciled in the birds and painted the birds with black acrylic paint.  It all went well except for that bird on the left.  I just coudn't get the right shape on her and the more I tried to correct it with paint worst it got.  Thankfully, I knew when to stop.  I'll probably do this image again just so I can do better on the bird shapes.

Selfie

I didn't have any inspiration for drawing today.  I know I want to continue freehand sketching, drawing and lettering this week but I just don't know what to draw.  I passed by our folk art mirror this morning and decided to draw that because it has such a nice feeling to it.  And once I sketched that, I figured I needed a subject within the mirror.  Soooo....I sketched me!  Well, I don't think it actually looks like me, but at least it looks a person.  For what little experience I have at drawing faces I'm actually quite pleased that it doesn't look like a kindergartner's drawing.  I'll have to make drawing faces one of my one week assignments later in the ICAD project.  For now...presenting me (sort of!):

Meet Chester

Last night I had an incredible burst of creative energy.  I got the dinner dishes washed, my husband left to go bowling and I ran to my crafting room to do a little drawing.   My husband gave me this book last year for Christmas:

I had worked on the first exercise in the book but then set it aside as other bright, shiny objects (quilting, tennis, working) stole my attention.  Last night I went back to the first exercise again, which was to draw cats.  I sat with my lap top and follwed tutorials on drawing cats.  Some were cartoon cats and some were realistic cats.  I was doing pretty good with it.  I really have come quite a way in realizing I actually can teach mysef to draw.  It truly is something that takes practice.

Anyway, at some point I shifted from copying other people's cats to trying to create my own style.  There was lots of trial and error and I just rolled with it.  I kept trying to draw a whimsical cat over and over again until suddenly Chester started emerging from my pencil tip.  I drew Chester several times until I like the details and then I drew him on an index card that I had already painted a yellow/green/gesso background.  I inked him with a Prismacolor black ink pen (not permanent, as I found out!) and then painted him in with acrylic paint.

I'm in love!  Not just with Chester, but with the whole process and the fact that I created my own unique cat from my imagination.  I'm exciting to sit down with the sketch book and see what else develops!.

On to Drawing and Lettering

What are my two biggest fears in this discovery journey?  That  I won't be able to develop my drawing skills to my satisfaction and that my lettering skills will continue to look like my 1st grade handwriting.  This is where practice will really be important.  I did this little tea cup sketch and lettering for ICAD:

I'm not totally unhappy with it, but I want to be able to produce fluid drawings that look reasonably skilled. How will I get there?  Practice, practice, practice.  I think in any free time I have today I will redraw this sketch (and lettering) until I understand the elements involved.  I think those elements include perspective and proportion, with a good dose of shading, shadowing thrown in.  In other words, all the basic drawing skills. I will draw coffee mugs and tea cups until I get it right!  I will draw them the rest of this month if necessary!  I can conquer this fear!

Awake

I've seen too many sunrises this past week. Instead of drawing today I just needed to say how I feel...Awake!  No coffee for me the rest of this week.  I'm sure I'll be regretting that decision when the lack of caffeine headache sets in at work around 11 this morning.

However, this does give me my focus for the next 7 days...Lettering.  Hand-lettering is so popular now and so beautiful. I've never had good handwriting.  But I just read in a art article this weekend that good handwriting can be learned, even later in life. So I'm going to work on some hand-lettering styles.  I have a couple of lettering books I bought from creative memories back in the nineties so I'll start with those.  Be back tomorrow and fingers are crossed for a good night's sleep tonight.

Watercolor Pencils - The Finale!

After a whole week of experimenting with the watercolor pencils, I put together everything I learned in a sweet little still life.  I got a "wow" from my husband so I guess my discovery experiment is moving along pretty good so far.  I used all the techniques from this week.  Dry on dry, Wet on Dry, Wet on Wet, color mixing. The only thing I did drastically different was that I used watercolor paper which technically is a violation of the ICAD rules. But, since I am trying to develop artistic skills, I thought I shouldn't cause myself unnecessary frustration.  I thought I did a pretty decent job on shading, but my shadows still need work. This is great because I know exactly what to focus on next. I think I'll spend a week doing some pencil sketches so I can get the shadow and shading moving in the right direction.

My photo is a little out of focus, but I need to run to work.  I'll re-photograph later.

Watercolor Pencils Part Four

Yuck!  I am really not enjoying the experience of using watercolors on index cards. This is the last day I am doing that.  Today's experiment is to layer the pencils on the paper dry and then add water so I made circles on the card and colored in with combinations of colors, starting with mixing primary colors.  Then I pulled out my color wheel and started mixing color neighbors, and finally mixed complimentary colors.  Then, I took a wet paintbrush to each circle to see what would happen.  The colors did mix, but you can also see streaks of each original color, too.  On watercolor paper, color lifts off better so I think the color would mix more completely on that base.  Well, I liked my experiment well enough until I painted the background.  This time I wanted to try scribbling the pencil on another piece of paper and then applying it to my work in progress. I immediately realized I needed to moisten my work first, which I did. But then I still couldn't get consistent results across the whole piece because the index card grabbed the color too well and couldn't be "smushed" around if you got too much in one place.  So my background is splotchy and uneven.  Well here...see for yourself:

Well, I think I've tried using watercolor pencils every way I can this week.  And I've learned quite a bit about them.  I like the control you get from them.  I'll still need to do more color mixing with them, but I think I am on my way to being able use them as a medium.  One of the biggest lessons learned is....use the best quality supplies you can afford!  Tomorrow, it's time to put it all together and create a small piece of art using my pencils.  

Watercolor Pencils Part Three

Today I decided to focus on simple shapes because I had such a difficult time with shading my leaf yesterday.  I had a image in my head of shapes floating on a soft background.  I really like the background technique I used yesterday and wanted to do it again.

This time I used some vinyl material (normally used to apply shapes and words to walls or glass) to mask out triangles and then watercolored the background using the wet paper/wet brush technique from yesterday.

Then I removed the vinyl and drew around the white spaces with the watercolor pencils (after I let the background dry) and drew in lines to emulate pyramids.  Then I shaded in colors on each side of the pyramids to give shape and height to them and attempted to add add shading by using darker colors. Once this was done I used a small round watercolor brush to apply water to pencil.

It was a very hit and miss process and again I wondered if I would be more successful on watercolor paper. I'm off from work today so I may take time to redo it on better paper.  I think the index card might grab to much paint.  From what I have read, I should be able to lift color off the paper, but that's not happening for me.

Once I fussed with it for I while i decided to try and add some shadowing under the pyramids to see if I could create an illusion of floating.  Not sure I quite achieved that, but I'm not completely unhappy with the result.

I can see I have a long way to go, but I feel like I'm heading in the right direction. When I try this again, I'm not going to draw in lines for the pyramids....I'm going to create the shapefes with shading.

EDIT:

Okay...I immediately ran into my craft room and started again with watercolor paper.  I'm much happier with the results. Watercolor paper (cold press in this case) definitely makes a difference in the work-ability of the pencils.  I had more control of my shading.  I still need to work on both my shading and shadowing techniques (for instance...I shaded the wrong sides of the orange pyramids!), but I feel better about being able to progress with it.  Here are my shapes, take two!

Watercolor Pencils Part Two

I got up early this morning to play tennis so I prepped a new index card before I ran off.  Today I'm trying The Frugal Crafter's technique of pre-wetting the background and then brushing the color from the pencil directly onto the brush and then smushing it haphazardly around the paper.  This gives a very soft undefined color wash to the background.  I drew a leaf (following some techniques I learned here) and then applied the color wash around my drawing.  The take-away I got from the leaf tutorial was to draw the spine of the leaf first. It worked!  So here's my unpainted leaf and colorwash background:

Once I got home I got to work on watercoloring the leaf with the pencil.  This time I applied the pencil to the dry paper and went over my strokes with a wet brush.  Then it was trial and error while I tried to add detail and shading.  Sometimes I drew directly on the leaf (drying the paper occasionally with my heat tool) and sometimes I applies the watercolor to my brush first.  I didn't achieve what I had in my head (always the problem!) but it doesn't look too bad.  I couldn't quite get the shading right and the vein detail isn't consistent on each half of the leaf.  But I like my leaf shape and I thought the shadowing was pretty good.  And I like the softness of the background.  I think I'll check out some more video tutorials and try a leaf again tomorrow.

Watercolor Pencils

Since I used watercolor pencils to add the very light coloring to my ICAD index card in the previous post I decided to spend this week experimenting with different techniques. I watched a frugal crafter video in which she brushed clear water on the background and then brushed color directly off the pencil and then applied that color to the wet paper. So for this first card I did the same thing. I moistened one section, swiped my brush on the watercolor pencil, applied the color to the wet paper. This created a nice soft, smooth color application. I dried each section (with an embossing heating tool...because I'm impatient!) before moving onto the next. I used a Pitt India ink artist pen to draw each section. I'm staying true to the ICAD request that only index cards be used...but I will also be trying this on higher quality watercolor paper. When I tried to apply more paint to create shading I could see the index card deteriorating.

For my second card I colored each second directly with the watercolor pencil, as you would with a regular colored pencil. Then I took a wet brush and went over the color. I waited for each section to dry before coloring the next, but a good experiment would be to work with wet edges. I applied a good amount of water to each section, but you can see that the stroke marks are still very visible.  

I find the watercolor pencils give you good control over when you place color and it is very easy to apply shading. I'm going to continue experimenting with different ways to apply the pencil and I am challenging myself to draw an object and color it with watercolor pencils by the end of the week.

Starting Out

I've been dabbling in mixed media with some friends for the past year and I love learning how paint moves and how colors mix.  I'm still ending up with muddy colors, mostly due to my impatience to get the next layer on, but for the most part I like what I have created. Here is a recent creation:

I like how it turned out but I feel like I am just copying other mixed media at this point.  I felt bad about this until I read a book called "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kieon.  My take away from the book was to study things you love and emulate them and in the process of emulating you will learn the things you need to know to develop your own style.  So for now I will continue to play and learn to duplicate effects that I see in the hope that at some point I'll start to apply these effects to my own unique art.

So, the first part of my journey is to develop some basic drawing skills and to learn to use different color mediums.  My drawing skills are dismal but I picked up a copy of "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain", a classic book for people who feel they have no drawing skills or would like to improve their skills.  I've made improvements already so I'm on my way in that department.  

I've also been picking up different paints, inks and paint modifiers (glaze and such).  My head is spinning with possibilities and things I want to try. I'm finding that I am jumping from thing to thing before I have truly learned how to get the best out of each medium.  I have to find some discipline! 

With this first blog post I am starting the process of organizing my learning. The first thing I'm starting with is Index Card a Day.  I'm going to use this 61 day exercise in creativity to focus on some different color mediums.  My plan is to work with one medium for a week at time and see what I can do with it.  I'll use these experiments as the background for collages, drawings or lettering practice.  Today's discovery was that I can produce hand-lettering if I really focus, take my time and PRACTICE!


Today is the start of ICAD and here is my first entry for it.  A simple, easy index card using water color pencils (I used them like regular colored pencils) and Pitt India Ink artist pens






For the next 6 days I plan to explore the use of the watercolor pencils.  I think I check out some tutorials online and then try the techniques I see.  What will I learn this week and how will I apply it in the future? We'll see!