Things have been so busy of late and my output has greatly reduced. However, I have returned to oil painting. I revisited this piece I started last year and put in a few more hours to finish it. The scene was from a few summers ago when I visited Pen Arthur forest for the first time. The piece takes me right back to that day when the late summer afternoon sunlight struggled to penetrate the canopy.
This is the basic, uncolored sketch of a project I'm doing for art class. It's a little different from my usual style because I tried to go for a more realistic style. I bet nobody will be able to guess who my favorite KotLC character is (hehe)... Also ignore the horrible lighting, my room is not the best when it comes to that kind of thing.
I wanted to draw a crowned animal with a crest on top of its head. Originally , this was colored with colored pencils but I didn't like how it looked so I tried to save it by painting over it with acrylic paint.
Close to a month ago, I had found out my design was selected for the Art Stop Program, and, yes, this is mainly what I've been working on since. I've never worked on a piece this large before, 72in x 24in, and I rarely make sketches of pieces before creating the final work. It's definitely a cool feeling to look at the finished board and see how the drawing actually came to life. (The Art Stop Program selects a handful of entered designs for the artists to create on a larger board, and these boards will then be inserted into bus stop benches around Niles, IL.) I can't wait to see the bench this will be in, and I'm so lucky I got to be part of the program.
Marker, and colored pencil on paper. My partner bought me some fancy markers that have been really fun to play with. I'm thinking about making this image into a greeting card.
A challenging media—Crayola wax crayons!
A self-portrait: I find that I’m grasping for something that always seems to be out of my reach. I didn’t bother to enter the official competition because I don’t have access to the specific colour set that they specified in the brief. I did enjoy drawing this self portrait with a medium I would not have considered. An awesome change of pace!
Drawn from a garden photograph. This took me much longer than expected. I kept stopping because I was getting discouraged. I still don't like the leaves, but there's not too much I can do about it at this point.
I have avoided social media for a couple of months now as it was making me unproductive, unmotivated and all-round less creative. I miss the community of creative social media so I have made this account to post my art anonymously: good or bad; finished or not; unedited and unfiltered. I hold back a lot when making art and even more so when publishing it. This is an opportunity to change that. This is a quick self-portrait just to force myself into creating anything today.
My first attempt at drawing a piece inspired by the art in my favorite childhood book series Scary Stories to tell in the dark. I am actually rather happy with this piece even though some details are a bit off. Comments and critique always welcome. ♡♡
More ballpoint pen experiments. This was trying to "blend" colors, using ball point pens in a similar way to colored pencils. I found Layering evenly to be pretty difficult, esp with the pens blotching and very very limited burnishing. The interesting thing is that the paper doesn't seem to get "tired" the way it does with pencils. This is just cheap printer card stock.
My idea was to make a textile pattern for fabric printing. Drawn on paper with a micron pen .005, colored with pens then put into Photoshop for some color manipulation, blurring of lines and pattern arrangement.
The challenging thing with just using pen is that I can't paint over a mistake. I usually redo a face more than once. I didn't mean to make their face so stoic, it makes them look like a statue.
