Illustration Friday: Stir

Sometimes emotional turmoil stirs within...and sometimes something tragic happens

...and sometimes it's both.

I've been feeling...melancholic...recently, not sure why. I have a lot of reasons I could list, but in light of the news about the Japan earthquake and tsunami that hit today, they just seem irrelevant. My prayers are with everyone in Japan and everyone who has family in Japan.

Our friends' families in Japan are ok. Thank goodness for small blessings.

Illustration Friday: Swarm

I couldn't NOT post for Illustration Friday when the topic, swarm, was so perfectly suited to my obsession with drawing bugs. I just don't know why I waited until Thursday to post when the drawing was finished on Sunday.

I think, perhaps, because this week has been a little off-kilter. I'm settling into the semester and realizing that I don't have enough time in the world to do all the things I want to do, particularly when I am easily distracted. I came to the decision/realization that for my own sanity, I was going to have to drop my Saturday drawing-on-location class that I have LOVED taking for the previous 2 (3?) semesters. Knowing that Will's class often has a waiting list of eager students and knowing that I would be missing 3 out of 6 classes because of traveling for work and other factors didn't make me any less reluctant or less....let down. I've enjoyed exploring my adopted hometown through these excursions, and I definitely know the freeways of northern LA much better these days. (Ignoring the fact that I still get lost on surface streets)

It didn't help that I am most definitely off schedule with the Picture Book Dummy project because I like making things complex and 2-3 characters won't do when you can have 20 (or more!). I am not stopping just because i'm behind, I'm just going to take a bit longer. I'm having a great time creating costumes for all the characters and my Gesture Drawing class is definitely helping with that.

It most definitely didn't help that I had a series of eye exams today in preparation for a corrective eye surgery I'm planning on having at the end of next month. Eye ultrasounds are SO NOT fun!

Luckily, I have a weekend with good friends, random doodling and massive amounts of silliness and junk food to look forward to! Target acquired! To the flowers!

Gouache practice

I got gouache paints this past week because I made the determination that I need to learn to work with both color/value and work in areas larger than the tip of a colored pencil. So i'm going to start doing lots of little painting studies whenever I get the opportunity.

I found a photo that had the slightly atmospheric yet detailed background effect that I've been wanting to master and had a go at it, ignoring the person in it. I felt it went pretty well, although I was surprised at how dark my midtone had to go for the yellow trees to start to glow slightly. I went over areas more often than I would have liked overall, but ease and simplicity will most likely come with practice.

I set up my paints in an old watercolor set, so now my gouache paints will be portable for plein air painting.

Illustration Friday: Reverse

All he wanted to do was head off into the sunset, but for some reason the unicorn went in reverse as much as it went forward.

I had a ton of fun with this drawing! I was toying around with different ideas for baby dragons and I got inspired by the dino spring rider in Chalk. There was one at the park by my house I used to love when I was little. It was the old-fashioned painted metal ones. I think it was a red horse, but I could be confusing that with the color of the slide.

So I said, "What if the dragon was riding a spring-rider horse?" Hubby replied, "what if it was a unicorn?" and instant inspiration. I sketched it in pieces in my sketchbook, merged in photoshop and then resketched it with the wacom. Not fully happy with the sketch, because the wacom wouldn't register the pressure sensitivity today. No nice tapered strokes.

I need to correct a few things, primarily the perspective on the head of the unicorn and figure out the best overlap of the mane and dragon. I will definitely color it, perhaps both digitally and traditionally. I can't wait to practice planing in color, particularly on the unicorn body, which has very distinct top/side/bottom planes.

In Progress

I have a couple of projects in progress at the moment. They are all in various stages from unstarted, to barely started, to under way, to nearly complete. And a new semester is about to start, which usually ramps up my drawing/posting activity on my blog.

• I have lots of sketches of herbs and ingredients I need to start working on for my cousin's cookbook.
• My coworker's daughter is very fond of my bug drawings/sketches and would love one to call her own. She reminds me of myself when I was young.
• There are babies about to be born everywhere, and if I'm enthusiastic enough, I have up to 5 original art pieces I could create for friends and family. The two that are the most important: a close friend is expecting their first child and my eldest sister is expecting HER first child. Woohoo!
• various and sundry other spur-of-the-moment stuff, including practicing more digital paintings with some of my old sketches. I've been wanting to create finished pieces on some of them for a while, and this will give me some practice before I actually take a digital painting class.

IF: Surrender

A last minute illustration Friday entry which unintentionally coincides with the Chinese New Year: Year of the Rabbit.

This is my first digital painting with a Wacom tablet! woohoo! I'm learning new things. eventually, I'll be confident enough to work in color. But for now, this is good practice.

Avatar! (not the blue kind)

I am finally finished with a project I promised my husband many months ago. A new avatar for his online presence. The direction he gave me: a viking ninja robot. The robot got lost somewhere along the way, but I mostly got the viking ninja, in stereotyped fashion. He was pretty fun to work on, although the drawing got put on pause many times for other projects.

Like many of my pieces, I overworked the rendering and am still not completely satisfied with it, although there are parts I really love, like the folds at the waist and the belt. The rest is kind of stiff, although I felt I learned a bit more about skin tones in the process.

Hopefully the gesture drawing class will help me loosen up on my process/rendering.

Sketchcrawl 30: Natural History Museum

I attended the 30th SketchCrawl at the Natural History Museum today, but only a few crawlers actually saw me. My friend and I decided to draw outside, rather than go in. I've been wanting to draw more buildings to practice perspective. Plus, it was a beautiful day outside. Once you get past the austere front entrance of the building, there is some beautiful architecture at the NHM. Some kid even took a photo of my drawing.

The only minor disappointment was that I was told there was a FANTASTIC sketchcrawl turnout for Los Angeles inside the museum. Oh well. Hopefully, I'll get to see them all at the next crawl.

All my scribble drawings of people today reaffirm the need for me to get back to my 10 minute daily sketches. My quick sketch needs help.

Illustration Friday: Deja Vu

deja vu!

Yes, your eyes do not mislead you; there are two of him. This project is over four years in the making! We went to Japan with our friends in August 2006 and while we were there I collected all my ticket stubs, receipts, pamphlets...everything! They've been sitting in a paper bag for 4 years, being sporadically relocated throughout the house. Every time I saw them, I kept thinking, "I should do something with these..."

I knew when I saw this week's IF topic that the time had come, so I bought a canvas 2-pack and pulled out my matte medium and started tearing and pasting and sketching. I had no clue if this would work, or if my colored pencils would stay on top of the matte medium, but I had hope because my friend and great illustrator, Siri Weber Feeney, works with colored pencils on top of gesso. A number of hours later, I am at a point sufficient to post, although I am not finished yet. I ran out of matte medium just short of finishing the second collage, although there was enough done in the area I was planning on drawing over. I plan to add some loose sketches/doodles across remaining portions of the canvas, and maybe add a bit more color. I just wanted to get this posted with lots of time for feedback before a new IF topic was posted.

The two guys are not identical: the legs on the original sketch looked off, so I shifted them when I transfered the sketch the first time. It still looked off, so I ended up going back to the original placement for the second drawing. I guess some times, it all depends on the angle you are looking at it.

As far as the inspiration for the drawing? Simple: we saw him in Japan! It was one of my favorite photos that we took in Japan. I would like to say that I took it, but we had 2 cameras and 4 people, so I don't know for sure. I love the juxtaposition of the modern and traditional. If anyone happens to know this random guy photographed, please tell him a couple of Americans think he's really cool!

Holiday Stamp

In between work, art classes, holiday shopping, and testing for my 2nd degree red belt in Tae Kwondo, I've had little free time. What time I've had, has been occupied with a new type of art project for me: carving (of a sorts)!

We decided to personalize our holiday gifts this year with a hand made stamp. We wrapped all our gifts in stamped butcher-block paper and even made a few cards as well. I originally wanted to create an image-based illustration, but ran out of time and settled for typography that reads Happy Holidays both right-side up, and upside-down.

Revised recipe

Here is the less-spicy version of the pumpkin cookie recipe, as promised! I also tweaked the sugar levels slightly since it IS a cookie and the holidays should be as sweet as can be.

Merry Christmas!

My recipe has been posted

My recipe has been posted on They Draw and Cook! Yay! It's been such fun watching all the different recipes appear on the site every day. It's like a very unique advent-day calendar: what goodies will opening the door each day reveal. I can't wait to see who the winners are.

What a great Christmas Eve present to me! I had a blast working on the drawing and testing cookie recipes. Below are some photos I took while I was creating the piece. They're not the greatest, since they were only taken with iPhones, but it's always fun to see the process.

The first of three versions of the mouse putting a cookie in the oven. I decided I wanted him leaning over more.

Take 2, but overlapping the center mouse more then I liked.

Final Line drawing

I started by laying in the background elements, then went straight to the foreground, since i'm still hesitant with the dark colors

Then, I started laying in the color on the main pumpkin and the snow in the middle-ground.

And more color...I was trying to mimic a white pumpkin with orange patterns from my reference photos, but by the time I finished tweaking colors to accurately highlight the focal point, this effect got very subdued

Working on the focal point, even though the background wasn't quite finished. The pear-shaped gourd has the door and window in a different position then the final drawing, which I didn't correct until the end. It had created a horrible tangent in the drawing with the pumpkin in the foreground. The carolers were also added to give more life to the scene.

Mostly final color.

The concept for my primary pumpkin.

The reference photo for the primary mouse, so I could get the lighting to look as accurate as possible, while stylized.

Oops!

I recently discovered that I made a rookie chef error. During the recipe testing phase of my entry for TDAC Illustrated Holiday Recipe Contest, I made many variations of this recipe, all with the spices I had on hand. All of my spices were at least a year old (most more), and not as potent as fresh spices. When I remade the cookies with new spices after running out of what I had in stock, I found the recipe WAY too spicy.

I should have realized that during the testing phase. I started with half the spices in my current recipe, but felt that I could barely notice them, even though there cumulatively seemed to be a large amount of spices.

There isn't much I can do about the contest entry as it stands, but I can go back and adjust the recipe for my own edification. And for all my faithful blog readers, I will post the revised recipe once I make all the final adjustments.

If anyone HAS tested the recipe, I would appreciate your feedback on the cookie as it stands and any recommendations you may have on tweaking the spice levels.

Christmas project

I'm currently working on a new art project unlike anything I've been working on in the past couple of years. It's for all our Christmas gifts, but I don't want to say what it is just yet because I know some of the recipients read this blog.

I will give one major hint. To help speed this project up, I had to buy a new toy: a Dremmel! Woohoo! I was very excited about this, since I've been wanting one for a while. If I had a Dremmel in October, I probably would have carved a pumpkin based on my Proverb sketch. Maybe I will next year.

My husband was vastly amused by the stereotypical gender role reversal: the female member of the family was more excited about the purchase of power tools than the male member.

it is DONE! or Illustration Friday: Savour

I've been very quite for the past month, but I have been working hard!

I worked all month (read: weekends and sporadic nights) on my recipe submission for They Draw and Cook's Holiday Recipe Contest. Not only did I work on the illustration, I made LOTS of pumpkin cookies in search of my perfect cookie. My coworkers sure enjoyed that part of my project.

It's been fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, and exhausting, because it definitely came down to the last minutes before the submission deadline. I achieved most everything I set out to do with the piece. I have strong characters, strong composition and focal point, and I added/modified things up until the end to make it just right. I also used dark colors, which is still the hardest thing for me to do. I wanted to hand-letter the title, but I knew when to throw in the towel and fall back on my graphic design abilities.

Tanks!

We went to the military museum for our last Drawing on Location class of the semester. It was a lot of fun, but I really need to learn to draw faster. My teacher said i'm just putting too much detail in, but it's so pretty! all the little gears and cogs and nuts and bolts... very distracting. And very fun, even if my second tank drawing couldn't actually shoot anything due to the warped barrel.

I have a recipe!

Woohoo! My recipe got posted on They Draw and Cook! It's so exciting.

I've been waiting (impatiently) for it to get posted and I was very excited when I saw it this morning. I didn't post it here, because I wanted it to be a surprise. I will post more on the creation of it later.

Sketchcrawl 29: Los Angeles @ Home

I've been busy working on my bathroom the past two weekends. Between that, work, and classes, I'm pretty worn out. So driving to Venice Beach for Sketchcrawl didn't seem very appealing. Furthermore, I keep driving past a pumpkin patch everyday, and have been wanting to get to one to draw. I went to the Pierce College Harvest Festival and had fun drawing buildings and flags.

Illustration Friday: Old Fashioned

He was less enamored then she at the fabulous old-fashioned apron and bonnet in the trunk.

I was out of town visiting family, and had our cousin return with us for a couple of days. I kept doodling this duo while I was away, trying to get them exactly like I saw in my head. It came out fairly well over all.

Still experimenting with mixing marker and colored pencil. What I'm liking so far is when I nail the value I want in marker, then all I need to do is match the value with the color of my choice. Any lighter/darker colors will work to cover up any mistakes I make with the marker as well. You can barely see all the attempts to get her back arm in the right position now. Still need to pop the darks more, and possibly more saturation of colors.

I also forgot to draw the trunk in the background...maybe I'll go back and add it later. and possibly flowers on the apron.

Sketchcrawl 28 and Forest Lawn Photographs

When I posted my sketches from Sketchcrawl 28, I forgot to post the pictures I took. Here they are, along with some pictures I took at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, where I went with a friend to see the gallery exhibit Menagerie. Enjoy!