Drawing up a storm

As per my last post, I've been taking a bit of a break from crafting to recharge my creative batteries, as it were.

 

I have still been creating but rather than papercrafting, I've been drawing. :)

 

I've done a whole bunch of sketches recently and have turned several of them into digi stamps. All these stamps are now available in the Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet:

 

 

And I've been playing with the original pencil sketches which I used for the digi stamps, colouring them in in different mediums...

 

I coloured in Flora using my Prismacolor pencils (this scan doesn't really do it justice - my scanner seems to struggle to pick up the subtleties of pencil colouring):

 

 

And I shaded in Forest Elf just using a plain HB pencil:

 

 

I've also done some other fun drawings recently... for a "Draw Me" challenge, I responded to a challenge to draw myself as a character from Doctor Who and drew myself as a Time Lord:

 

 

And for a challenge to draw a crossover of Sherlock with a video game, I drew Sherlock and Watson as, respectively, a Mage and a Paladin from World of Warcraft! :D

 

I'm really enjoying getting back in drawing and sketching. Am even looking into possibly taking some art classes in the summer term...

Playing with paint pens...

Recently my DD1's reception class at school have been working on a collaborative project with an awesome local artist known as Fabric Lenny. They've produced some amazing work including drawings, paintings, wire sculptures, an animated film and a documentary film and parents were also invited to attend workshop sessions with their child and Fabric Lenny, working together on making some artwork for the animated film.

 

The workshop was fantastic and I loved creating art with my daughter and I really enjoyed the techniques we used - drawing on stiff cardboard using black felt tips, using a wet paintbrush over the drawn lines to create a colour wash effect and then adding further detail with white Posca paint pens.

 

My DD1 was very taken with the paint pens so I decided to invest in some and they arrived this week so of course I had to try them out. :)

 

I'd also had a few deliveries recently so had a few cardboard boxes lying around so I decided to try Fabric Lenny's technique for myself. And this is what I made:

 

 

I really like this technique and it makes for really striking artwork. Definitely going to play with this some more.

 

A little bit sketchy...

My other main hobby, aside from crafting, is... well... pretty much being a full-time geek. :D

 

I have a long history of getting really hooked on tv shows and movies etc and getting involved in fandom. It's lots of fun to chat with like-minded folk who are into the same things you are - and I've been lucky enough to go to quite a few conventions and get to meet some of my fellow fans, and some of my favourite actors and actresses too - and fandom is also an incredibly creative place. Fan art, fan fiction, really quite deep meta discussions... it's awesome.

 

My new fandom addiction is Sleepy Hollow and I really am utterly and completely hooked on this show. If you haven't watched it, do! It's fabulous. Spooky and funny and clever and very well-acted. It's been on hiatus for the past 3 weeks (grrrrr... stupid baseball!!) but it's back on tomorrow and the next episode looks absolutely incredible. I can't wait! And neither can the rest of the fandom... and they've been going a bit stir crazy over the past few weeks and, thankfully, filling the void with some awesome art and fiction.

 

And I've decided to join in. I can't compare with some of the incredible fanart I see on tumblr but I wanted to have a go anyway so I put pencil to paper and did this sketch of Ichabod Crane:

 

 

I've also done some other sketches recently as I signed up for an ATC swap with the theme of BBC characters and, as I've been in the mood for drawing and painting recently, I decided to do hand-drawn cards for my contribution.

 

So I drew Sherlock:

 

 

...and Doctor Who:

 

 

...and Blackadder:

 

 

I found it rather hard to part with these - especially the Sherlock one! :lol:

 

It's interesting how things seem to come full circle... I used to draw all the time when I was at school and I just kind of got out of the habit after leaving school. Then I got into papercrafting and through that began to expand into stamping and inking and mixed media stuff and using paints etc... and then, particularly through doing ATCs, full circle back to drawing (and even a bit of painting) again.

 

I'm really enjoying it. :)

 

 

More ATCs

I have soooo many ideas for ATCs and projects running through my head atm... I've gone crazy for original art/mixed media stuff lately... to the extent that before going to sleep last night I had to turn the light back on, grab my phone and type in a quick memo of the idea for these ATCs: :D

 

 

 

 

My idea was a line drawing of a face - in close-up - with random, splodged brightly coloured inks as "eye shadow". My idea was for the colour not to be contained within the lines of the drawing so I used watercolour paper and sprayed it with water before splodging on Dylusions spray inks (I sprayed the inks onto my non-stick craft mat and then dipped a paintbrush into them). I also tilted the cards and let the watery ink run a bit before drying them and dabbed some spots of Stickles onto the ends of the eyelashes.

 

After I made this set of cards, I had the idea to do a similar set, this time with the eyes open and using the splodged, watercolour-effect colours for the irises.:

 

 

 

I filled up the white space at the top and bottom of these cards with some Distress Ink sponged lightly through stencils (this doesn't show up all that well on these scans).

 

I'm really rather pleased with all of these. They are quite simple and yet quite striking, I think. :)

 

The Eyes Have It

I've been getting back into ATCs in a big way lately... and, as part of that, I've been getting more and more into drawing. And remembering that I actually used to be pretty good at it! :lol:

 

With that in mind, I spent my one, precious, child-free afternoon per week today chilling out on the sofa with repeats of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on the TV and a fineliner pen in hand, and drew these:

 

 

 

 

I'm really quite pleased with how these came out. I'm fascinated by eyes anyway, they are such beautiful, complex structures and look beautiful when drawn well. I'm not sure how "well" these are drawn but I like how they look. :)

 

I put these up for trading at ATCsforall.com and they've all been snaffled within an hour of me uploading. :D

WOYWW 211

Oooh lookit, I actually remembered what day of the week it is, for the first time in 3 weeks! :lol:

 

Yup, I've remembered that it's Wednesday *and* that that means it's time to share what's on my workdesk. Take that, baby brain! :D

 

So here's my desk in all its messy glory:

 

 

 

I've actually quite productive over the past couple of days, mostly making ATCs. I am on a *major* ATC kick at the moment and getting involved in some great swaps over at ATCsforall.com.

 

Scattered about on my desk you can see some of the goodies I've been playing with - Pan Pastels, stencils, Chocolate Baroque and Stampotique stamps, pens, Distress Stains, offcuts of Gelli plate prints, crackle paint... ooh it's been a lot of messy fun! :D

 

There's also an in-progress card sitting on the desk. I've started off with kraft card and Distress Stains but not yet decided where to take it from there...

 

But here's some of the bits and pieces I have finished recently...

 

Three cards for an art journal themed swap:

 

 

And a hand-drawn card, using just a fineliner pen on card:

 

 

I also made a few quite notecards with which to send out my cards for swapping, including this one:

 

 

I love this big butterfly stamp (Swallowtail stamp from Stampin' Up!) and been wanting to play with it and I was tempted by the Clean and Simple challenge at Flutterby Wednesdays. So am entering this card into that challenge.

 

That's it for me for this week... will try and get around and comment on a few more desks this week. The days just seem to get away from me and I never seem to get chance to do as many comments as I would like!

 

 

 

WOYWW 192

I'm a wee bit ashamed to say that there's not a lot going on on my desk atm cos I pretty much haven't done any crafting in almost a week! *gasp*

 

I had a busy weekend involving a verrrrry rare night out and I was busy running around trying to get things sorted for that (like, trying to find something to wear! Ack! ;D) and since the weekend I seem to have been feeling distinctly "meh" and, despite having a whole bunch of crafty ideas I want to work on, I have been struggling to find the motivation to get up off the sofa once the kids are in bed! :lol:

 

Nonetheless, here's how my desk is looking this morning:

 

 

You may have noticed that my computer keyboard - usually a half-buried victim of my "push back" brand of "tidying" is actually completely absent from the desk this week. That's cos things kept getting put on top of it and then I couldn't use it - like, to log onto the computer! - without moving and rearranging piles of stuff! So it's now been temporarily relegated to the floor, keeping my guillotine and glass cutting mat company:

 

 

I know I say this pretty much every week but... I really *really* do need to tidy! :lol:

 

I did actually do a wee bit of crafting last night and the results are visible on the desk. I'm swapping some ATCs at the moment and, as ever, I am my own worst enemy and can't bear to send the ATCs out just stuffed in an envelope... I have to make a quick card to send with each one! :lol: So I had a play with some Stampin' Up! inks and a freebie stamp set that came with a magazine fairly recently:

 

 

Also on the desk is an in-progress ATC.... I've been asked for a Lolita/Japanese Street Style-themed ATC and this is what it's looking like so far:

 

 

What do you think? I'm quite pleased with the basic drawing (I used to do a lot of drawing as a teenager and have been enjoying getting back into it a bit recently) but am undecided as to whether to go over this with a fineliner pen and then colour it with Promarkers - my go-to method for colouring digi stamps (although this isn't a digi stamp) - or whether to have a try at colouring it with my Prismacolor pencils. Any feedback welcomed... I'm kind of at the paralysed stage where I'm happy with how it looks atm but am scared to "ruin it" if I make the wrong decision on how to progress! :lol:

 

Thanks for stopping by my desk this week... if you're wondering what all this waffle is about then check out Julia's Stamping Ground blog for an explanation of what WOYWW is and the master list of desks to visit. And I am seriously going to try and get around and comment on more desks this week! :)

My first attempt...

...at a Suzi Blu-stylee girl. :)

 

 

My mum pretty much always asks me what she can get me for Christmas/birthday so this year I emailed her a short list of a few mixed media/art journalling books I'd been lusting after on Amazon and she bought me two of them... one of them being Mixed Media Girls with Suzi Blu.

 

So as we're having a fairly lazy day today, huddled in the lounge/study (the only two rooms with gas fires) while the plumber works to fix our central heating boiler, I thought I'd get out pen and paper and have a go.

 

I quite like Suzi's technique for drawing and shading faces and luckily faces are the one thing that I am quite good at drawing. I used to draw a LOT when I was a child/teenager and faces were what I drew most... in fact, whilst at school I drew portraits of just about everybody in my class! I'd get them to sit and pose for me! :lol:

 

So I do feel like I have a bit of a head start here because I'm not starting completely from scratch, as it were. Nevertheless, I am rather pleased with my first attempt.

 

Next step will be to clear enough space in my craft room (once the heating is working again cos it gets chillllllly in there! :lol:) and start playing with some mixed media backgrounds to go with my faces. :)