February "artitupwithfriends"

 I was looking for another art challenge to do in February. These challenges help me learn how to draw faster, work smaller, and come up with ideas more quickly.
I had one that I was going to do, hosted by the same person who did the September challenge and the week-long one in December. When she finally posted the prompts though, they weren't anything I wanted to draw. I wrote them all down, resolutely planning to do it anyway, but I had no ideas at all. Well, except for one day that would be several weeks into the month. (They all involved animals...I don't like drawing animals.)
In the end I decided not to do it after all (I didn't want to make myself miserable) when about six days into the month I found another challenge that was much more up my ally.
So, I missed the first several days, and there were some days that I posted older artwork that fit into the themes, but I did get to create a lot of new things that were pretty fun!
 Here they are, in no particular order. (Remember, you can click on them and see them much bigger.)

Black and white pieces always garner the most "likes" on instagram (probably because the high contrast catches viewers' eyes). My first and last creations were both black and white. This first one was for the prompt, "Edgar Allan Poe". I illustrated the poem "Annabel Lee". It was drawn on gray paper with black and white markers. (Incidentally, I just got some new white liners that are awesome, so I found any excuse to use them repeatedly.)

 

This last piece I wanted to get done before the last day of the challenge, and I finished it in about an hour and a half. It didn't look quite like I was planning, but in the end I decided it was better than my original idea. This girl was cut out from white paper, and the rest was just the white liner on black paper. Much easier than coloring it all in. This was "wish upon a star".























A few of the line drawings I started in the fall were perfect for this challenge, and I was able to save time by coloring in these pictures I'd already done..and they turned out great!

I used this October  Nausicaa piece for the prompt, "Welcome to the Jungle". I hesitated to color the black and white because I really liked it, but I'm glad I did, as I like this even better.



















The line drawing was originally just the girl; drawing the sky really transformed it. I like the clouds, but the center sky is a little messed up. I think it looks like she's on a sky island. This was for, "turbulent skies".























For another one I drew a simple picture with the plan to add to it later; then I used the same picture for a later prompt. So this first was was for "skulls". Then I completed the picture to be used for, "bus stop". I just had to change the guys elbow so it was in front of the girl instead of behind her, so the picture would make sense.
























I'm always annoyed that my camera doesn't capture the skin colors quite right. They're more rich and blend together better in real life.


















The following was the piece that took the longest, I worked on it for three or four days. The theme was, "fan art". It was hard to decide what to draw.... tv shows and movies? Books? I've already done Harry Potter. In the end I chose to draw the characters from a series of books I had recently ready, "The Mortal Instruments". It was pretty fun! This picture is big, 11x14".

Because it was February, I wanted to do a few Valentines themed pieces. so for the theme, "childhood" I drew kids leaving treats and heart attacking someone's door, combining memories of my childhood and that of my kids.

 

On the actual Valentine's Day, the theme was, "love monster". Pretty self explanatory. I wanted the tentacles to be spiderlike and snakelike...I'd already done the octopus thing.






















This one I was probably least excited about. The prompt was, "mushroom village", and I couldn't think of anything that wasn't the obvious stereotype. This actually has gel pen details; in real life it's got sparkles all over it- the blue dots, the yellow details underneath the mushrooms, the green lines, etc.- but the camera couldn't capture it except in video. I did show a video of it on my instagram.
 

This one was also kind of meh...the theme was "Stage Fright", and Scooby Doo seemed perfect for it. I later found out it was actually the name of an episode of the show.

This one probably had the least planning, with the best results. The prompt was "phobia", and I wanted it to have a spontaneous look. It is made with marker and watercolor.

 And these two are the fantasy worlds I drew. The first one in supposed to be the three trolls that were turned to stone in The Hobbit, for the prompt, "trolls". The white trees were done with the new white pen I mentioned; it's on brown paper.

This one turned out great, it was for the prompt, "three color challenge". I've seen other people use three colors and not count white and black as the colors, so I hoped it wasn't cheating!

Which do you like?

inktober stuff

 So I already posted my September challenge drawings, and the week of drawings I did in January. These are the ones I drew for "inktober" the October challenge on Instagram. This one has tons of participants. You're supposed to draw everything with ink, and then you can color it if you want. At this point I was starting my Christmas portraits, and I had already spent a month on the previous challenge, so I knew going into it I wouldn't have time for all of them; I think I did roughly half.

I also had fun combining a few different challenges I found at the same time, which was very helpful in finding subject matter. One group of prompts was about mythical creatures, another about creative objects, etc. For instance, this one combined the prompts, "banshee" and "sea shells." I thought it would be fun to imitate Edvard Munch's, "The Scream".























I did a few with just ball point pen, because I had some fun colors I wanted to try out. They looked neat, but took longer than I expected, much like the boy in the snow I drew in September:





I also did a few with just liner markers. Leaving out color was faster and helped me focus more on the basic drawing.

 

 I got to do a few "fan art" pieces, from books, tv shows, and movies. The previous drawing is based on the Miyazaki world of Nausicaa. This next one is from "A Series of Unfortunate Events." The prompt was "cloud", and in the books, this boss always had a cloud of smoke around his head, so much so that the protagonists never saw his face.




This next one was also kind of fan art, but with a twist. It's supposed to be female versions of the main characters from the Netflix show,  Stranger Things: Michael, Luke, and Dusty. There was already so much fan art surrounding this show that I didn't want to try and compete with all those excellent drawings already out there, so I changed it up a bit.
 

 I did several mythical creatures because of the challenge list I was working from. I even got to research some I'd never heard of before, like "Madre Monte", a South American mythical woman who lives in the jungle, kind of a personification of the strong mountain. She's with pumpkins, because that was the prompt that day from one of the other lists I was doing, haha.

 


Here is your everyday selkie,

 


And of course, a Kraken. I thought my caption for this one was hilarious.
It said, " Lady Cottington treasured her fortnightly visits with her beloved Reginald; she adored him almost as much as she adored her perfect pink parasol. But if he insisted on ravaging every ship that sailed into the harbor, she might need to rethink their relationship."
(Yes, an umbrella was another prompt I was trying to include.)

 I already drew a witch in September, so I took a different approach when I got the same prompt here, and combined it with the words from other lists, "long"and "mushrooms".

One prompt was "witchsona". I had to look it up, but apparently its when you do a self portrait as a witch. Yeah, I guess it's a popular thing. Mine didn't turn out looking like a witch, but it was still pretty cool. The explanation for the snakes: "The prompt for inktober2017 today is "teeming". My drawing is teeming with snakes because 1. snakes are cool, and 2. once introvertdoodles did a comic about the introvert personality types as animals, and mine was a snake."

I had the words, "planets", "shy", and "skeleton" for this one, and I was trying to simplify the colors so I could finish it faster. It looks like a scene from a recent season of Agents of Shield, if anyone watches that. Which wasn't intentional; I realized it after the picture was drawn. The little scavenger creatures are the "shy" part.






















The very last day of the challenge was Halloween of course. I didn't get done quite in time, but I did finish this picture, based on my kids and their Halloween costumes this year. Although I think on the actual night, some of them changed their minds. The faces are pretty generic, but I guess you can tell it's supposed to be them. I thought the lamp from the "Witchsona" drawing was cool, so I reused it in this drawing for the word, "lantern". And of course, the rest is to illustrate, "Trick-or-treat"!

I had a personal project I worked on this January (which still isn't done) but a few days into February I found another fun challenge, and was able to complete quite a few drawings. They really help with finding ideas to work on and learning to work faster. I will post that sometime too.

Jonah's quilt

 So I made Jonah a quilt for Christmas. I got it done only two days before, because I didn't want to work on it while he was home, and I had to get all those portraits done before I could finish it! For the record, I did work on it off and on over the last year or two.
As with other quilts I made, the technique is not that great, but it's fun and warm, and made with his favorite color: green.

I am happy with several parts of this quilt, such as the following:

This was a patch on Josh's jeans when he was about five. I wanted to put it on his quilt, but didn't find it until now. So cute.

 
















I like these examples of two patches on top of each other. Yay. (these pictures make the green thread look much more yellow than it is in life.)

 
 


And it's always fun to use sections of jeans that already were repaired when they were pants: its nice to remember the little pants from which they came.

 

 

 For reference, here are the other three quilts I have made previously.
Last time, I made one for Joshua. I liked the different design of sewing it over the top and the long strips instead of squares. Because of this design, I was able to finish it really fast! That underside color is not nearly that bright anymore, but he loves it on his bed, even in the summer. I saved all the black jeans so they could be together on this quilt.























In 2014 I made one for Elora. It was really similar to the one I just made for Jonah; I loved the idea of the colored patches on the top, so it's no surprise I tried it again this time. Obviously, red is Elora's favorite color. Her's has really thick batting inside, so it's so warm!






















This was a patch she really had on her pants, and it worked so well with this quilt.

 

    And the very first quilt I made goes on my bed in the winter! It has, by far, the worst sewing job on it, because I just couldn't figure out a way to make the patches look random instead of orderly rows, so there's a lot of messed up bits, plus I didn't want to work on it very often. But I love it because it has pants from when Elora and Josh were really little, and it's super warm. It took me like three or four years to get this first one done! It's funny because I can see the line where I suddenly figured out a better way to do it, and it went much more smoothly.

 Now I have to make some for Eli and River!

My favorite part of making these quilts is feeling like I'm making something that will last out of all of our piles of jeans which would otherwise end up in a land fill. My town may not have recycling, but this is a way to recycle that is worth keeping.

September Challenge

 So, these are the pictures I did in September for a Creative Challenge. Originally I was only going to post the ones I liked the best, but I guess I'll post all of them. These aren't in order of when I drew them. The titles are the words I had to draw.
  I worked on this even during my trip to my brother's wedding in September, so I had to find ways to work faster and simpler, which was kind of the point anyway. For some of the drawings, I used some small "artists trading cards" which are only about 2.5 by 3.5 inches large.The following drawings were all done on this size, and I love how they all turned out:

 1. cozy shed (other participants that didn't speak English interpreted the shed as a tent, and so I did too.)

 

2. Honey rain






















 5. lunar landscape
 

 4. Striped evening






















 5. ghostly bouquet (it's supposed to be flowers along a pioneer trail grave or a ghost town.) I saw these ones at Independence Rock, WY.



I also did a few watercolors, with mixed success:
6. autumn rabbit (this was the second drawing I did and it was very popular- I guess people love animals.)






















7. Gray wind.

8.pumpkin fog. I was thinking of the Great Pumpkin, but I didn't want to actually draw Charlie Brown characters; instead, I gave the mouse a blanket like Linus'. I like the trees, and the foreground, but the whole middle of this picture just needs to disappear Or I need to learn to paint fog.



I also wanted to try using some things I'd never used for drawings, since it was just a fast experiment. For this one, I used some cool scrapbook paper I'd recently bought, for the background. The rest is drawn with marker.

9. apple jam

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 And for this one, I used some colored bic pens to draw the whole thing. It took a lot longer than expected, even though it was small.

10. cold traveler (I was thinking of the kid from A Christmas Story, who can't put down his arms.)

11. Forest plaid. I was a little disappointed with how this turned out compared to how long it took to put together. It's hand drawn plaid on paper cut in the shape of a forest, then glued together.

 I did a few with  minimal color, thinking that it would help me finish them faster. I forgot that doing things in just black pen actually takes longer because you have to do more line work details to make up for the lack of color. And pencil takes forever to build up shading!

 12.secret sweater.  This one took a few days to finish. I liked the idea of it, but not sure if it lived up to my plans.
 
 
13. morning dress. (this was the first drawing I completed..it's my three boys fighting over blankets while they watch cartoons in the morning)



14.  river city. This was after the style of another artist I admire...which is probably while it was the most liked of the whole month. The artist's name is Ian Miller; he draws really cool buildings and fantasy worlds.



 I had a lot of fun learning from that artist while creating this picture, so when another prompt made me think of a second artist I admired, I decided to have fun trying out their style a little too. Patrica Polacco is one of my favorite illustrators, she draws lots of Russian type Babushka characters, using fun patterns, markers, and pencil.

15. kind scarf

 






16.  Festive umbrella. A little fan art involving Totoro and Firefly...so it would only appeal to the small audience that was familiar with both shows.

I did a few on tan paper which works well for portraits, but not so much for these,, so they didn't turn out as bright, 

 17. fiery beetle

 18. soft cloak. This was based on a photo of Elora, though it isn't really supposed to look like her.

I wanted to try a few Halloween inspired pictures, since it was coming up soon. 

19. magic coffee and sunny fox. This was harder to draw than I thought, but I like the idea of it. This is the one drawing where I combined two prompts, because I knew I wouldn't finish in time otherwise.

20. unusual pie. I had the idea for this one planned from the beginning, and I was really excited to do a pulp-fiction inspired picture. There are a few things I'd like to fix on it, but overall, this is one of my favorites.

 21. musical cat. I really wanted to try to draw neon lights for one of the prompts, and this one was perfect for that idea.Also one of my favorites, drawn on black paper.

 22. red ornament. These crab apples were from a photo I had taken,and it was fun trying to figure out how to draw them with marker! Another favorite.

I was able to make a few faster drawings by leaving the white around it instead of coloring in all the details; something I admire with other artists' work, but have a hard time making myself do.

 23. strange house

24. terrible mushroom (probably the fastest drawing I did. Totally something Eli would draw, too.)

 25. Warm kettle. This one didn't turn out as nice as I pictured it (probably because it was too small to do much detail) but it's based on the landscape on Cedar Mountain. See the kettle?

















 And this one was a very small one. almost as small as those artist cards.

26. Yellow sunset. I didn't want to draw another sunset, so I thought this worked too, with the yellow flowers and girl, facing the sunset.

 Finally, here are the ones that really didn't turn out that well, and I wasn't happy with.

 27. Flower soup. I loved the idea of it, but didn't notice till I was taking the picture that A. the circle was off for the plate, and B. The lines on the background are incredibly off, with the size and spacing changing all over the place. I'm sad it didn't look as good as planned.

28 Fragrant druid. I spent a long time changing ideas for this one. I liked the idea of drawing an ancient Celtic warrior for the druid instead of a guy in a black cloak. The flowers are the fragrant part, it just didn't quite turn out as I wanted.

 29. Probably my least favorite; it's supposed to look like a label for a mens scent or something. Meh. I guess that's what you get when you make it all in one day.

 Next time, I'll post the pictures I did for October! Which do you like?