Weekly Challenges and other stuff...

Diva Challenge #349

Rumpus

I love Rumpus!

Joey's Weekly Challenge #201

&

It's a String Thing Challenge #228

This was a fun duo-challenge. I set up the page on Monday with Joey's challenge to use Lily Moon's "Drogon", happy to re-visit it. A lesson learned from previous attempts at it is to go big. "Dublin" is a new pattern I've been wanting to try since seeing it on Facebook's Square One page. I love ogee grid patterns with leafy motifs.

This is where I stopped on Monday

When Adele's challenge appeared on Tuesday night I was apprehensive at first because Paradox and I have not been keen friends. Bumpadox didn't seem to fare much better, but as I laid in Adele's string a friendly cohesion started formulating in my head as I saw some parallel's between Drogon and the 'Dox's. Good Times!

The last page in my Trainwreck Journal

The purpose of this journal was to experiment and play and avoid being precious about anything. I wish I'd taken a picture of the watercolor background. It made me think of butterflies, so I started with some Pinterest pics of butterflies. I did the right side first and I really was not that crazy about all the white. On the left side I added more color using Crayola markers. There's a strip of washi tape down the center that I embellished as well.
I love how this book turned out!

🐾🐾🐾🐾

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Diva Challenge #348 and other artsy stuff...

Diva Challenge #348

Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day 2018

It's a String Thing Challenge #277

&

Joey's Weekly Challenge #200

I've been trying to work these two challenges back into my practice for awhile now, but it seems like there's just never enough time as I've been trying to diversify my art with studying more illustration, painting and lettering.

I have also been inspired by so many gorgeous Tangle-a-Day calendar pages I've seen out there as way to keep introducing new patterns into ones repertoire. So I thought I'd try to design my own method in a sketchbook format using these two challenges as a starting point. We'll see how it goes;-)

I continue to work on my handmade book binding technique. I'm finishing up the last page in my Trainwreck Journal, so I made a new one:

I'm getting better!

I haven't decided what to call this one;-)

The Sea Lemon YouTube channel has a bunch of book binding tutorials. I used Daiso A4 Drawing paper. It's smooth but takes mixed media pretty well. It's 11.7" x 8.2" . I fold each page in half and tear it to get the deckled edge. I save all the backing cardboard from my watercolor and mixed media pads to use for covers. This one is covered with IKEA wrapping paper. I used dental floss (also from Daiso) to sew the signatures together.

My Alphonso Dunn page

There's an artist at my neighborhood cafe who makes bookmarks from her trimmings and leaves them on the bookshelf. This was just a red and gold strip of paper that I loved. The texture study is from this video. This journal may just be all over the map;-)

Next, I painted a bunch of pages:

This page is stained with really strong tea

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Thanks so much for stopping by! Your generous and thoughtful comments delight and inspire me 😍

Diva Challenge #347 and other stuff...

Diva Challenge #347

String Theory: Traced Objects

lipstick, jar lid, USB stick and an ink bottle

I love this kind of string challenge. I managed to catch Laura's YouTube video on Sunday night so I got a jump start and set up the string. The next morning I grabbed a handful of tools and headed down to the cafe for a little drawing session.

I went back-to-basics on this one. Black ink, white tile, conjuring up my top 20 faves in my head and letting the zen take me on little journey. I started off by thinking about where I might want to leave white space and at the very last minute, decided to add a border. I used a fountain pen so the blacker areas aren't so solid, but I really love how this came out.

duo tangle: Huggins & Phicops

Trainwreck Sketchbook

In my attempt to make friends with Phicops last week, I played a little bit with it here in my trainwreck sketchbook. I had set up the watercolor backgrounds a while back and the colors here seemed a good fit for some organic exploration. I've been using a Pentel Stylo pen and Staedler Triplus Fineliners in this book as the watercolor grounds were done with a cheap Daiso set of tube paints. They're chalky and will clog up Microns and fountain pens. I actually love the muted colors they produce when mixed. Both pens are water soluble so I dripped water on the linework and let it do its thing. I love that effect. I don't know if this is finished yet. I pondered doing some highlight and it just didn't seem right.

Trainwreck sketchbook

fun floral motifs

Alpaca

Aimee

Thanks so much for stopping by! Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me;-)

Diva Challenge #346 and other stuff...

Diva Challenge #346

Duo-Tangle: Phicops & Huggins

Yaaaay! The Diva is back and to start a new year of new challenges, Laura gave us...uhmnnn...me quite a challenge. Very Yin/Yang because Phicops is one of those patterns I've managed to avoid, whereas I can't get enough Huggins.

It's taking me a while to make friends with Phicops and I'm still not quite there yet. I had many ideas going on and frustratingly pursued several clumsy attempts at it in my sketchbook and finally started this first tile as more of a warm up, casually executed on a 4" x 4" scrap of card stock I rescued from the recycle bin at work.

Duotangle #2

Cosmic Garden

I like how this one turned out. I knew these two patterns would be a nice fit in the Cosmic Garden series, even though I thought I was done with that. I guess not. 

I spent some time looking at Phicops from the Diva's archive challenges and there were some real beauties. I was inspired to play some more with it in my Trainwreck journal. I'll share that next week.

Other stuff:

During the Diva's holiday hiatus, I challenged myself with daily drawings inspired by many different sources. I've mentioned that I do spend waaay too much time noodling around the internet and watching YouTube videos. One of my creative goals is to strive for more balance. I tend to bombard myself with images and ideas and then step back and see what sticks. From time to time I'll share the stuff that sticks.

During my recent organizing binge, I found an old, large, spiral bound sketchbook and re-purposed the remaining pages into a smaller hand-made sketchbook using a watercolor practice sheet for the cover. I call this the sketchbook of "Everything Else", inspired by an Alphonso Dunn video where he talks about looking at student sketchbooks of one polished/pretty/finished page after another and asking "Where's everything else?"

The paper is not conducive to any wet media including many of my ink pens so I decided to use it for colored pencils...mostly.

 I was breaking in the cheap Daiso watercolor set and practicing layering.

One of my early sources of inspiration, long before I ever heard of Zentangle is "They Draw and Cook". It's a collection of illustrated recipes curated by artists Salli Swindell and her brother Nate Padivick. I follow Salli on Instagram and I love her whimsical and seemingly simplistic style. It's the antithesis of mine. I tend to get caught up in too much realistic (and labor intensive) detail whenever I draw "real life" and though I enjoy that and get a lot of satisfaction from it when I have the time, one of my creative goals this year is to achieve a simpler balance to that.

Playing with my Prismacolor pencils sallistyle

9 x 12 ZIA

mixed media

I was doing some cleaning and organizing of my art closet last week and found this work-in-progress ZIA I had forgotten about under a stack of watercolor pads. The line work was done on the water-colored background, so I spent the rest of the day finishing it with the shading, highlight and colored pencil. I can't remember when I started this, but I was clearly influenced and inspired by the work of Sharla Hicks. I love her organics.

A few pages from finishing the Trainwreck journal

dip pen and ink

Aimee takes a break to let me draw

She's usually trying to sit on top of whatever I'm doing

It's always a bit precarious when the pen and ink are out

Thanks so much for stopping by. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

A New Year and a few drawin's

Trainwreck Journal

"In 2018, I will..."

Happy New Year everybody!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and I want to thank everyone who found their way here over the last month and left such lovely comments.
So...here's what I've been up to this past week...

Little Pieces of Art

Texture study

I love this Lemur!!!
BFK Rives Illustration paper
Platinum Preppy EF nib fountain pen

Little pieces of Art

Dragonfly

Texture study

Platinum Plaisir fountain pen

Setting up the last few pages of my Trainwreck Journal

Daiso watercolor set

$1.50 for a set of 12 tubes!

I'll be making another one of these ASAP. It was the best $3.00 I've ever spent. Paper and paint both came from Daiso and the time I spent developing my mad bookbinding skilz...well...I hafta say I love it! The best thing about the Trainwreck is that ended up best illustrating my 2017 word of the year:

I drew this on New Year's Eve 2016. It was a prompt from the Facebook group, Tangled and Journaled, Too! It took me most of the year to get here and that's ok;-)

The Trainwreck is a mess of half-baked ideas and meanderings, fits and starts and some serious fun. It's been my best creative tool.

Trainwreck journal

dip pen & blue ink 

texture study-tree bark

Sharpie and a Pentel Stylo

Dip Pen with Winsor Newton Violet ink

white gelly roll pen

trying out some different inks

Texture and value study

"I likes dis here color. It matches my eyes"

Thanks so much for stopping by. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me;-)