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;-)

More daily drawin's and inspiration...

My Trainwreck Journal

I was watching this.

I hope everyone is enjoying a lovely holiday season. I, for one, am glad it's almost over. For my last post of 2017 I'm pleased to say I stuck to my guns and managed to draw something every day for my personal 21 day challenge. I didn't always complete a piece in a day because I usually have more than one thing going on at a time. I worked on this piece above over a couple of days, inspired by the Buntstiften YouTube channel: Watching her draw and listening to the music is mesmerizing. She's the master of elegant and sweeping curves.

I also thought I'd wrap this year up with some links to my favorite sources of inspiration. I spend waaaay too much time watching YouTube videos, but I like to think it's paid off;-)

Dutch artist and illustrator Koosje Koene does a weekly "Draw Tip Tuesday". That's what started my whole "Inktober" plan. I've been watching these for a couple of years now. Love, love, love them;-)

These 4x6 pen and ink drawings are done on BFK Rives illustration paper. Normally I use the very inexpensive Strathmore Skills pads but I was inspired by a "Paper Haul" video by mixed media illustrator Kendyll Hillegas. She does the most amazing food illustrations (among other things).

These illustrations were inspired by Alphonso Dunn's Inktober video. His videos were my greatest discovery this year.

Backlit Gingko leaves

4x6

from a photo found on Pinterest

Texture Study

4x6

from a Pinterest photo

more texture study

from this Alphonso Dunn video

9x12 watercolor experimentation

I found a whole stash of these sheets I'd stowed underneath a pile of paper pads and forgot about. Sometimes I'll cut them into tiles or ATC's for Travelling Tangles or more often, I just cut them down into 4x6 sheets and use them for  playing around with my dip pen and inks:

various stages of completion

into this

Look what Santa brought me!

I became totally obsessed with pen and ink while watching The Diva's Inktober videos. She used a different bottle of ink for each of the 31 videos. I also became obsessed with fountain pen drawing and joined two Facebook groups Fountain Pen Sketchers and  Artist's Journal Workshop to amp up my drawing game.

Throwback Travels

Santa Fe, New Mexico

September 2001

from a photograph

I spent a lot of time on this one. I need to work on my value scale.

Untitled

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

Some Daily Drawing Practice

Texture

4" x 6"

dip pen and various inks

So began my first week of daily drawing after last weeks post, not in any particular order, inspired by this video  and this video by Alphonso Dunn. Not everything is "finished" and some are just exercises. Here's a link to his series of Basics and Fundamentals if you're interested in exploring pen and ink drawing.

This first one started out as an exercise. I was practicing a wet on wet technique I came across on another one of my favorite YouTube channels, Studio Jess. She calls it Cosmic Moons, 

before pen and ink

"Toodles"

Perhaps a Throwback travels series?

Continuous line drawing...sort of

A page from my Trainwreck Journal

Frost Flower, Printemps and Rumpus

Shading and Hatching practice

Just noodling around

I usually have something like this going on all the time, for when I feel like drawing but don't have the bandwidth to start something.

"Why, oh why you draw so much and ignore me???"

Thanks so much for stopping by! Let me know if you have any questions about what I shared today. I tried to keep the chatter to a minimum;-)
As ever, your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me.

🎄❄HAPPY HOLIDAYS⛄🎁