Something About Nothing

 There was a big sale on classes through an online community called Domestika at the end of last year. There were several classes which intrigued me and so I bought them to help me continue my studies this year. Currently I am taking The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Ar t by Mattias Adolfsson, an illustrator. I am loving his style because it is reminding me that I don't have to be a hyperrealistic artist to be an actual artist. All types of drawing are acceptable and wonderful! Here are a few of the things I am drawing in his course. I was shocked that my pens looks like pens.  I don't know why, but for some reason I just didn't think they would look right. It was a very exciting moment in my drawing journey. Such simple drawings, but I like them. Drawing the pen and pencil characters was a lot of fun. I've always loved drawing faces so that part of the class was enjoyable and I feel took them to a new level. I used my Pitt Pens to add some color to th...

I went to Florida to see the grandchildren and we ended up getting Covid together.  At least half of the family did. Thankfully because of vaccines it wasn't bad. A lot like a bad head cold. My husband tested negative so he flew home as we originally intended. I ended up staying another ten days because I was still coughing and testing positive after five days. I thought I might be able to get a lot of stitching done, or some drawing at least, but feeling sick doesn't always lend itself to anything but sleep and TV. I did spend a little time in my sketchbook.

I started my first 100 day project on April 2nd. The idea was to create 100 drawings of trees using ink. I wanted to improve my drawing skills with ink and I felt that trees, always a favorite of mine, would be a subject I could accomplish.  Two of the kraft paper notebooks I purchased from Paperchase  stationary store while in London. I picked up a couple of kraft paper notebooks from a beautiful stationary store in London called Paperchase. I wanted to use the smaller one for this project because it had 100 sheets of paper. However, I quickly learned a number of important things. Rectangular pages don't post well on Instagram, especially if all you want to post is the drawing.  Also, I started out posting the drawings without a logo or name on them. This opened up the images to being easily used without my permission, and didn't give people the ability to find me if the images were posted elsewhere.  I needed easy solutions....

I've drawn realistic faces before but usually from a photograph as the ones I try to draw from my imagination look cartoonish.  I've envied other artists (like my daughter and son) who can draw a face from their imagination.  When I saw Pam Carriker's Mixed Media Portraits book I knew I had to have it.  I read the book as soon as it arrived but it took me a couple of weeks to gather the nerve to put pencil to paper.  Pam's instructions are easy to follow.  My teenage daughter has tried to teach me the proportions of a face before, but somehow the information, though very simple, has gone in one ear and out the other.  I think I am better at learning from reading the instructions than from just hearing them because I can keep going back and making sure I get it all right.   Here is my first attempt using Pam's method - first a sketch, getting all the proportions just right.  Well - sort of just right!  And then comes the fun part - SHAD...

 Jill K. Berry, wrote a book called Personal Geographies: Mixed-Media Map-Making .  I read her book when it first came out in 2011 and have been wanting to make an arty map ever since.  Sometimes new things intimidate me and so they have to float about in my head for a long time before I make them.  I am a literal and linear thinker with a lot of things and just thinking about making an arty map has been stretching my brain in all kinds of unusual and interesting yoga poses!   Recently  Jill issued a challenge to draw a Map of 2014 for a blog hop she is hosting in January - here is how she describes what she would like everyone to do: "This project is about making a  map of the future, in particular the year 2014.  You can approach this in many ways, and here are some simple guidelines to get you started. Pick a subject or focus Goals Travels Relationship(s) Career Health Personal Journey And on and on… Pick a medium ...

I played around a bit more with color, gradient and texture in the zen doodle from my last post.  Here's the before texture photo:  The color and lines makes this one feel more masculine to me. My friend,  Anneliese , suggested turquoise with red so I drew a new piece and started on the turquoise.  I then decided that I didn't like the dots and lines in the flowers so I removed them all with photoshop and then. . . . . . somehow ended up adding yellow instead of red!  Next time I will play with the red! Anyone have another color combination they think I should try?