Friday, November 29, 2013

New stuff


First up, a nice red pecan. I really enjoyed drawing this. Its Polychromos on Stonehenge paper (my favorite combo). Its 4" x 6", and in the shop.  


A few WIP shots of how it developed ~






 Its so satisfying to finally get to the last layer!


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Here is the 'ginger snap cookie rock arch landscape', finished. I purposely did this one more 'illustrative', and had fun putting the little Stonehenge-y bits in the background. This started as one thing, and ended up as this - which is OK. It was all about exploring an idea. (I did a step-by-step in the last post, here.)




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And then I finished up the first sets of little square cards. Well, actually, these are the newest incarnation of them. I did these a while back, and had different boxes. I haven't had them in the shop for a long time. But I got fired up about the idea again, and found these cute little take-out boxes, and designed some 'wraps' for them. 

These are the 'drawings of knitting' Assorted Holiday Knits ones, which are in my Draw1Knit1 shop. So far these are the only thing in there - there will be more, soon, hopefully!




These are the Assorted Tartan Plaid ones, in my other etsy shop. I'll have more sets as I'm able to them done. I need to hire some elves.


Here's what they look like all packed up in the box. 


And here's how they work.



So that's what I've been up to. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 25, 2013

Ginger Snaps - WIP (work in progress)

Thought I'd better blog something, since I've been slacking off with this blog lately.
This is what I'm working on, colored pencil-wise.

I found these fun little ginger snap cookies at Trader Joe's, and decided to draw them. At first I thought I was going to do one of my 'photo-real, food in a white space' drawings. I played around with how to set up the cookies, and had fun stacking them up in various ways. When I did this arch, and got them to actually stay that way longer than 2 seconds, I snapped a few reference photos and got to work.






For some reason Blogger doesn't like my line drawing jpg (the first step) and just shows a black square - ? Not sure what that's all about. So we'll skip to where I started to render a bit. (You can click on any of these to see them bigger.)

At this point I still thought I was going to do a 'cookies on white' piece.



Then I decided the cookies looked like a rock formation, and thought it would be cool to try to make them look like they were part of a landscape. So I invented a horizon line, and blocked in a very non-commital, easy to change, sky and ground.


I worked more on the cookies here, doing a lot of casual cross hatching, rather than my usual wee tiny tight circular strokes. I'm using all Polychromos so far. Burnt Sienna, Caput Mortuum Violet,  a couple of other colors. Trying to establish their "cookie-ness" with some textures. And I did a tentative bit more with the sky.


The cookies needed to be more 'ginger', so I added more color.


THEN. I just decided to go for it. I made up a cool sky, and had a blast doing that. I wanted something that wouldn't compete with the cookies, not be too sunny, or too grey, but still interesting.


And so this is where its at for the moment. I hope to finish it in a day or two, in between other things. 


I'm also back into my 'drawings of knitting' thing, which I was all excited about, then fell into a funk about for a bit. I took all my listings out of my etsy shop, and had a re-think about it all. I came up with a new logo, 



and am working on some new sets of little cards. I'd show you my work table, but it looks like a kitchen when you're in the middle of making a complicated recipe - a big mess. I'm hoping to have them finished in the next couple of days. I'm also re-working the ones of food and plaids and some other art for my regular shop. 

And its THANKSGIVING OMG. Actually, I'm thankful I don't have to do a big dinner, but its still a day to be reckoned with. I'm praying I don't have to make a mad dash to the grocery store for anything at the last minute, because you all know what that's like. I'm also thankful we should be having good weather here out west. I have so so much to be thankful for, all joking aside. I hope you all have a wonderful day, full of whatever you have to eat, good company, and good health. Always, not just on that day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 08, 2013

Just for fun




These were a diversion. There are about 4 different technique experiments beneath the final layer of colored pencil of both of these. They started off being one thing, then they went in a different direction, then they morphed into something else again. The surface on these is completely saturated, burnished, and like glass - and I still found a way to put more color on. I finally got them to a place I like, and hopefully next time I'll be able to get there without all the detours. Sometimes you have to try new things and see where they take you. I had one of those "aha!" moments with these. These don't look like anything special to you, I'm sure, but for me they're a kind of personal victory.
They're all Polychromo colored pencils on Stonehenge paper.

Last time I was talking about doing greeting cards. Well. I received the ones I'd ordered, and was dismayed to realize I'd bought the really fancy embossed ones. Even though it says right on the box "Decorative Emboss", somehow I'd missed seeing all the decorative bits in the online photo! Embossed is fine, but all the extra foo-foo is not. So I'll be sending those back, and won't be doing Christmas cards this year for the shop. I should have had these together way earlier anyway. Every year - it never fails.

Am I a bummer today? Hmm. Maybe, kind of. There's all sorts of astrological weirdness going on right now, so maybe that's why. I'm also in a "I want to do all new work" mood. If you're an artist, you know how that feels. You can't stand to look at anything you've done, and want to dump out your flat files or whole studio and start fresh.


Its still sunny here, and the kitties enjoy a nice after-breakfast snooze every morning on the back porch. They're lucky they don't have to worry about doing cards, or art of any kind!