Archive for the ‘Illustrations’ Category

I had a Coke too late in the evening last night and couldn’t sleep. And a quote from my Oswald Chambers devotional that evening was really stuck in my mind. So I got out of bed at 1:30 a.m.,  surrendered myself to my awake state of mind and drew till about 2:45. The roofers then promptly awoke us around 8:00 and I colored this afternoon while trying to ignore their nail guns because a nap would be impossible for my 3 year old, much less me!

When I read what Oswald Chambers wrote I totally “got it”.

The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one with the nature of the sea in him.

I call myself a “wimpy” certified diver. I love to dive but don’t want to ever see a shark. Ever. I prefer stationary dives to drift dives. And my dive master is always in my sight. Despite all that fear, when I am underwater and all I can hear is my own breathing while gazing at a whole other world it is amazing. There is something about getting past your fear and being 100 percent in the moment that is kind of a memorable experience.

There was a point in my marriage where my relationship with God hit a new level. It was when I realized that I was totally alone in my relationship and accountability to God. Despite the amazing God fearing husband He gave me there are some times when He is talking to me and only me. Running what I think I heard by my husband, sister, or friend really doesn’t do any good. Because ultimately my relationship with God is and always will be as solitary as I feel when I’m under the ocean and can’t talk to anyone else. I can’t get anyone else to chime in and validate what I think I’m hearing. My faith is MY faith and mine alone.

God does speak to others in order to give you affirmation, but that is a whole other subject. I don’t get into my Faith very often on my blog, but I thought I would today so that you would understand the illustration I’m sharing. Also, I was inspired by the latest Artful Blogging to be authentic. So there you go. Deep, huh?

I drew this using two Dover illustrations as reference and then colored it with Copic markers. The flourish is meant to be seaweed or living coral. I colored the water BG10, drew squiggly lines with BG13 and shaded with V12, B32 and YG11. Then I came back with the colorless blender to make the bubbles. I won’t list all the colors for the fish and seaweed. I took creative liberties in coloring them in an attempt to stylize the look instead of making it realistic. Lastly, I finally over came my fear of the Copic air brush system I’ve had for about nine months. You can’t see it but I airbrushed around the illustration with pink and orange. What fun!

I can’t do an illustration of one daughter and not the other as well. I’m not as happy with how this one turned out. I think it is a little harder for a beginner like me to tackle a toddler’s face. It is a little easier when the facial features are more defined.

This is little Raeleigh, she was just over three years old when the picture was taken earlier this year. I scrapped a photo taken the same day, so you can see how her face *really* looks. The photos of her sister showed some sky, but Raeleighs didn’t. I wanted them to match, so I started by compositing a background for Raeleigh’s picture with backgrounds from Danielle’s pictures.

I am obviously not a trained artist. I did take all my college electives in graphic design, but it was only about 17 hours with one illustration class. I think I had one drawing class in 9th grade and I took some water color classes post college. I miss doing water colors but I’m so slow at it that I fell in love with using the Copic markers to do a faster piece with a similar look.

So, I’m being a little brave showing my rudimentary art. I know those that stumble upon my blog because Google hits “Copic” will be disappointed!

I was reading on someone else’s blog that they were doing Artist Trading Card (ATC) size illustrations every day for practice. And, I thought working small might be a great way for me to get some practice in with not a lot of time invested. (I just don’t have the patience to invest a hundred or so hours in a water color right now! When I was doing that I didn’t have a husband or children!)

Plus, I’m using my birthday money to add to my 72 marker Copic collection and I need to justify it! I’ve been trying to find videos by good illustrators to help me decide which colors I need. Here is one that I found on the Copic blog that I love…Trev Murphy. After doing this little illustration it firmed up my decision that some of the money needs to go toward some colored multi-liners. I just need to decide what widths! I know I want several widths of Sepia and black and maybe a pretty small width of each of the other colors.

I want to be able to get better without getting too frustrated on getting the drawings right. So, I decided to try messing with one of my own photos until I had a pseudo “sketch” and printed it on some Bristol board. First I used the magic wand selection tool in Photoshop to select my daughter’s form. Then I copied it to a new document and applied Atomic Cupcake’s pencil sketch action. I also used this action to create the shifted outline. Then I turned the photo into gray scale, blew the highlights until only a few details of her face and form showed and applied a drawing filter in Photoshop. I just wanted it to be a guide so I lowered the opacity of this layer to about 10%. Here is my cheater method “sketch.”

This is my illustration. I used the only two multiliners I have to finish it off with a very rough outline. I like the look of it but it did convince me that I need some very fine sepia multiliners for this type of work.

Finally, this is the original photo. If you know of any other great Copic videos by amazing illustrators please leave links!

I could not really find the art I wanted so I drew my own vintage baby. Not perfect, but luckily it fits with the distress look I’m after.

I used the “wet paint” feature on my Photoshop brush when coloring the baby stamp. It is really neat how it mimics real life effects of “working wet”.

This is a continuation of my Song of Solomon Valentines digital stamp creations. There are three now, so I guess I can call it a “digital stamp set.” While I was drawing the Trapeze artists I was not sure what verse I would use, but when I read Song of Solomon 3:4 I knew it was meant to be!

I wanted the card to have an antiqued and distressed feel and chose a subdued and earthy palette of Copic markers. I made every attempt to make it as masculine as possible. After distressing the artwork with Tim Hotz’s “Old Paper” ink I inked the edge with “Walnut Stain” and then applied Walnut Stain Distress Stickles! Wow, what a fun way to add bling in a manly fashion!

Deciding on an embellishment to add some dimension was a little more challenging. My husband suggested that I restrain myself from the urge to add flowers when I was showing him some Grungeboard flowers. So I settled on Grungeboard initials. Cricut users can get the same effect by cutting letters out of chipboard. I painted the “n” and “h” with Antique Bronze Distress Crackle Paint. After it dried I stamped a zebra pattern on the letters with Fired Brick Distress Crackle paint. I like that it sort of looks like flames. The ampersand was painted with Tarnished Brass Distress Crackle Paint then I stamped it with a Cheetah pattern. After distressing the letters with Walnut Stain I applied Scattered Straw Distress Stickles to the ampersand.

I think the animal prints tied very nicely with the Circus themed illustration. I was striving for a sensually romantic feel in the illustration and was happy to achieve sort of an underlying “wild at heart” theme for the musclebound lover.

The striped paper is from Creative Memories 2007 Limited Edition Valentines kit. It has a beautiful distessed brown pallet accented by peach, mauve and white. Read on if you’d like to win this paper kit.

I’d like to see how some other people would use this digital stamp in a Valentines (or other romantic) card. So, I decided to host an impromptu single event design team. If you like this design and would like to be considered for participation then leave me a comment. I will pick up to 5 people, who respond here or to my message on the Cricut board, to be on my special Valentines event team.

You will have 5 days to design a card and post it on your blog with a link back to my site mentioning the contest.

TERMS:

1. You can use the digital stamp to make your own cards as long as it is not for commercial gain
2. And you cannot enter anything using my pre-release stamp design into another contest or publication.
3. You will not email it or make it otherwise electronically available to anyone else.
4. You must have a blog to participate.
5. If you post your card on a messageboard you must link back to my blog and mention the contest.
6. I will have the right to use your card design in the event I decide to promote my stamp commercially, linking to your blog as the card designer.

The chosen 5 will “win” my first pre-release stamp. And one of the 5 will be selected as the winner of my contest. The winner will receive the beautiful special edition Creative Memories Valentines 8?  kit and very cute set of acrylic valentines stamps. I will be getting my friends and family to give me input on who to choose.

PLUS, I will pick a winner from the volunteers to receive a second set of valentines stamps. So everyone who expresses interest has a chance to win a prize, even if you are not chosen for the design team.

Thanks to those who have already expressed interest, I’m hoping to get a little more awareness now that I’ve created my own version of the card. I plan to pick the team late Monday.

With Valentines day around the corner I’m kind of on a heart kick with one more idea sketched. Like the first one, this is inspired by a Song of Solomon verse. Knowing a little about the Bible’s “love chapter” I’m interpreting this verse as being about “getting in the mood.”   

My illustration goes along with the literal meaning of the verse with a heart sunset symbolising the passionate mood.

We just drove through the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas and I took several pictures of windmills, one of which I used for this sketch. My landscape is colored to look like the desert foothills as you enter New Mexico. But, it could just as easily be colored in greens with grassy terrain. I thought the red dirt look would lend itself well to a masculine card.

I distressed the torn edges of my artwork with “old paper” Distress Ink by Tim Holtz and the rest was distressed with “walnut stain.” Then I liberally spread his antique linen Distress Stickles around the edges. I think the distress stickles were a great choice for the masculine look I was after.

The flowers are cream Primas which I colored with Copics to match the illustration. I used Glossy Accents to adhere buttons to the center and set them off with a felt leaf.

Keep your eye out for the next installment of my valentines digital stamps, hopefully by the end of the weekend.

This is the first of (hopefully) a few digital stamps I’m making for Valentines day. As you may know, Song of Solomon is a love story and it is full of allegories. Think of this verse as a description of the passion between King Solomon and his new bride. I’ll let your imagination take it from there.

I added a little whimsy with the turtle shell in place of the wing and the fun girlish font.

It was stamped in Photoshop on a digital distressed white “paper” and then printed out on cardstock. I then colored it with Copics.

Next I cut a frame with my Cricut, using a design from Stretch Your Imagination. I used Coredinations cardstock, distressed it, then backed it with a Basic Grey distressed white (which matches the digital paper in the illustration.)

I would love to hear feedback on my first digital stamp design!

Thanks to Claudine Hellmuth for answering my question in the “Magical Firefly Collage” post and coming to see what I did w/ her product! Claudine is a woman after my own heart, an artsy techy gal with a knack for marketing! Check out this WSJ article where she is featured as a rising star in the world of artist entrepreneurs!

I was inspired to do this drawing by the intro to a kids movie we watched on Friday morning. It was a lazy day off and the kids were cuddled up with me in my bed. We watched parts of several movies so I don’t remember which one it was!

I cannot tell you how much fun I am having with my Copic markers!  I’m not an artist by training and have only dabbled in it. One class in Jr. High, one in high school, one in college, and three water color classes post college.  In three classes I painted one painting and started another. That gives you an idea of how slow I am!

What I’m loving about the Copics is how much faster I can work. There is a whole lot less color mixing and experimenting since what you see is what you get with markers. But the markers can look a whole lot like watercolor!

In this collage I used a new medium that was also a huge confidence booster. I can remember several drawings where I got “stuck” when it came to doing foliage or a mass of flowers. As a “beginner” artist the idea of drawing overlapping flowers has made me give up before finishing a concept. But wow! In comes Claudine Hellmuth’s BRILLIANT new medium to the rescue! I’m talking about Sticky Back Canvas. The girl’s dress, hair, feet, and the tulips were all cut by hand. I tried cutting the grass with the Cricut and so far my cuts have not worked because of the stretchiness of the material. I’m going to try adjusting the blade though before I give up.

It is a little hard to describe how this material handles. It feels kind of like a very tightly woven muslin. But it takes the ink more like a paper, and it is lighter weight than fabric would be. As you can see with the dress you can remove the paper backing, sort of drape it like fabric, then press down to adhere it to your surface and keep the folds in place.

The sticky backing is a perfect consistency. It is repositionable, yet once you want it to stay put it still has plenty of stickiness to adhere well. I even pulled up the edges the next day to add a little shadow under some flowers. My bet is though that you wouldn’t want to hang something like this in a bathroom as-is, I think moisture would eventually get to it. But, I think oftentimes collage artists cover things like this with Modge Podge or beeswax. I’m still learning and will report back on that!

The markers bleed ever so slightly on the Sticky Back Canvas. But, that was OK with the look that I was after here. It lended itself well to blending the colors!

I learned a lot doing this piece, I’m thrilled with parts of it, like the sky and the walkway. I was really just playing in a sketchbook with very light weight paper. If I’d realized how much I’d like the drawing I would have done it on a heavier weight. I very roughly sketched the drawing with a Copic wine colored multi-liner. The sketched girl was atrocious! But she got covered up with the Sticky Back Canvas and with the exception of her bad hand, big feet and the line coming off of her face you would never know! My 6 year old asked why her feet were so big, the answer is because I had so many scribbles to cover up, but I could have just said it is because she is going to be so tall when she grows up! I also don’t like my moon and will have to figure out better colors and technique if I do a moon again.

This is the first time I have EVER completely freehanded a drawing w/out a picture in front of me for inspiration. The exercise was a huge confidence booster and I’m ready to try again, just waiting for another moment of inspiration. And, I ran my first marker dry! So, if anyone ever wants to know whether you need to buy refills for your markers, I’d say go ahead and buy some W1. It is awesome for blending and shading. You can see that it dulled my fireflies just a little, and just right.

I used way too many colors to list here. But I did write them down, if you need to know what I used for a certain part of the drawing just leave a comment and I’ll email you.

The “woods” matting was done with Cricut Design Studio. I welded four trees together and cut a rectangle out of the middle. I used Coredinations card stock, sanding the trees to distress them before I took them off of the mat. The blue backing is also Coredinations paper and I wrinkled it a little before sanding so that the lighter blue core would show through and kind of look like clouds. It was a fun finishing touch for my illustration!

Copic has been around forever, the markers are a must have tool of the trade for artists and architects. There are over 300 colors in all, but they are usually sold in sets that build upon one another. They are a little pricey, so I’ve been coveting them for a couple of months. I had just bought one “skin colored” marker, until CHA!

I already have Bic markers and recently bought the Prismacolor set and my one Copic marker to work on my blog banner. (An artist friend, Alice Trainor, drew it and I colored it in.) I made one mark with the Prismacolor marker and after trying the lone Copic pen I boxed the Prismacolors right back up. Sorry, but there was just no comparison to the way the ink flowed and their brush tip. I decided I’d have to buy the Copic markers a few at a time on sale at Hobby Lobby.

Little did I know they’d be at CHA! They were right by the Ranger booth. My sister Lisa stumbled upon them and came to tell me about them. I was like, “uh-huh I know what they are, you mean you might want some too?! OK, let’s go look!!!!” I was like a kid in the candy store hoping sister-mom wanted some candy too because it would take both of us to make their minimum order.

Marianne Walker, a product specialist for Copic and author of the blog ilikemarkers.blogspot.com, put together some CHA specials. She hand selected the most popular colors and created some collections just for scrapbookers and card makers. First she created three mini-sets of 12 colors each, earth tones/pastels/primaries, which will be great for Christmas wish lists! For those that want to have a cost effective full set of colors, she created a set of 36 which will compete nicely against the Bic and Prismacolor marker sets. And for the color connoisseur, she created a larger set of 72.

This was new color bundling just for CHA, so you have not seen this particular selection of colors yet. If you want to put this on your Christmas list, and your store does not have them, let Lisa know at least by mid October because there is a 6 to 8 week lead time! I can’t wait to get mine!