Archive for the ‘Illustrations’ Category

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!