Saturday, January 26, 2013

Bird

Mixed media page. Acrylic paint, a button, feathers, white paper flowers, and a red jewel.

Squid Ship

A print from a few years ago. It's a squid in space. I wish I would have added more details, but then again I've only done two prints in my life so maybe I'll do better next time.

Door Page

My "door page" of a horse stable.

Dream Page

 Two pages had to be about my dreams so...

Friday, January 25, 2013

Watercolor

Just some watercolor paint on a picture in the book I used for my artist book.

Pages 3 and 4

Two pages of my artist book. Black and white acrylic paints.

Yellow

Pages 1 and 2 of my artist book. The assignment was to devote 2 pages to our favorite color, and find out some facts about it.

Artist Book

In one of my art classes, I had to take an old book that was going to be thrown out, and do projects in it. This is the cover. It's black and white acrylic paint.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Hair

If you'd like to see the original of
this, this is from my drawing
50 Factor.
Hair is one thing that many people are intimidated by, but that is super easy once you've really focussed on it for one or two drawings. The thing about hair is that unless you are looking at it up close, the individual hairs can't really be distinguished . So when drawing hair, I usually draw a light outline of the shape, and then start shading it in, depending on how light or dark the color is. Once it's shaded in to a relatively medium color, I start drawing darker streaks into it here and there to give it some shape and volume. Once I'm done with that, I get my kneaded eraser out and erase highlights in, which are usually just lighter shapes in the hair, not necessarily skinny streaks. Usually, the top of the head, around the roots will be lighter than the rest. When I'm done with these things, I usually smudge the different streaks together somewhat just to make it look more uniform. And that's hair. :)

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The Face


1. The Face: Many people complain about not being able to draw the human face realistically. I am occasionally one of those people. Although I consider my face drawings pretty good, that doesn't mean it's easy for me. It usually takes me a long time to get it right. The trick to drawing a face is to draw shapes of shadows, instead of drawing lines. Drawing very light lines in order to get the general shape of the features down is a good idea, but make sure you don't draw them too dark. Then, just focus on what the shadows actually look like and where they are. Once you have a light outline of where the eyes and eyebrows will go, start drawing the shadow that is underneath and on top of the eye. Don't worry about leaving the light spots light, since it'll be more efficient to erase them out once you're done shading. Remember that when drawing eyebrows and eyelashes, individual hairs are seldom defined. See how in my drawing below only a few of the tips of the eyelashes are defined? The rest should just be shaded dark. For eyebrows, color them in dark, and then use a kneaded eraser to erase out a few tiny little lines near the inner eyebrow. Don't forget that eyes are not all shaped the same! It's important to really study the small angles in individual eyes, because the shape of the eyes can change who your entire picture looks like.
Click image to view larger.
When drawing the nose, start by lightly drawing the curve in between the eyes up to the eyebrows, and the straighter part of the bridge just to get the length of the nose right. Then draw the bottom of the nose by drawing the middle part as a small u-shape whose ends extend into ovals for the nostrils. Then shade the shape of the shadow underneath to define the shape of the nose.

It is particularly important to use this shapes instead of lines strategy when drawing the mouth, because lips do not usually have a natural outline to them. They are just shapes whose outline is defined either by the very thin highlighted area around the top lip, or the dark shadow underneath the bottom lip.

Click image to view larger.
Then start by the corners of the eyes and continue shading down to define the cheek bones. Towards the beginning of your drawing, it will probably look a little funny, and you may think it could not possibly turn out well, but the further you get, the more it will come together, like so: :)

P.S. Remember that when drawing a face realistically, the lighting will not always allow every feature on the face to be defined perfectly. Like in my drawing, how the left side of the nose is not as defined as the right. But that's okay, because that's what makes it look more realistic.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Little Hailey Mae

This is a pencil drawing of my niece, Hailey, who passed away three years ago from Leukemia. This was a difficult drawing to start and to work on in general. It's impossible to draw her as good as she should be.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Muses in the Woods

My charcoal woods illusion picture on blue mi-teintes paper.

The finished version.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Stargate

My cattle marker and oil paint drawing of a stargate that I made for my boyfriend +Ian Jorgensen :)

Monday, January 7, 2013

Monster

Someone asked for a tattoo design of a plant monster that resembles a wolf. I came up with this pen drawing.

Jolteon

Just a pencil sketch of Jolteon.

Pet Elephant

This is an acrylic painting of the same wooden elephant statue that I drew in charcoal. I wanted the colors to really pop, and I think I was successful in that.

Grapes of Death

This very up close cropped drawing of a bunch of grapes was done for my Drawing 2 class last year. It measures at 30x40. It's on an art board instead of regular paper. The medium is cattle markers, otherwise known as paint sticks. These things are awesome. They're like gigantic oil based crayons, only messier.

Mi-Teintes

This black and white charcoal drawing was done for my Drawing 2 class last year. The paper is mi-teintes. This paper is great for charcoal drawings. The color of it acts as the middle value, so all you have to focus on are the shadows and highlights.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Elephant Detail

An up close picture of the chiaroscuro.

Elephant

My chiaroscuro charcoal drawing for my Drawing 2 class. The elephant and the fisherman are wooden sculptures that my aunt brought back for my dad from the peace corps. I set them up on the floor with a small lamp to the left of them for the lighting. First I covered the entire paper in black charcoal using the larger chalk-like sticks of charcoal and cotton swabs. Then I lightly drew the outline of the figures with a white charcoal pencil. Then I erased the rest with a kneaded eraser, a gum eraser, and a battery powered small eraser. Some of the very light highlights are done in white charcoal.

50 Factor

The first stage of my 50 factor drawing. 50 pounds lighter by being cut in half!
Got the legs filled in.
Basically finished.
Final Drawing.

Spacial Anomaly

This is a spacial anomaly drawing done in graphite. The assignment was to make a space that defies the laws of perspective.

Supplies


Here is a larger picture of the shallow space drawing.

Office

This is a close up of my shallow space drawing that I did as an assignment in my Drawing 2 college class. The assignment was to get a board of some sort (mine is cardboard), attach small objects to it however you want, and draw it to make it look like it's actually 3D. Personally, I think It turned out amazing. I surprised myself!

Smirk


Horse


Butterfly


Dragon


Fish


Roar

This is my favorite piece that I've ever done! Not because it's the best, but just because It's the first time I realized things turn out better when you just draw instead of worrying about every little detail.

Seeing Red

This is a really old colored pencil drawing. It's not very good compared to my face drawings now, but I was just trying out some new watercolor pencils.

Alice


Shadow Couple


Splatter


Drip


Lost


Hailey

I painted this watercolor sun set one or two days after my niece passed away from Leukemia three years ago. It's my favorite sun set picture, even though it always makes me a little sad when I look at it. I painted it to remind myself that my niece is in heaven, and that she's better off there than suffering in this world. Rest in peace little Hailey Mae.

Anger