A week or so ago I was wandering around the web looking at other peoples art, and I noticed a lot of talk about ATCs and ACEOs (Artist Trading Cards and Art Cards, Editions and Originals)

(  Essentially it goes like this: )



What do you all think?
Do you guys have any opinions or thoughts on the matter?
Anybody wanna trade?

Tags: art
Current Mood: curious

Pretty uneventful and boring week over all.

I played around with colour a little bit more, but not much else. I did spend some time researching water colour paints in preparation for my class tomorrow. I now have a pad of water colour paper, a set of brushes, a palette, and a set of water colour paste and a set of dry water colours.

Besides that, this week has been rather uneventful drawing wise. I'm still practicing, and drawing, but not much progress to speak of.

If you go to me deviant art page, or my flickr set you will notice that there are two days missing.

I've been having trouble getting inspired and deciding what to draw lately, and I have been very unhappy with the results when I force myself. So I decided that if I really just could not decide on a subject to draw that I shouldn't force myself. I don't want this to become something I dread.

That's not to say I haven't practiced drawing in some way on that day. On Thursday I practiced shading with a pencil and getting a wide variety of tones using different techniques, and I also practiced some hatching and cross hatching with a ball point pen to see how it acted compared to the ultra fine point sharpie I've been using. And yesterday I did a lot of doodling, mostly silly little cartoon birds that I just didn't feel like scanning in and posting. I'm working on being more free and spontaneous with my sketching, and right now, everything just looks too close to what other people do for me to feel comfortable posting it.

( without any further ado, the highlights: )

Tags: art
Current Mood: calm

Good progress this week.

I've been very happy with the majority of the drawings I've made this week, and I think am slowly making more progress.

One problem I am experiencing, though, is the lack of interesting things to draw.

I often put of my daily sketch until late in the evening because I just haven't been able to find something that inspires me.

The weather is getting nicer though, so maybe I'll be able to find more subjects outside.

I also signed up for a water colour class. It starts on the 18th and I've both excited and nervous.
I have this little voice in the back of my mind saying that I'm not a good enough artist to learn how to use water colours and I'm going to go into the class and be constantly frustrating to the teacher and her won't be able to teach me anything.

*sigh.

Bill tells me it won't be so, but it's difficult to get over the self doubt.
But I won't let it stop me from going. I will learn even if I need to take several classes before I'm good enough.

Blah. Ok, if you want to see everything I've done this week, you can check out my flickr set, or go to me deviant art page.
Now, ( on to the highlights! )

Tags: art
Current Mood: tired

Well, the first month of my draw every day resolution has passed with flying colours. (Literally!)

I have now worked my way though Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards and have read almost every book on drawing from my local library (don't be too impressed, it's a small library) over the past month my skills have improved greatly and I am incredibly happy with my progress. I have already met one of my main goals of being able to make embroidery patterns from my drawings. Which has opened a wide world of possibilities and excitement for me, my fingers are itching to embroider more of my own designs.

I still have a long way to go before I'm completely happy; I only just within the last week branched into colour, and only then very tentatively. Pen and ink and made occasional appearances, but that as well need quite a bit of work.

as a way to increase my rate of improvement I am opening up my drawings for constructive criticism and critique. Please, of you want, each week either go to my flicker set, or deviant art gallery and comment on my pictures, tell me what you like, what you don't like, and how you think I can improve. I have one restriction; please only critique the more recent pictures. I have already made great steps, and am all too well aware of the faults of my earlier work, and in most cases have gone paste that, and no longer need somebody else to tell me how to improve them.

Thank you again to everybody who has already begun helping me improves my skill, and thank you in advance to everybody else.

Now go out there, and be brutal, I need it!

( this week's highlights: )

Tags: art
Current Mood: chipper

Another rather slow week on the drawing front.

I tried out a little pen and ink, and rather liked it but I still need a lot of practice. I really wish I could go out and draw outside. Nothing is really appealing to me inside, and pictures just aren't as good as the real thing.

Did a little more pencil work, some good, some not quite so much.

The speed sketching is going ok, I did a lot of practice for that with the pen and ink (sketch in pencil before going over it in ink then adding details and shading) I had a lot of fun with the pen and ink, and want to do more, but like I said, I'm feeling a bit short on inspiration and drawable subjects.

I think I'm just feeling very listless over all. (S.A.D. rears its ugly head)

I signed up for a couple of classes at the library, one in water colour and another just a plain drawing course. These are free (besides materials) so I can take as many as I like.

I won't know if I can take the classes offered at the museum until I teach a class, the museum charges $30-$50 per class, and while there are several that I would really like to take I just can't afford it unless I am able to teach a class myself (I have a stranded color work class coming up on the 7th if anybody is interested! :D) and get paid.

Ah well.
As always, you can see everything I've done this week on my deviant art page or in my flickr sketching journal set

( this weeks highlights (if you can call them that): )

Tags: art
Current Mood: cold

This week has been rather lackadaisical when it comes to drawing. The second Betty Edwards book wasn't very helpful, and I realized (with Bill's help) that it was because the book was focused more on creative problem solving as a way to increase creativity, but despite my lack of self confidence, I'm already quite creative, and what I really need is more help with techniques.

So for most of this week I've been rather afloat without any idea as to where to go.
I know I need to work on my speed sketching, so I've taken a few tentative steps in that direction, but otherwise I haven't been doing much (although I have managed to draw something every single day so far)

Some techniques I would like to learn more of:

• hatching and cross hatching as a means of shading and adding tone


• speed sketching


• drawing from nature (this one is going to have to wait until spring, it's too frigging cold to leave the house)


• colour


• I have a set of chalk and a set of oil pastels; I want to learn how to use them.


• I LOOOVE the look and flexibility of watercolour, but suck at actually painting.


• charcoal


• pen and ink (this goes back a bit to the hatching and cross hatching, but also to getting the line right the first time, because you can't erase.)

Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how to proceed to learn these skills. Books, while inspiring, haven't been all that helpful of showing me exactly how things are done. I don't want to just jump in and learn later that I've been practicing everything the wrong way.

In the next couple of months, the Hand weaving museum is offering some drawing and painting courses, I think perhaps I will look into taking some.

As always, you can see everything I've done this week on my deviant art page or in my flickr sketching journal set

( Now, onto this week's highlights: )

Tags: art
Current Mood: chipper

I finished Drawing on the right side of the brain this week, and over all I'm pretty pleased with my progress. I took Drawing on the Artist within from the library and have started working my way through that.

Right now it's mostly abstract getting in touch with emotions and feelings through drawing stuff, which frankly just doesn't appeal to me, (although some of the ideas of symbolism could come in handy later)

I also took out the sierra clubs guide to sketching in nature which so far seems really neat, and that was one of my main goals. It really makes me wish the weather were warmer so that I could go hiking.

Bill let me loose in Michaels this week, and I bought myself a full set of sketching pencils, some ultra fine point sharpies, a kneedable eraser and some charcoal to play with.

The pencils make shading so much easier, but a regular old #2 has been my main go to so far, I will admit that I am in love with my kneedable eraser, it so totally rocks. I played around with the charcoal, and I like it, but I'm not very good with it, and its super messy, more practice is in order. I like the clean bold lines than pen and ink drawings have, so I also want to play with the a little bit, and I really need a lot of work on crosshatching for shading.

As always, you can see everything I've done this week on my deviant art page or in my flickr sketching journal set

( this weeks highlights: )

Tags: art
Current Mood: hungry

I took your advice and got drawing on the right side of the brain and am slowly working my way through it.

I'm finding it an amazingly helpful book, and am quite pleased with my progress so far.

A few caveats, a lot of her "right brain/left brain" talk is rather unnecessary, and actually mostly pseudoscience. One could easily have taken out the first two chapters and instead plugged in a few paragraphs on visual/special thinking vs. language. But hey, this was originally written in the 60's so what can you expect, and if you take all the pseudoscience stuff with a grain of salt, and pay attention to the lessons and visual/special reasoning, it’s a pretty damned good book to learn from.

Unless you already know a lot about drawing that is. The premise behind a lot of the exercises is to train you into looking at things differently, and as such they tend to have a lot of props and other helpers to get you going, which you practice with a lot, and then eventually drop as you get better, like training wheels on a kids bike. But if you already have a pretty good grasp of what she is trying to teach, the props and exercises can actually make it harder for you to do what already comes naturally.
I've only run into this problem twice so far, the first time was incredibly frustrating, and I was very upset, but once I realized why I was having difficulty, I was able to set aside the props and actually practice a more difficult form of what she was teaching, and further my skills.

Now, without further ado, what I have drawn this week can be found at my sketch journal flickr set or on my deviant art page

( A few of this week's highlights: )

Tags: art
Current Mood: chipper

I'm trying to teach myself to draw.

my long term goals are to be able to sketch the birds and squirrels i see out my window, to paint my adorable pets, and to make line drawings for my embroidery.
the other perks of being able to draw well are nice too.
but I'm a beginner, and learning mostly from library books and drawsketch.about.com and it's slow going.

drawing is the first art/craft I've come to that i have not been at least acceptable if not good at right away, and frankly I'm not used to it, and it's frustrating.

everything I've read says "practice, practice, practice!" and while I'm not used to have to really work at this kind of thing, I'm going to make a go at it.
as part of this I've decided to buy a sketchbook and starting on the first, draw something, anything, every single day. it's probably not going to be much at first, but we'll see. I'd ideally like to try something new at least once a month, (preferably week) and eventually work my way through pencil, charcoal, colored pencils/crayons, pen and ink, and watercolors. and i really would like my drawings to be more spontaneous, quick, and confident and less slow and labored (yet still good!)

the other part is you, deviant art and Flickr.
no matter how horrible or small my daily drawing journal entry may be, I am going to post it for the whole world to see, and hopefully offer up some encouragement and constructive criticism (and maybe a little obligational pressure to actually keep to my resolution.)

so wish me luck, and please be gentile!

(if yyou are on either deviant art or flickr, feel free to friend me or whatever.)

Tags: art, artsycraftsy, links
Current Mood: determined