Drawing Blind Contoures

Whoa, another post? Oh yessss, read on ;)

I had to catch up for our draw along so it was blind contour drawing time. It's really interesting how this goes. My first giraffe contour had quite a resemblance to the original photo and then some of the next ones too but it looks like my brain can't concentrate for a very long time doing this. And this manifests in shorter or longer lines which make the end result really funny :)  I just couldn't pull off the whole giraffe but could do reasonably well with only the head. Maybe I would improve over time but it was really quite different from the first lesson when I was drawing cats where I could see the improvement from one cat to another.

Here is my first batch of drawings; top right was the first page I did (and some are rotated):

Then I decided to do some other animals and I couldn't believe how hard it was to draw a really simple bird outline. This is really an interesting exercise. It looks to me as if I captured the things I thought were the most obvious or interesting. Like if the communication between my brain and hand went along these lines: "Line going slightly to left, slow down a bit, going up now, oh my does this eye look gorgeously big, nevermind this now, adjust the line please, it's supposed to go slightly more to the right and o nooo, this is a wrong angle, it's going to fall off the paper you ....". Some features "pulled" me away - they deconcentrated me - so I had to work really hard on following the outline if I wanted to draw something resembling the photos.

But I do love the results. I think these would look great on a T-shirt and I think I'll do one. Just don't know what to choose. Flower? Animal? Suggestions are warmly welcomed :)

This is my final drawing:

It was done with 3 outlines above one another and you can see the fourth one on the top left side (I'm not sure it was meant to be done this way but that's how I went about it). I colored everything with water soluble pencils and then almost chickened out for using water over them (it's because the results are usually not what I want them to be). But I did use water and after everything dried out went over with some ordinary colored pencils for a few touch-ups. I think I should just stop using the water ones or at least for the time until I figure out how to use them properly.

And if you are wondering about the paper I'm using - it's from a cereal box because I decided to somehow recycle them and because I plan to bind them all in a book once I have all the lessons finished. It should look pretty awsome - having everything in one fat book :)

Hello :)

Feels like yesterday since my last post but it's been almost a month! Gosh. I really dislike time sneaking off like this.

I feel I should mention my little 5 day getaway at the beginning of this month. We visited Omiš for a climbing type of vacation. We were there along our colleagues from the climbing school and it was such a pleasant getaway. The weather was beautiful, summer was already there and everything was in bloom like in spring time. Quite interesting to have two seasons at the same time.

This photo is my favourite one - it captures the essence of this old little town. Hidden gardens amongst cute rock built houses.

This view was shot while in the middle of our climbing route. We had this beautiful valley below us all the time.

I think we shall return next year to enjoy this beautiful place once more as there are still loads of routes left to be explored. Not to mention the river or all those hills surrounding the place.

And these are the cards that surprised me in April and May. The left one is from Fern S. and the right one from Helen A. N.. Aren't they cool? It's sooooo nice to be surprised like this. Which is why I still feel awkward for not sending anything out to Esther yet. But I will Esther! I said I will and you shall be surprised too ;)

Cats In Bed - Finished

It took me a while to finish my "Cat" piece even though it probably looks like it was made in an hour. But there were lots of mistakes made and weirdly, almost all of them came out to be what I needed exactly. Even if they revealed their true mission in the very last steps.

It was quite painful to finish this as this theme was the reason why I put away this book for so long. I'm really glad I made it though because I think I got my answer out of it. 

Cats In Bed

With April 1st our »Draw Along« started and exercise 01 is all about cats. I still have time to finish this task but I wanted to show some progress shots. It was really interesting to observe how awkward I am with a pen. I can't draw with it directly as I can't erase my mistakes and that makes me nervous. I'm not sharing those mess ups with anybody but I am posting my pencil cats. I do know though, that with a lot of practice I could be using the pen directly too, but that's still far away :)

These were done after cat’s photos from the web and I can see the improvement from each cat to another already. Carla’s work in the book we are following (Drawing Lab For Mixed Media Artists) is all about having fun and experimenting with different materials. Bonus task from the assignment is choosing one of the drawn cats and rendering it in full - mixed media style.

I’ve never done any mixed media pieces before so this is very interesting for me. I’ve been observing them with great interest but now I’ll give them a try myself. I know I’ll never have enough resources on hand but I’ll do with what I have and I’ll just have to improvise. I hope having fun will creep in as I move along too ;)

At first I wanted to use the cat from the bag for my final piece but I think I’ll do something else. I still like the way it looks though. I colored it with water soluble pencil and colored pencils.

Eyelet Polka

I was working on my first embroidery thingie over this weekend. I followed Laura's tutorial and I must say I learned a lot. Here is my poor attempt at making the eyelets :)



I noticed I have problems with getting the needle where it's supposed to go, following the drawn line, pulling thread too much or too little and making things way too small (no idea why). But I'm quite satisfied with my results nevertheless. 

I have to go and buy some extremely sharp scissors - the tiny ones for cutting off excess fabric and such - and a smaller hoop. And then do another set of eyelets to see my improvement. Oh, and try them with other type of threads too :)

Lessons In Embroidery

Sometimes things fall together - they click and you find yourself in the middle of that "aahaaaa" moment because your busy brain just sorted out/ fetched from the past/ put together info you thought was forgotten from a long time ago. I love these moments. I really do. Because they make me think I am where I'm supposed to be and that feels amazing.

So, what does all of the above have to do with embroidery? It goes like this:

• back in August of 2006 I got 2 incredibly cute little handmade books from Laura whom I met over at deviantArt (one of the little books is made of paper and I use it for addresses of friends I meet on-line and the other little book has pages made of felt and is meant to house sewing needles). She now has her own site and creates beautiful and unique hand embroidered items.
• in August of 2008 my dear friend Katrina surprised me with a small papery suitcase filled with awsomness; lots and lots of different crafting materials which included embroidery threads (or are they called embroidery flosses? the later sounds rather yucky to me as I associate any type of floss with the dental one)
• I have no idea when I bought my embroidery hoop but I know it was in summer and judging from previous two lines probably in August :)
• last year I became really good friends with Toi who not only is a brilliant illustrator and photographer, she also uses embroidery to create her amazing "illustration pieces" (remember Mrs. Fox I made after one of her embroideries?)
• this month Laura decided to start with a series of mini tutorials for which she will prepare all the photos and instructions and they are about.... embroidering of course!

In my mind, this all means it is finally the time for me to give embroidery a proper try. Cool huh? :)



Here are my gathered supplies and you can see all the things I mentioned above. Aren't those little books adorable? The one with a bee will house the needles.

Being Busy

A big sunshiny hello! :)  (finally some sun amongst all that snow)

I've been a bit quiet lately so just in case any of you started wondering what happened to me I am here to assure you I'm doing perfectly well (knocking on wood). I've been busy with all sorts of things; first I kicked my self somewhere and decided to tidy up my desk a bit (the one I usually take photos of my WIP projects on).

Tidying it just wouldn't be enough so I opted for the "wall solution" - meaning getting a rail and containers to move my pencils and stuff there. After one quick Ikea visit (is that even possible? :)) there were 3 white Bygel containers and the rail waiting to be installed.



I knew I'll pretty them up a bit because they were just too plain for me (and beautiful Fintorp containers are a bit too much for my budget right now).

If you'd like to do something similar here are my progress shots and some guidance.



Take double sided tape and put a few strips on the container. Then start wrapping it up with a cord or yarn or whatever you'd like your container to wear in the end. Try to keep your thread as close to each-other as possible - I didn't and you can see how it looks (you can see glue strips between the cords).



Here is how they looked like all wrapped around. Notice how translucency of the containers messes everything up? Well, if you do this on a non translucent material the container looks gorgeous at this step. But if this happens, you need to use some color. I colored everything with white acrylic - inside and outside - to remove the see-through mess.



And voila, much much better after all is clear and white :)


I wanted to add some colors to the containers maybe even do some napkin decoupage on them but I just didn't have enough time so they shall stay like this for a while. I also plan on doing a little shelf to put above them but that will go on my to-do list as well.

I know there are still things on the desk but at least I can work on bigger scale papers now. 


The second thing that is keeping me busy is helping my friends to put up web page for their climbing holds. Photographing all of the holds took a whole day and now I need to process and pretty all of those photos up. I tried to work on my web page as well but it's so much easier to help others that it's going back on my to-do list for the time being :)


I'd also like to invite you to join us in a group I created on FB for drawing along the book called "Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists". I've had this book for so long and completed none of the assignments from it that I needed to take some serious action. We shall take 2 weeks for each assignment starting on April the 1st.

I have one more thing to tell you but I'll write a new post just for that :D  As soon as possible of course.

I wish you a bright and happy day!