End of April

Hello! How are things going? I've been insanely busy with Sketchbook Skool and The 100 day project so I have lots to show you. A few weeks ago I completed my final assignment in SBS for Seeing and decided to enrol in the next class Exploring, which started this past week. So, without further ado here's what I've been up to since you heard from me last:

Sketchbook Skool - Seeing:

Completely done in pen, we were asked to draw one of our collections of stuff.

A neighbours house on my street.

Sketchbook Skool - Exploring:

The first week we were asked to draw something in pen using hatching to show the form. I also learned that stippling could be used on the pattern and I really liked that effect.

For fun, I decided to try adding watercolour to the cup so you could see the pattern better. Loved it!

 The 100 day Project:

The last image filled my sketchbook, so I had to make a new one! This one is approximately 4"x4" and made up of 100lb Bristol paper.

Personal Projects:

A little something for Earth Day.

Just some chickadee sketches.

This is just a quick summary of what I drew the past while. If you'd like to see more my links to my social media sites are below. If you'd like to learn more about Sketchbook Skool and any of the classes they offer, click here.

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Beginning of April

Hey you! How are you doing? Were you good to yourself the past two weeks? I admit that I was in an  on-again, off-again relationship with myself. I think all the weather changes affect not only my mood, but also my patience, and the past week or so have been pretty turbulent. That being said, surprisingly I had a pretty big turnout of creative projects. Let's just dive right in, shall we:

Sketchbook Skool

Week 3 of Sketchbook Skool was with Brenda Swenson, an amazing watercolorist (seriously, Google her!) who focused on teaching us how to see using continuous line, contour, and blind contour, and playing with non-waterproof pens with watercolour paints. Here's what I managed:

For week 4 we worked with Cathy Johnson, a noted sketch booker, who taught us to get out into the great outdoors and draw some of the living things we see, as well as how to use watercolour to portray distance in a landscape. It's been pretty windy and cold here in Ontario the past while so it was tricky to do her class fully, but I did my best:

Another thing that Cathy is noted for is making her own sketchbooks. She has a whole bunch of Youtube videos with instructions for drawing, sketching, painting, and making sketchbooks! I followed one of her instructions to create my own accordion-style sketchbook! It's just a wee thing but I plan to use it for my 100 day project!

Personal Projects

Aside from my homework, I also managed to find time to do a few other creative projects:

This sleeping kitty was made using Adobe Illustrator and following a tutorial on Envato Tuts+.

I painted this pear in watercolour using a new kind of paper called Terraskin which is made from limestone and resin! I followed Anna Mason's free class on her website to paint this!

My Grandmother's birthday happened this past week and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to turn out some illustrated, lettered envelope work. I used some metallic watercolour paint for the gold leaves.

Shortly after making the envelope I decided to make this beauty. I had the words kicking around in my head for a few days and decided to get them on paper so I could see them, instead of hear them.

And that's about it for the past two weeks. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I am taking part in #the100dayproject by Elleluna this year! I am very excited about it. It starts on April 4 (today for me) and if you stay tuned you'll be seeing a lot of faces illustrated by yours truly. Likely most of the faces will be mine, but the point of it is to try out different techniques and media to see what I like to do best with faces and how I'd like to portray people in my own style (I just happen to be a handy model to work with). 

If you're on instagram at all, follow my tag #100daysoffacesmw to see what I'm doing!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Mid March: Happy Spring!

Hello again! How are you? How have the last few weeks been treating you? Has the weather been pleasant where you are? Here, the weather's been...interesting. There's been so much fluctuation our poor barometer doesn't know which way it's going from one hour to the next! But happily we are finally into Spring, and I hear that it will be warmer than usual!

This post is going to be a bit on the short side. Last week my girls were home for March Break so I didn't get too much done on the creative front. I did keep up with my Sketchbook Skool class, Seeing, so I have a bunch of pictures to show off, but I only managed to half finish the vector art tutorial I was doing, I hope to get it done this week.

Here's what I did in week 1 of Seeing taught by Danny Gregory: 

Our first assignment, was to draw all the nooks and crannies you see in a piece of toast. No pre-drawing, take it slow and steady and try to draw as much as you can. I used a piece of bread from a Half-and-half loaf of whole wheat bread we made in our bread machine. Two things to say about this exercise, one, pick a piece of bread with fewer and larger holes, and two, see number one, it's that important to your sanity!

The second assignment was to use a sort of Fast and Slow technique that Danny's very fond of. You pick an object, it can be anything really, he chose a bicycle, and start by painting in an outline of the shape with a medium-large brush. Okay, I didn't do too well with that part, but I wanted to give the whole shape of the object. You do this part quickly, under a minute. Then, with a pen or marker, after the paint has dried, you slowly draw the object, working from the outside-in, adding as much detail as you can.

Week 2 was a different beast entirely, self-portraits taught by Koosje Koene:

I don't really have anything to add to these self-portraits aside from the written text with each drawing, I hope you can read them okay. We were assigned to do 7 self-portraits in the week, some from a mirror, some from a photo, and 1 from your memory/imagination. I really like seeing my progress here from the first to the last! Can't say that any of these sketches look like me, but I already knew how difficult that would be with a quick sketch, so mainly I focused on the technique and I am not disappointed! Besides, in many of these I look much younger and who can complain about that?!

I have to say that between these first two weeks my mind has been blown away! Already I find that I'm braver and more confident in trying new things and experimenting (which was part of the main reason I signed up for the course). I'm less hesitant to try something out for fun, there's way less stress to get it right the first time! I got to try out some techniques that I've always wanted to do, but was never brave enough to try. Also, after the self-portraits, I find that I'm less critical of myself in my physical appearance, which is an interesting side-affect.

Well, that's all I have for you for now. I can't wait to see what the next two weeks will bring with my course. I'm also going to get see if I can't get more exercise into my day, so far I've not been succeeding there. But I have at least been keeping up with my meditation, even during the March Break, and I'm happy with my results so far.

I hope the next few weeks are good to you and yours. Hopefully we'll have more sunshine and warmer weather!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Beginning of March (finally!) - Another Negative Painting Tutorial!

Hello my friend, and how are you doing this fine (though rainy) day? I hope that, like me, you are looking forward to the lengthening of days, the melting of snow, and the return of the birds that is all March! The weather here the last week or so has been a lot milder than expected and that was a refreshing change from the miserable cold we've been experiencing the past month (there's even been sunshine!).

All that changed with a brief spell of snow and winter cold this past weekend, just in time for my eldest's first winter camping experience with her Girl Guide group. As you can imagine I spent the weekend steeped in simmering anxiety - she's never been away for so long or so far before, and in the cold and snow no less - but my fears were completely unfounded as she returned home with all the bits she left with (minus one hat) and had an absolute blast.

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a painting that was inspired by a photo taken by Jonathan Tucker for a contest in UpHere magazine. His picture was of an ice cavern inside an iceberg. When I saw it in the magazine, even with the very small image provided, I was blown away with the depth of the blues and the way the light glowed all around. I absolutely had to try painting it! My intention was not to perfectly replicate Jonathan's photo, but to see if I could recreate the feeling his photo inspired in me, these are the steps I took:

First I started with thumbnail sketches. I wanted to make sure that specific pieces were inside the frame. I also added tone with shading so I could lead the eye where I wanted it to be in the image.

I chose my colours carefully. These were blues, greens and purples that, to me, were more jewel-like and had a range of intensity. I used Winsor & Newton's Winsor blue, Winsor green, and Indigo plus DaVinci's Prussian blue, Violet, and Phthalo green. I start with a wet-in-wet wash and vaguely layout the shapes and tones where they will be needed.

Working with the colours I start working wet-on-dry in the negative, that is on the shadows of the objects, to better define them. I follow both my thumbnail sketch and the photo reference.

I keep working, mostly wet-on-dry with some dry brushing, with this first layer of colour, always in the negative, all around the painting.

I realize some texture might help to show the rocky nature of the bottom-centre section and add some salt. I've also stared a second layer of wet-on-dry to darken up the front areas.

Continuing with wet-on-dry and dry brush layering in the negative parts of the painting to further enhance the objects or define their characters. This is the final piece and I'm pleased with how it's turned out. I think I managed to convey depth while also keeping the overall luminosity of the ice and snow. 

I should probably have a name for this painting but at the moment all I can think of is "Blue" which doesn't seem descriptive enough. Oh well. On several occasions I was very nervous working on this piece. The beginning stages are easiest because you can change them as you go, but once you start cutting into a shape you are more-or-less committed so you better get it right the first time! It's really cool to see the differences when you compare the first wash with the final piece too!

As well as painting, I'm also still working on vector art tutorials in Adobe Illustrator. This one is by Nataliya Dolotko with EnvatoTuts+ and you can click here to see it. I've always wanted to make up a set like this and it was so much fun! It helps that the characters are cute too! I showed this to my eldest and she said "I like it. Are you going to do girls too?", ha ha, so now I guess I should look into that!

Anyway, to explain the set, yes I made up everything you see on the image, including the background, and then I put some pieces together to make the four boys you see here. I haven't selected my next tutorial just yet but it's likely going to be in the same style, can you blame me?

My version of the character set by Nataliya Dolotko.

This week I'm switching things up a bit by taking a class through Sketchbook Skool. If you haven't heard of it it's a teaching website for people (many of whom aren't trained artists) who want to learn to be more creative, learn to draw, try out different media, etc. It was founded (and is still run by) Danny Gregory, who has written a few books on the subject of introducing art to those afraid of doing it wrong or badly.

I read one of his books many years ago when my eldest was just starting to toddle. I hadn't drawn or done anything creative in years and his book really helped me to not only get back into it but to also be a little more confident in myself. Ultimately his book helped me to get here, so I'm really looking forward to taking this class! The course is Seeing and it runs for 6 weeks, so you can expect to see my progress as I go along.

And that's it for this post! I hope you have a great first few weeks in March. My mantra for the month is "simplify" and I will be doing my best to uncomplicate my life and thought processes, I think everyone will appreciate it!

Have a good one my friend!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Mid-February

Hello again! How are you doing? Have you managed to keep the winter blues away so far? February is probably the worst month for the blues for me and I've noticed that this year has been no exception. The last few weeks I've been struggling with motivation and feeling down, as I'm sure many others have too. We've finally seen some sun the last few days and that's definitely helped!

So... it's time to update you on my progress. The surprising thing for me is that there's been any progress at all with how I've been feeling lately, which is nice! I've been continuing my daily meditations as much as I can and I've added 30 min of cycling (indoors) every other day - time to think about shedding that extra winter weight! There hasn't been as much creative work as I would've liked, or that I even scheduled for, but there has been some movement.

I've also been thinking that while I have all this theoretical education concerning how to use programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, and how to use colour effectively, and how to combine fonts, I don't have a lot of practical experience. So in an effort to correct this, I started researching various tutorials on Illustrator and creating characters and shapes in vector. There are a lot of really good sites out there. I even managed to finish one and I have another planned for this week too!

Let's take a look at my work this past few weeks:

I started a new negative painting in water-colour. It's the same subject as my last one, with orange berries, but I made a colour change by swapping out the violet in the previous painting with phthalo blue. I'm trying to get a feeling of light in this one.

Here you get a better sense of the texture I added with alcohol and water drops when the paint was still wet in the first step. I've started cutting shapes into the piece.

Lots of shape work here. The leaves are coming along nicely I think, but I don't like the group of berries on the bottom-right corner, they look very forced. I'd also like to see more variation in terms of contrast in the whole piece.

The finished piece. I lightened up the edges of the bottom-right corner bunch of berries to send it to the back and be less prominent. I've also added more darks and lifted a few lights for better contrast and did a bit of positive painting to improve the colour of the fruit. I admit that I was very worried that this experiment would turn out anything I liked at several points in the process, and while I'm not sure I completely achieved what I set out to do, I'm still happy with how it turned out!

In the midst of all this painting, I got a card from my sister in the mail and for the first time ever, got the urge to doodle a sort of mandala-type drawing. I only did the flap because I thought that would be more interesting, plus I had to go do other things so couldn't work on it more. I like how "spring" it is!

I found a really sweet tutorial for this little fox done in Illustrator and I just had to try it out! The only trouble I had was with the background texture - I couldn't get the opacity to work the way the tutorial said, no matter what I tried. Still, he's awfully cute isn't he?!

So that's how the past few weeks have gone for me. By the way, if you're interested in trying out the little fox tutorial you can click here to go to it (a new window will open up). It is a beginner project and works well with the lower versions of CS. My next tutorial is on creating vector characters with swappable features. I'm really looking forward to it! I'm a bit stumped for my next painting, so I did a bunch of google searches to see what people have done with negative painting. I created a new board in Pinterest with a bunch of inspiration! Click here if you'd like to have a look.

And that's all for this post! February looks to be leaving like a lamb, so here's hoping March is beautiful! 

Have a good one my friend!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Beginning of February: Gosh it's cold!

Hello again! How did January treat you this year? I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but for me January was a blur! I'm really hoping that February settles down more and I'm taking steps to helping make that happen. This post has a lot of updates: new extra-curricular activities, a completed certificate, mental health, and of course paintings!

Free Time?

A lot of changes have happened this year already in my family, a lot of which you already know about, but my husband and I, in our infinite wisdom and vast storage of free time (wait, what?),  have decided to put our girls into Girl Guides this year. Oh man, what am I thinking?!

I'm actually really pleased with the group, my husband's family grew up with it and his mom is still very active, so there's a lot to say about it. And I'm sure my girls are going to get a lot out of it (and maybe even me too). But when I consider the time commitment for this thing - let's just say there's a great big red hand-print mark on my face from epic face-palm I self-delivered. However...I do think it will be an amazing adventure for the kids and as a mom I really want to give that to them, so...yeah.

Certificate Complete!

In other news! I completed my first Learning Path certificate through Lynda.com (woohoo!)! I just want to say for the record that the courses on Lynda.com are incredible. They took longer to complete than I expected but I was trying to get as much out of them as possible. If you are thinking of signing up for any reason, I recommend giving it a try for a month if you can, I don't think you'll regret it!

So, since I've completed that course-set I'm onto my next set which is all about logo design. I'm very excited about this! I hope to have this course done this week and if everything goes the way I'm thinking it will, then I will start applying for freelance work by mid-February! Very exciting!! Oh, if you have a need for a logo and you're on a tight budget, send me a message. This isn't my first course in logo design, I just want to be better at it.

Gaining Focus

Do you meditate at all? I've come to it off and on over the course of my life so far and I've always enjoyed it. I usually find that when I'm really stressed (when I need it most) is when it drops off my routine and then it takes awhile to get back to it. But now with smart phones and tablets having access to apps galore there's so many more options for guided meditations and just sound meditations!

Just last night I downloaded a meditation with Tibetan bowl chimes. I tried it out this morning and while it isn't perfect, I can't complain for the price (free) and I did feel much calmer and more focused afterward, which was the goal. I truly need the days to stop whooshing past me and I'm thinking that 5 min/day should definitely help!

Painting Practice

I want you to know that I haven't neglected my art at all during all this hurley-burley either. I've been practicing my negative painting as promised and I'm not too dis-satisfied with my results so far. I'm not sure if I will reach my goal of having one finished painting by March, but we'll see. I'm trying to be methodical about this learning because I really want to learn as much as I can about painting in this way. I'm drawn to the way it looks and feels and it's important to me to feel like I've mastered something for once!

Here's my progress so far:

After some online research of other artists and how they
approach negative painting in watercolour, this is what I did.

I wanted to play around with the idea a little so I tried
out this concept. Not entirely sure I pulled it off.

Then I went through my photos and found a tropical fruit tree that
looked promising so I setup a composition and tried out my
knowledge so far. This is a step or two beyond an
underpainting (with some detail starting to take shape).

And this is where I decided to stop for this experiment. I could
have gone further but I didn't want this to be a finished
piece, more of a lesson. I like a lot of what happened here though!

And this is what's on my desk right now. This is an underpainting, with
only a vague placement of colour to give some idea of where I
want to go with the piece. The subject is the same as above, but I
switched out the violet paint for blue and I'm adding more
textural effects with alcohol and water drops.

I'm not sure how this experiment will turn out, but that's part of the fun of it! After I posted my last piece there were a lot of requests for a video tutorial or some sort of demonstration - I'm not sure I'm ready for that just yet but I will keep the idea in mind for the future. For now I will make an effort to post pictures of each stage as I do it so you can get a better idea of what's happening.

And that's all for this post! Thank you for taking the time to sit with me. I hope your next few weeks go well. My birthday is this Friday so I have that to look forward to too!

Have a good one my friend!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me or working with me for graphic work, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

End of January: Progress isn't always pretty

Hello! Is it as gloomy where you are as it is here? So far, I have to say that the weather we've had this January has been less than optimal, we've had a lot of overcast sky, rain, and ice - not even good weather for winter activities! I'm feeling very starved for sunlight!

Temptations

So, we've made it to the last week of January for the year - how are you coming along with your resolutions? I'm still plugging away at mine and things still seem on track, even with the last minute changes from a few weeks ago. One of the things I learned last year was that being a full-time mom means that, at most, you can do part-time school/work and pretty much nothing else. You have to be extremely focused so you can get what you want/need done and not go insane!

The reason I bring this up is that my focus has been tested frequently the last few weeks with all the deals on online art classes and such (I had another one today!). They are so tempting!! But I'm winning so far by reminding myself of my goals for the year and determining whether the temptations will help me get there or will they distract me from them. It's a struggle though, I just don't have the time to do everything I want!

My first Certificate with Lynda

What have I managed to get accomplished the past few weeks? Well, I completed my first course (and received the certificate for it) on Lynda.com, which was a generalized introduction to Graphic Design. It was pretty awesome actually. It covered all the basics that I learned from my Certificate with Conestoga College, but in a more practical and focused way. I really felt confident in my skills and talent as a designer when the course was over. I still have to finish the final assignment and I plan to get that done today, then I hope to finish the remaining courses for the Graphic Design Learning Path before the month is over.

Negative Painting

On the creative side, I've been working through various practice pieces in negative painting in watercolour, with varying degrees of success. Negative painting is quite challenging and I admit to some struggle with it. The biggest challenge for me isn't in looking at the objects you wish to paint from a negative perspective (not that I'm perfect at that yet either), but in the glazing needed to create the layers that make negative painting so appealing! I either have too much water, too much paint, or the wrong colour. Still, this is all learning and I'm progressing through all the "ugly" creations, so I guess it's going well!

If you haven't seen my Facebook/Pinterest feed lately here's what I've managed to do so far:

I feel this is my best and was done following an example by Linda Kemp from her book "Watercolor: Painting Outside the Lines"

I thought I would try my own design based on violets. 

Um, yeah, there's so much wrong here, however I feel the layering idea is improving!

Obviously I need to do more research as to what makes a good negative painting and how to achieve that so that's my goal for the next few weeks. Hopefully you'll see more examples of practice pieces in my next post!

In the meantime I hope you have a great week in whatever way is most important to you. Don't forget to take time out for yourself because you are awesome!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)