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

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