How I Drew This. #1 in a new series.

So maybe it was last weekend…I was sitting on my butt couch not feeling like I wanted to do much of anything. Not that unusual, I suppose. Except for the fact that I have really made myself some goals regarding my art, and one of my goals for that weekend was to create (and essentially finish) something new.

There was no specific topic in mind, nor any real goal to use a particular medium.

I’ve been trying to use my drawing skills again. I know I can draw, but I’ve been a little rusty at creating in the style that I like to draw in. I am more of a realistic artist, I guess you could say. I can veer toward abstract, and slightly into a more expressionistic style, but generally, realism is where it’s at for me. When I do tend to veer off that way, you can still tell that I’ve gotten my inspiration from what’s around me.

So, I’ve taken to storing my sketchbook and a pencil and eraser under the coffee table in my living room. It’s possible that it is being stored there because I was too lazy to take it to the basement where the rest of my art stuff is located. (Okay, MORE than possible). Anyway, the coffee table happens to be right in front of the couch I was relaxing on. So, as I’m sitting there, feeling lazy, I see it. And start feeling guilty. Because, you see, I’ve made these goals for myself…no one else even knows about them…so if I don’t follow through, the only person that really knows is me. That’s enough to make me feel guilty.  This is something that I really want to keep doing.

My main goal is to make some money off of my art in my Etsy shop. (Link here). I have a good start, no sales yet though, but I need more stuff in the shop. My goal is 40 listings. Well, to have that many pieces of art listed, I need to create that many pieces of art. Right? Now, I know that I have plenty of art laying around my “studio”, but not all of that is a) anything I want to part with, b) anything I think worthy of selling, or c) anything that reflects my current abilities. Make sense? So, creating more it is.

I also really want to get into the digital prints thing. I have a program that I’ve been using to manipulate my original drawings to make them more  “digital friendly”. I just made that up. But seriously, I have been doing the original drawing, scanning it into this program, and learning how to make it digital print friendly. So far so good. BUT. !!! By doing all that, I have created that much more work for myself. Now, not only do I need to create the art piece, but now I have to scan it, vector it, save it in different formats, watermark it so I can post it on my site, and save all those different variations of ONE DRAWING. Never mind the fact that I am doing all of this to a black and white drawing, which I then want to restart the whole process and add color to. I want to have both a black and white option AND a colored option. So yeah…I just gave myself that much more work. I guess it’s not  work in the sense that it’s something I enjoy, and that I’m excited about learning and all that good stuff. It has made the process that much more time consuming though.

So I wanted to show my process of creating this drawing. It is obviously not finished to the extent that I explained in the above paragraph, but the scanning, etc., is the next step in my process.

 

I had no good ideas that day. I’m not even sure where/how/why I came up with this one, but I’m rather pleased with it. I’m trying to teach my son some of my knowledge, since I have had quite a decent amount of formal art training. One of the things I keep telling him, is that when I was never sure what to draw, I would draw my hand in various positions. Truly, it’s great practice. Especially for me, I have always been partial to drawing faces and hands and my most favorite class I ever took was Figure Drawing. So, I decided to do what I tell him that he should do, and draw my hand. Well, I decide I want to make it hold something…maybe a flower.

So I start out like this. (Okay, this is a picture I took just now. I didn’t take a picture and draw from it. I had my hand out in front of me and just drew it while only being able to use my right hand).

So from that, I got to this.

Looking pretty good. Before I decide to continue with this drawing, I go over it in with my Micron pens. Have I mentioned that I recently rediscovered these? I think I did in my last post about all the art supplies that I love. Anyway, they are awesome little pens. So this is how it looked after the ink.

After the ink dries, I go over it all with one of those lovely squishy gray erasers. I don’t know the proper name for them, but they are the best. Squishy and mold-able. So now I’ve decided that I want to put a flower in place of that pen I’m holding. I don’t happen to have an actual flower handy. Google images comes to my rescue. Do my fellow artists use Google images like I do? It’s so handy. Back a way, way, way, long time ago, I used to go to the kids section of the public library and use all the picture books as reference images. The internet has made everything so much easier, don’t you think??? So, ok, this is the image that I decide on. (Screen shots are also the best!)

I just proceed to draw the flower where I would like it to be, as if my hand is holding it. This is where I’m at now in the process.

That picture is a little more blurry than I intended, but you get the idea. Now, all there is to do, is go over it all with my Microns, and erase my pencil lines and end up with this!

I just realized that I haven’t signed it!

Now, what I want to do is scan it into my program and get all that nonsense done, then add a little color to it. I’m not sure if I want to make a bunch with different colored flowers, or just one copy with color. I guess I’ll decide when I get there.

Thanks for reading, and as always please feel free to comment and share!