Category:

A new book

11/26/2012

I wanted to show you a new book I got to work in along with Carla's book.

It was written by Quentin Blake and John Cassidy. Blake is one of my all time favorite illustrators (I've mentioned him several times).

I believe it was a book written for children, but I'm going to use it anyway!

Sometimes kid books have more to say than ones for grown-ups (though that is what is perfect about Carla's latest book because it is for adults and kids -- anyone!)

My computer isn't working right or I'd give you a link to Carla's website and to Quentin's. The picture is a link to Amazon for that book -- though it is out of print (but there are still copies around).

I'll let you know how it goes!

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Yowza -- A new Stage begins!

11/19/2012

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I'm so excited. This morning I have been doing so quick sketches for fun and they were fun. They made me laugh! And you know what -- if no one else likes them it doesn't matter because I do. I am enjoying the process of sketching. It is a new thing. Sketching just for the fun of sketching!

If I never make my elusive goal, so what.

I have something else to share then I'm going to share two sketches I did this morning that make laugh. Here's what I want to share: I don't care about making money. There are so many schemes and also well-meaning programs online that tell you how to make money with your blogs or whatnot....I don't want to waste my time seeking out these business things. We only have so much time each day. I want to spend it on things that make me feel alive -- caring for my family, caring for others, ministering to people, showing them the Divine Love that is there for all of us; creating - -painting, drawing, writing....and yes, I do need to clean some too.I had a dream someone came into my house to buy it and it was a wreck...an absolute mess (the kind where wild animals had been living in my house for a long time). That is one of my weaknesses -- my insecurity about my housekeeping.

Here's my two sketches:

The part I love is the picture in the bottom left -- me dancing with a headache. It is funny....to me anyway.

Feel free to click on the picture. It will get bigger. You can then see all the lovely things I drew.....

These are my two witches. I made them from drawing scriggly lines on the page -- the pen I am using bleeds through the page. Instead of getting irritated about it I am using it to help my creativity.....I got this idea from Carla Sonheim's book. She talks about taking pictures of sidewalk cracks, then using them to inspire ad drawing or painting. I haven't done that yet, but this bleeding ink page thing is working great for me.

I also thought about Roald Dahl's The Witches book. It is a funny book and he gives details on how to spot a wicked witch. They are all bald, they wear gloves; they have club feet so they are always wearing high heels to hide this. And the gloves are to disguise their clawed hands. And they wear wigs too to disguise their bald heads. I think I'll make my own list for a new book....we'll see. Maybe this picture will be my inspiration.

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Sketching

11/12/2012

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I've just been doing a lot of sketching these last few days. I've used a few of Carla Sonheim's lessons in her 52 lessons book.

The sketch on the right was kind of my own version. I have been using a kind of pen that bleeds through in the notebook I'm using so I use the backside and trace some of the lines that bleed through and create something from my tracings. Mr. Camel Hybrid is my result. That is my daughter dancing on top of him. His name is Mr. Blue Face.

This page is from the other day.

I'm really enjoying sketching but it is getting me kind of bummed out. I know i am in a rush. Am I off on a silly tangent? What do you think? Do you see any style emerging from my stuff?

I went to Joan Aiken's website today. Joan is an author and an artist (though best known for her writing). I have just recently discovered her whimsical writings. I love them! But I read about her first book. She turned in her own drawings with them, and the drawings were seen as amaturish and wholly rejected. I thought, will that be me? I really don't know. I did find this weekend that I started a story after drawing a little person. This person is in the scribbles above. The skinny one with crazy colored hair is my Maggie. And I made a story fragment about her going to see her new next door neighbor who is a witch. She goes and asks for a fattening potion. She gets a growing potion instead....or maybe that was through mail-order. The witch came later.

Maybe this is the witch in this picture. I don't know. I drew her after reading a fairy tale that had an evil witch in it. The little girl is cute. The dots are bleeding through from the other side -- they belong to a snail with a flowery shell.

I don't really know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm in a waiting mode. While I spend a few minutes every day on sketching, I also am thinking about the BBC (the Blunt Bible Club), a once-a-week club for elementary students I'm beginning in December. And then I think about my lack of income -- my husband works so hard. I so wish my writing and such were bringing something in. I keep telling him that one day he'll be a kept man. He looks forward to that day!

But as I wrote that I remember the story of one of my favorite authors -- Dick King-Smith. You might know a couple of his books. They were made into movies: Babe and The Water Horse.

Mr King-Smith didn't become an author until he was in his sixties! That always gives me hope. Before that he was an unsuccessful farmer and a teacher (and a few other things that I can't remember). I linked his autobiography on his name. It is called Chewing the Cud.

So, there's hope for me.

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Ink Blot pictures

11/10/2012

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I don't have a picture to show you today -- I didn't have much time yesterday to devote to my illustrating. But what I did was one of the lessons in Carla's book about using ink and an dropper. I tore out a few pictures of people from an old magazine and then cut four small pieces of watercolor paper from my roll (I learned from Thursday they need to be flat so I ironed them rather than try to roll them backwards to get the curve out -- the iron worked great).

Then, I "painted" the picture of the person's face with the ink in contour-style. After the ink was on it I laid a paper napkin on the face and pressed down....Carla recommends toilet paper -- I see why now. The napkin put design impressions on the results....but that is okay.

Well, my results were okay. One of them was pretty good and after the ink dried I put a bit of color on it with a brush and paint.

What did I learn from this experiment? That when you draw with ink and dropper it works a whole lot more to remember "less is more." Where the ink was bunched up I just got big black blots on the page.

If you are trying to get an illustration style, I have found more and more that watching artists create on video is so helpful. I watched a long one yesterday about Roald Dahl Day. Quentin Blake was there drawing for kids. It was fun to watch. I'll put the link below if any of you want to watch it (again it is like 32 minutes long though).

I am trying not to get discouraged at this process. I am enjoying the drawing, but I sometimes question the time I am spending on this. Is it time well spent? Should I be just focusing on my writing? But as I write this I remember this is one of my dreams and it deserves time. No, it isn't making me money, but that really isn't a true test of what is important. Money is just a tool in this world. Unfortunately a lot of us equate something's success by the money it generates.....that isn't truth. That is just buying into the world's system.

If you too are drawing or if you are an illustrator already I'd love to hear from you. Jasmine Ray has emailed me a couple of times -- that is pure delight. Please check out her artwork. She has delightful watercolor paintings. And Carla Sonheim has also emailed me too. Check her blog out. She is having an internet tour through blogs promoting her new book The Art of Silliness. This is a pretty cool idea. Plus, if you follow her internet journey you get to see some great blog sites.

Have a great weekend. Thanks for visiting. Oh, the video! I forgot.

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Monsters, Toys and Doodles

11/8/2012

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I flipped through Carla's book and combined a few lessons. There is a lesson about drawing toys, another lesson about drawing made-up monsters; and another about doodles.

So this was my first page. Today I'm not feeling very hopeful but I'm learning about me and what I like and what I don't like to do. I want to enjoy this process.

My next monsters, doodles and toys. I guess there is a cat on the recliner too.

Can anyone guess what this toy is in the front? It has something to do with a movie.

My final doodles. I then decided to pick a few and draw them on watercolor paper and paint them....I also found out that the fine-point sharpies do not smear either with watercolors...so that is what I use all day today.

I liked Bird (that's what I named it). I think he is funny.
I gave him a human arm. My scans of the watercolors didn't do well -- realized it was because my paper wasn't flat.....oh well. Lesson learned.

I named these two Pete and Sylvia.

And this is The Thinker....again, those light spots are the folding of the paper -- make sure your paper is completely flat before you scan.

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Lesson 3 -- Pet pictures with charcoal

11/1/2012

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OK, I should have no problem with this one, at least for the subject. I have four cats and two dogs in the house!

All I can find are sleeping animals! Carla says even if they are sleeping, we still have to do each charcoal drawing quickly, like no more than a minute. This is Huckleberry the cat and Zeko the dog (both rescued animals).

These aren't the exact material lesson 3 asked for but they are close enough. I am not comfortable using charcoal at all! I love the idea of it, but actually using it rarely happens -- probably would have been better to use a charcoal pencil but didn't have one lying around.

OK. This is pathetic. My sleeping animals are just not something I capture movement wise. The cat in the corner is better than the dog, but if my dog Zeko was vain he'd say I made so fat! So, I'm going to look for another subject to test my skills on.

Here's my kitten Killer. I had to wake her up too and then she just posed! She moved her head a bit because a fly was bugging her, but she seemed to know I was drawing her and wanted to "help" me out -- though this assignment does better with moving animals! So, I'll try (of course now she is trying to get up on my keyboard).

Here they are. I don't know if I was successful or not.

Here's my favorite (though the face on the right is not good though I learned something about a cat's mouth).

What did I learn from this assignment?

1.That animals don't always cooperate.

2. That it is good to use materials I don't normally use and that I'm not comfortable with.

3. That drawing moving animals in my house should happen at night or early morning when they all are running around!
Today' assignment was short (and Killer is now sitting on my lap along with this laptop). I feel a bit cheated, but maybe I'll take time to do a bit more. Moving the pencil or whatever you're drawing with quickly without self-criticism is key to drawing well I think.....

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Lesson 1, Part 2

10/30/2012

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The second part of lesson 1 is to finish one or two of the cats I drew yesterday. One of the ideas Carla mentions is to paint them with acrylic on canvas. I didn't want to do this because it is exactly what I've been doing for too long. My favorite thing is to use boxed canvases with glue and acrylic paint.

I had to do something new.

I went into my bedroom and found this piece of canvas drop cloth. Yes, it is canvas but a totally different kind! And so I cut a piece of it (I tried to rip it first but that didn't work well).

So,here's the piece of canvas. I decided to try and use watercolors on this drop cloth.

Here's what I chose to use: watercolors from Walmart, water, brushes and my handy yogurt lid for a disposable palette. Those circle things I didn't use so I won't mention them again. If you look you can see the two cats I chose. I drew them on the canvas with ballpoint pen. I asked my husband to buy me a fine-point black sharpie for later assignments.

I also added some flowers in the middle of the cats for the left one to give to the right one.

This is a real fuzzy picture but I'm including it anyway. I messed up. I added black to outline the girl cat's mouth and it got away from me.

I fixed it by painting over it with white and red....it takes a while for this canvas to dry so I had to make sure things were really dry before doing a next step.

I am almost finished. I am liking the cats but I have no idea what to do with the background. Not sure about the flowers.

All the extra stuff takes away from the two cats. I don't like the words or the flowers at all. I do like the cats though.

Cat One. The color is brighter in person.

Second Cat. She is cute...

So I cut them out and threw the rest away. Not sure what I will do with them yet. Maybe I'll make them into bookmarks.

I am concerned that this is the second cat that I've made that has a big red nose! I will continue to try and try new techniques. Lesson Two I will do tomorrow. It is a blind contour lesson.

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Lesson 1, Part 1

10/29/2012

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Today I began Lesson 1 in Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists book. It is drawing cats in bed.

I originally thought I would get in my bed, but I made a makeshift bed beside my 13 year old son who stays home with me. I put the book and the materials needed on the pillow. It required a fine point sharpie but I used a black pen instead since I could find a fine-point sharpie (They seem to disappear really quick in my house).

The assignment is to quickly draw 30 cats. This is what I did.

Page 1 of 3. The paper I used was a piece of white card stock. cat in the top left corner I tried drawing over in a fat sharpie to make them darker for the pictures but it didn't work out well. So, I left the others as they are.

I like a couple of the cats on this page.

Page 2 of 3.

My favorite cat on this page is the on in the bottom right corner.

My third sheet.

I especially like the cat with chicken legs. But the very bottom one is interesting too. I drew part of that one with my eyes shut because I was having trouble getting variety.

The next part of this assignment is to develop one of the cats into a more complete picture.

I don't have time at the moment. This will have to wait until tomorrow. I have loads of laundry to fold, dishes to wash and a 13 year old son who needs changing, feeding and placed in his stander.
Do any of the cats I drew speak to you? I'd love to hear any thoughts.

I'm not a full-fledged professional illustrator but I am again on my way!

And just for good measure here is a picture of my favorite coffee cup. It is usually filled with hot very black coffee (Seattle's Best #5 is my favorite).

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Got The Book

10/27/2012

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My book came yesterday! And I am so excited to begin it. I read the introductory pages while doing dishes and cooking biscuits and gravy (I was going to show a picture of my early morning self holding the book but the computer wouldn't cooperate.)

I want to start it now but I am going to do my illustration assignments only Monday thru Friday since my family is around all weekend and they need my attention.

The first assignment we are told to get back in bed and draw 30 cats! It sounds like the perfect excuse for me to then take a nap afterwards so I believe I shall save this for late Monday morning when I am getting a bit tired.

I want to tell you a quick story of how I got the book. It came via Fed Ex last night a out 5:30 p.m. I am a prime member on Amazon.com and get my stuff from them (if it ships from Amazon) in two days.

Well, my husband was already home. He has grown to tolerate my love of books but I definitely don't buy all the books I want, and when one comes and he is around I feel kind of sheepish.

He goes to the Fed Ex guy, takes the package, sees it is from Amazon and says, "Hmmm, I wonder what this is?" and then gives me one of those looks.

Oh well. I am not into clothes or jewels or really anything but books.

So, my progress continues in my mind. I am not going to be drawing this weekend but I'm thinking about it, simmering around in there. And I even caught myself this morning saying, "I am an illustrator."

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My First Blob Creature

10/26/2012

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I did it. And you all helped!

I was talking last night at the writers group how ridiculous it was for me to set up this website, but you know what -- if I fail as an illustrator so what. I at least tried.

But I don't plan on failing.

And this keeps me accountable.

And guess what -- my made my very first creature out of a blob via instructions I got from Carla Sonheim's website.

I took photos so see below my process and the finished product. I ended up using too much pen but overall I think Red Nose is kind of cute (that's the cat's name). I enjoyed the process. Last night all I could think of was drawing my first blobs today.

So here are the pictures:

These are the blobs I ended up drawing. They were originally in pencil, but you couldn't see them in the photo so I went over them with a black sharpie. Incidentally I got all of them in my living room!

Here are the materials I gathered: a roll of watercolor paper I had bought months ago for a friend's project. Watercolors (and I mainly used the kind kids often have on hand -- I wanted to see if I could use cheap stuff to do the work). Pens, a #2 pencil, a sharpener, paintbrushes, index cards -- those are what I drew the blobs on.

I went with this blob. I copied it in pencil onto the paper. Then I went over it with green watercolor.

I turned the picture to the left and ended up using that nose looking thing for a tail. At this point I did a couple of layers of green and pink on the outline.

I added pencil for shading and hair. I also filled in the eyes a bit. I am really liking him at this stage. I add a moon and a window because the light needs to come from somewhere.

Here is the finished creature. I don't like his back left and I think I got too much pen on him but overall I like him. And I absolutely love him as being my very first blob project and the first step as an illustrator. Would love to do another but have to do some writing.

One last photo -- old yogurt lids or ice cream lids make great palettes. You can just throw them away when you're done. Also if you are teaching a bunch of kids they each can have their own.

So, that is it for Jane's illustrating today. How's your dream coming? Pursue it. Don't wait.

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Jane's Stuff

A new book

Yowza -- A new Stage begins!

Sketching

Ink Blot pictures

Monsters, Toys and Doodles

Lesson 3 -- Pet pictures with charcoal

Lesson 1, Part 2

Lesson 1, Part 1

Got The Book

My First Blob Creature

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