Tag: pen and ink

Day 15: watercolor coloring book page?

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

So I thought today I’d start coming up with ideas for a watercolor coloring book, a real need in the crafters/amateur artists market as far as I can tell. I can only find one, put out by prima, that’s on real watercolor paper. It has a few nice designs, but is mostly short quotes, a few words with a little graphic and lots of space. I am thinking of some designs that might be more fun to paint.

Still, I started simple, with… yeah, a sketch with just words, (by the way LOOK AT THAT! I finally designed a font of my own instead of copying someone’s!) and then thought I’d go ahead and color it in, too, with the paints that arrived yesterday…Prima Watercolor Confections.(the Tropical set) I LOVE them. They are SO bold and beautiful. I’ve never used really high end watercolor paints, so don’t have much to compare with right now, but these are very fun for an average person to play with. (Prima, I love them so much, I should be your spokesperson!!! Just ask!)

I hope to figure out a way to design and publish a watercolor coloring book over the course of the year, so stay tuned with that. If you have suggestions or experience with a project like this PLEASE leave advice. My daughter suggested I need a drawing tablet for this project, so last night I unsuccessfully tried to load the wacom tablet my nephew had left here for me to play with a few years ago. It seems so much simpler to DRAW, on PAPER. Technology frightens me. So many options. But I’m figuring out the blog thing so I can figure out the tablet thing, too.

fullsizerender

Did I mention how much fun these paints are?????

Day 13: miscellaneous

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

I actually thought I’d do a quick nothing doodle today because I was going out… but I ended up trying a new brush pen and spent more time than I’d imagined. I like it more than the kuretake marker I’ve tried the past couple of days. It’s a thin plastic tube full of ink, with a brush tip… like if a soft bodied fountain pen and a paint brush had a baby. It’s probably for Japanese writing, actually. (the blue pen in the photo) Found out the hard way the ink stays wet a LONG time and still smears even after it is dry if you erase around it. So… I worked the smears into the design and liked the end result MORE than without the smears! Tried three other new pens as well, micron and comic… Fun doodles! More time than I meant to invest, and certainly doesn’t look like it. But day 13 is finished.

 

img_3164

Day 8: sketching?

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Today I decided to try the line drawings again. It’s the end of the Christmas season (Friday was Twelfth Night), so all the decorations must come down. I tried some of my Willow Tree nativity scene, one of my very favorite things. (I hate putting it away!) The creator has already done all of the art, I just have to copy it in pen. The first couple things I sketched in pencil first, thinking I could capture the shape better, but truthfully that made it more difficult and stilted. I think maybe looking less perfect but more instinctual might be better in some cases. Even if it isn’t quite “right.” That’s art, right??
img_3096

 

I got a little better as I practiced, and the last one is my favorite. Less is more. A lesson I’m seeing over and over, everywhere. I used a different pen as well, an inexpensive Japanese  kuretake brush pen. The others were Staedtler pigment liners. Great pens. But the brush pen brought a nice organic feel.

 

 

 

I tried the angel several times. (the truly ugly ones aren’t even here, even though I probably should post them all.) D0ing the pencil sketch helped me see her lines more clearly I think, but I really only liked my last attempt, although I like the line of the skirt on the one before that.

 

Day 6: Single Line Drawings

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , 2 Comments

Today I didn’t have time or inclination to get supplies out, so I decided to try some Single Line Drawings. As you can see from the featured image, some of them used more than a single line.

I started out by copying some I googled… some are famous pieces are some are things people have posted. Because I was trying to figure it out, and copy others, I really wasn’t as free with my pen as I should have been.

Turns out, the female form really is kind of fun to draw. I just copied these from actual “art”.

The only ones I did myself are the cats and the jingle bells. Still, I was happy with my results, and am going to try this again. I’m looking forward to it, actually!

 

What I learned:

  • move quickly for better results
  • see the shapes and lines, not the item
  • copying line placement doesn’t really work for this
  • line drawings aren’t scary at all. Even famous ones look like scribbles, and they are beautiful.