Spooooktober! Creepy Cabin!

 

Pub Draw and Creative Goals

For a while now I've been listening/watching the livestream or podcast of Critical Role. It scratches a Dungeons and Dragons itch that I get now that our gaming group is gone, left either in Florida or Washington. IMO, it's better than some of the TV shows available nowadays.

They recently started a spinoff where an artist, Babs Tarr, teaches Marisha (one of the players and also a voice actress), how to draw. This was inspired by the plethora of fan art that gets shared with the Critical Role community but I think it's really a wonderful thing. Babs is super talented and she really breaks things down in a way that makes drawing characters extremely accessible.

As part of 2019 I made a committment to myself to engage in some form of creative endeavor once a month at a minimum, with once a week being my goal. Pub Draw will be live streamed once a week on Twitch @critrole so it's an easy way to meet my goal while following along to her instruction! I'm already super pleased with the one thing I've done. Take a look!

 I sketched this on watercolor paper and did some of the simple lines in a waterproof ink. I'm going to try and paint it later.

 One of the things she suggested to do was warming up with circles, just to get your hand feeling confident in moving the pencil around on the paper. I did a few of those too, especially during the downtime.

On this one you can see some other practice stuff I did after watching a video on SkillShare. That's also a good resource for classes in artistic and business endeavors. I accidentally paid for a year membership so now I'm determined to get my money's worth.

I'm also currently working on a gift for a Mom Friend (and using a skill share video to help me along). It will be a painting of Orchids. I started it and then Eric went and Marie Kondo'd the kitchen which immediately covered the dining room table in stuff. It's finally mostly cleared off so I'm going to get working more on this too.

Super super work in progress level, lol

World Watercolor Month and Poison Ivy

I've been doing a lot of posting over at the horse blog, but honestly not much has been going on other than normal life. I am battling a nasty spread of poison ivy which I acquired while trying to get yard work done on the farm. I'm on my second prescription of Prednisone and I'm pretty much slathering myself in numbing lotion 24/7.


Have some fun proression pics of this, from my trip to the ER last wednesday where I was having breathing difficulties to two days ago at my followup with my primary doctor. It's also all over my forearms and now on hte right side of my face as well as my left. Benadryl gets me through the night.

A Marriage of Science and Art Supplies

To start, I cannot say enough excellent things about Well Inked Box. They are a quarterly subscription box of cultivated art supplies. Each box has a theme and the most recent was Watercolors! One of the founders is in an online support group with me and it's awesome supporting women owned small businesses!  They are based in Canada and got their start through Kickstarter. They are totally passionate about writing and art supplies and really find some unique things to share in their box.

They do ship to the US and I find it's definitely worth the price. If you like what I show you here, you can use the code AMYM for 15% off! I don't get a kickback, but I like supporting my friends :)  

The box comes well packaged

As with most subscription boxes, you get a list and description of the sample that are included with each shipment

Watercolor Samples.

Here's a video guide to what was in my box

All of that to say, I brought the trading card watercolor paper to work with me. We get a shipment a couple times a week (more or less) from a watercolor producer (not featured in Well Inked but I'm also not going to name them for privacy concerns) and I wanted to experiment with the colors as I test them. My challenge to myself was to only use what I had in the lab (aside from the appropriate paper) and to see what I could come up with.

So the following little cards were made with the lab supplies I had in my testing of the paints (spreaders, pipette and a rough brush plus my gloved fingers). I really liked that the cards were small. It felt less intimidating to experiment and just play and not have specific goals in mind or an image to create. I would definitely buy these cards again, or just cut up some of my larger watercolor paper into small pieces for little practice pieces.

I had fun with them! I hope you enjoy them.

This was made only with the plate spreader and the gradations of our dilutions

Fingers and pipette only

Rough brush

Pipette only

Prewet and rough brush. A very rough water scene

Pipette only

Pipette and fingers

Pipette only with several dilutions

I call this " -3 -7 "    It shows the dilution strengths we use

Fingers and pipette