Past Artwork

So I thought I'd continue posting some past artwork of mine. As I've started painting again I decided to begin the art selection with some watercolor paintings I did several years ago: 

Watercolor #1: so the materials used weren't anything fancy, just some watercolor pencils on construction paper. This one is like most of my paintings in that I usually don't plan things ahead; just start doodling and experimenting with colors and see where it goes. I ended up liking the red with blue a lot and I really liked how the watercolor strokes came out on the paper. Comes to show that you don't need to have expensive materials to make something to your liking.

    

Watercolor #2: I tried painting a window with a curtain nearby at the beginning of this one which it may still resemble, but ultimately I ended up laying down some bright colors and defining the areas around with lots of black and dark brown strokes. I'm pretty sure that this one was done on watercolor paper.

This is a pencil drawing that I did some time ago on loose leaf. I've always felt the most amount of flexibility and control when drawing or painting with a utensil that I can firmly hold in my hand (like the watercolor pencils). Drawings like this usually start with me doodling a little with pencil and end with me feverishly layering on lines to define the image to my liking.

I consider this some practice drawing of what I ultimately envision to be a painting. Now the source of this is not at all mine; when I drew this years ago I was trying to get the shading down on a Tamara de Lempicka painting: Le Dormeuse. I always found that painting to be relaxing to look at and plan on someday taking the time to recreate my own. 

 

So I'm really not trying to sound cliched here but I think that I drew this on a Fall day. I don't know..... the leaves, wind, and colors at the time made me feel like drawing a red riding hood type of person taking a fall afternoon stroll. I'm not sure where it is at the moment but I think that it was around the same time that I drew a tree with a bunch of crayon pastels that looked a tiny bit like the tree in the background. The drawing spanned multiple loose leaf papers and made for some really nice wall art. I'll post it on this blog if I find it again.

And to mix things up here is a painting of Miffy that I did one or two years ago (I think). I always liked how cute and simple the drawings in those books were, and just felt like making a larger version for myself to hang up by the crafting corner of my place. Nowadays if I want to paint I'll buy a cork board at a thrift store really cheap (up to this point I think that the most I've ever had to pay was two dollars) and just paint over that. It's perfect because once you're done you can hang it up and don't have to worry about framing it. A much cheaper option to painting than the traditional canvas route.

Another pencil drawing. It was around the same time that I was producing the other pencil drawings that I was trying to get better at drawing people. For this one I chose as my subject one of my most favorite flappers: Louise Brooks. She also inspired the dolls that I made and posted on the blog some time ago. I haven't committed to the same amount of practice that I had those years ago lately but from what I remember the most challenging thing for me was in balancing the facial features. Drawing individual components of the face are not hard: I can do eyes, noses, lips just fine. It's balancing them out that's difficult. Most of the time I space things out too closely together. 

Those viewers who checked out my last blog post will have seen lots of yellow, red, black and orange lines and rectangles. Those were illustrations I created through Paint to make cleaner more polished and printable versions of the original artwork they were based off of (basically crayon colored squares on graphing paper). This one obviously follows a different color scheme and pattern than those (I was thinking of water when making this one). I would love to turn this into a painting and/or a quilt. Right below this is another example of my crayons on graphing paper art. :-) 

So yeah.... that's all for now folks! ;-D

Some Patterns Old and New

These little art pieces are both recent and old. The originals they're based off of I created 6 years ago or so. It was basically one afternoon that I had a bunch of crayons and graphing paper and decided to color within the lines to make my own colorful patterns. It was a simple and addicting activity, and I ended up spending the rest of the day churning out one abstract looking pattern after another. The patterns were stored in a binder and forgotten until this new year. I liked the originals as much as I did those years ago, and as a renewed activity I decided to recreate the patterns within Paint. The results are a lot cleaner looking than the smudgy crayon versions, which I am happy about. I'm not finished recreating all of the originals, so it is very possible that I will have a future post with more abstract looking lovelies. :-) The last one looks a bit different than the rest because it's the beginning of the ones that I made with a different color palette. Think of it as a prelude for things to come. ;-D

 

 

Just Bead It! More Craftista Made Necklaces ;D

So this is just a quick update of necklaces that I've made, some recent some not so much but colorful enough to merit posting on my blog. The first picture features what I've been experimenting with recently, necklaces more on the woven side requiring the use of a thread and needle (plus patience!). The remaining necklaces were mostly hand strung. The very bright green and pink ones are made of glass beads surprisingly, which I found at Hobby Lobby.

Valentines Day Craft Idea: Bottle Cap Pins

Hello hello hello! With February and Valentine's Day drawing near I thought I'd share one of my more recent projects inspired by the holiday: Owl Love Pins. The owl picture was cut out from a fabric I got at Joann Fabrics; the fabric is basically covered all over with them, so snipping out a few owls won't make any noticeable difference ;D. Cutting out a square with one owl in the middle and wrapping around a Snapple bottle cap made the centerpiece. After that the work was mainly in beading the bottle cap so as to frame the owl in center. I stuffed the inside of the cap with a little bit of cotton stuffing material. Sealing that up with a felt circle and sewing a bar pin to the back finally made it into a full fledged owl pin! May this bit of Valentine's Day accessory awesomeness inspire you all to make your own bottle cap pins.