Inktober-Wake Up Alice!

Day 12. It is time for Alice to finally wake up.

Anyway, I would like to finally announce that I finally have my own art page on Facebook! I encourage all of you to follow if you have an account. My blog will remain up, but for now on the source of my updates will be on facebook. It will be much easier for me to maintain. Inktober will continue on there.

Facebook link is on the upper right hand side of my blog, below 'subscribe'.

Inktober-Queen of Hearts

Day 11. We are now approaching the Queen of Hearts. She seems friendly enough...

Inktober-Mad Tea Party

Day 10. Whoever was at this tea party left some stuff behind. Have a very merry Unbirthday!

Inktober-All Seeing Smile

Day 9. Kinda lost in Wonderland still, oh but look! What an odd cat.  'I've often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat'. Curious.

Inktober-Eat Me

Day 8. Hey look, a cupcake that wants me to eat it. Nothing suspicious here.

Inktober- Drink Me

Day 7 brings us down the rabbit hole and into the ever gorgeous messed up mad house of Wonderland. If it says 'drink me', it surely must be safe to do so. So why not?

Inktober-Here Kitty

Day 6, and Batman should know better by now than to offer his hand to a stray cat. He could get scratched...or pick pocketed. It all depends.

I should draw more adorable Batman's. It's only fitting to this cape crusader.

Inktober Day 5-Butterflies

Day 5 brings butterflies! This time a decided to use the painterly approach with ink. This is proving to be good practice for values and getting comfortable with pure black. I'm glad I bought a separate brush for my India ink. Even when using a good brush cleaner, it looks like ink never truly washes completely off.

On the other hand I also do like the fact that a could put a wash of ink and not worry about it ruining the layers underneath. :) 

Inktober- Ballet Music

Day 4 brings a graceful ballet dancer as a little tinker toy on a music box. When a small blot of ink got on it, I decided to take my brush and make a painterly wash. Wasn't my original game plan, but I really like how it turned out.

Now the fun part of cleaning ink off a brush. XD

Inktober Day 3-Sword in the Stone

For day three of Inktober I think I found Excalibur. This picture was done on the go. For the month of October, my game plan is to use my dip pen for the lines, but since carrying around an ink bottle is awkward I took the more mobile route. My technical pens. And since I was busy today between work and other things, I wanted to keep the drawing simple.

So...does this piece make me a queen then?

Inktober Day 2-Pampered Parrot

Day two of Inktober is dedicated to Maury, my spoiled rotten parrot. If this was even possible, I know Maury would be all for it.

This image has been on my mind for a long while now. One day I'll probably make a colorized version of this. Originally I was going to make an ink wash for it, but I decided I really liked the line art as is.

It's Inktober!

Hey all! I'm back again and this time I am trying a new challenge! October 1st marks the first day of Inktober! What is Inktober some of you may ask? Well, Inktober was started by Jake Parker a few years back as a way to challenge yourself to draw everyday for 31 days of October. The rules are simple:

1.  Make a drawing in ink (pencil under drawing is okay) 

2. Post it online

3. Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2017

4. Repeat

I am personally excited to challenge myself to draw AND post everyday, and hopefully created a better habit for myself during my free time. Plus improving along the way is always a good feeling as well.

Everyone is allowed to join in on the fun!

Frog Stew

 Hello all! It's been forever and a day since I last posted something, I know. I've been trying to figure out a way to balance my full time job and time managing my art (I'm still working some things out). Anyway, while Halloween isn't for a few months it doesn't mean witches get to rest for a whole year. This is a late Mother's Day present for my mom who absolutely loves all things witchy (and frogs). Better late than never. It's been a long while since I used my copics, so I decided to use those as my medium of choice.

First off, to start this piece I actually tried a couple new products. I love the natural feel of dip pens when inking. Personally, I feel have better control with them verses the usual technical pens. While I have dabble with dip pens for little things in the past, this is the first time I've used them for a finished art piece. I had to make sure I got the right ink though. This particular ink I used is Kaimei Drawing Pen Ink. This ink handles alcohol based markers with breeze. No bleeding issue. However it will NOT work with watercolors, so a separate ink is necessary for that work. For the dip pen I used the G Model nib for the variety of line widths I could make. For the super fine lines I used a quill nib.

 After I had the foreground ink I used a lavender color for the base color for the background. My goal was to make a dark muted background as I wanted the focus on the witch.

The at this point the wall was mostly finished (saved for the window and the broom). I tried making the area around the sconces lighter to show the area of light from the candles.

 Floor and trim is mostly done. The color on the floor is the same used on the wall minus the lavender shade. I'm trying to keep everything unified.

 Started working on the witch. I made her a redhead because I like coloring redheads. It's such a pretty hair color.

 It's almost finished at this point. Just coloring the little details. I saved the window for last because I wanted to see how the overall picture was going to look.

So there you have it. I also added some warm gray in her hair too to help tone down the vibrant color and to harmonize more with the rest of the piece. Overall I am happy how it turned out. More importantly my Mom really likes it. Mission accomplished.

Title: Frog Stew
Copic marker on smooth bristol