Ovarian Cancer Awareness

September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. Though if you ask me, every month should be awareness month. Ovarian cancer is known as the 'Silent Killer'. Unfortunately early detection is extremely difficult. It is the persistent, smallest symptoms that women of all ages should look out for.

 

Potential symptoms include:

 

-Bloating

-Pelvic or abdominal pain

-Trouble eating or feeling full quickly

-Feeling the need to urinate urgently or often 

Other symptoms that can occur:

 

-Fatigue

-Upset stomach or heartburn

-Back pain

-Pain during sex

-Constipation or menstrual changes

Please be aware that all females (yes, even children) can get this. So please, spread the word. Share this post. Tell your wife, mother, daughter, niece, friend (heck, even grandma!) about this cancer. Early detection is the key! Education will help save lives. Let this awareness become as popular as the awareness for breast cancer.

 

About this piece:

 

I've wanted to do a little something for the awareness this month. After much thought, I give you the little umbrella girl. With her head held high and looking only forward, this brave girl walks on teal grass barefoot that supports her while her umbrella symbolizes the support and protection from getting beaten upon by the cancer. The sunrise that fills her represents hope.

 

Title: There is Always Hope

Medium: Derwent Inktense colored pencils

Paper: 9x12 Canson Cold Press watercolor

 

Websites about Ovarian Cancer:

http://ovarian.org/

Ovarian Cancer Symptom Awareness

So please, spread the word.

(This is dedicated to you, Melanie Chasen) <3

Unique Sunrise

I was at my grandma's house the other week and was struck with a simple creative idea. After messing around a bit, this came into being. It's nothing fancy at all, but the sun is full of hot fire, plasma, and other goodies that I just thought it'd be cool representing that to an abstract degree.

Besides, perhaps if we were to look past the pure brightness of the sun, it'd be cool if we could witness something like this.

Title: Sunrise
Medium: FC Polychromos
Paper: 6x9 on Strathmore black Artagain

Of Unicorns and Lilies

 Today's post is dedicated to all things pure and hopeful. I've been imagining a unicorn walking through a forest full of Canada lilies, so I thought I should put that to paper. And also that I've been meaning to put a nice header on my blog and thought this piece would be great for it.

This artwork is also my first time using odorless mineral spirits (OMS) with colored pencils. 

 My goal was to keep the background blurry, but still give the feeling that the unicorn was walking through a forest.

 Here, you'll notice that the right side is a bit more darker than the left. That is the OMS at work. I used a paint brush to paint over the work I've done. It does a pretty good job removing the 'scratchy' look of colored pencils. It makes a pretty good blender.

Background is done and I've started working on the shadows and cast shadows of the unicorn.

I added a very light green (Earh Green) on the unicorn in random patterns to represent the shadows of the leaves of trees high above.

Here is the finished piece!

A close up.

Title: Keeper of the Forest

Medium: Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils

Size: on 9x12 Strathmore Drawing paper

Horse Reference

The Mighty Sphinx

The Sphinx was powerful and wise creature of mythology. Unlike it's Greek cousin, which would eat travelers who would incorrectly answer its riddle, the Egyptian Sphinx was often portrayed as a guardian of the tomb of the pharaohs. It was less malevolent, though equally as dangerous. 

The Great Sphinx of Giza often comes to mind when people hear the word 'sphinx'. 

This is just a simple picture I made. I wanted to make a stylized version of an Egyptian Sphinx. The wings are not really common with the ones in Egypt, they're rather Greek, but it felt a little naked in the back area. Perhaps this one got tired of riddles?

Title: Egyptian Sphinx

Paper: 5"x7" Stonehenge

Medium: Faber Castell Polychromos

Mermaid Lake

Salutations. I've been working on this piece for a bit. To be honest, I had the line art for this in my sketchbook for a little over a year, and I decided I should do something with it. Better late than never, right? I've decided I wanted to try a new approach with markers. If you noticed, there are no inked lines in this drawing. My goal was to try to achieve a painterly-like affect with this piece (or at least get defining edges on certain parts of it without the use of line art). I think I did a pretty good job, for the most part. 

I'm still camera-less, but I did make sure to take a few pictures along the way on my phone. I've always like seeing progress shots of other peoples artworks. It's so interesting to see how things started out before it reached the finished look. I hope you guys have enjoyed seeing those of mine too throughout this blog.

This is the prep stage. The drafting tape is used to keep the border clean and crisp. I've traced the line work very lightly on nicer paper.

Once the tree is all colored in I started work on the grass. My goal throughout this piece is to try to give it and autumn(y) look. That's why you see a light orange color under the green(the color is YR01 Peach Puff to be precise). I've used that as a base color a lot through this piece, to try to keep colors uniform. 

 

 Grass is done. The grass by itself took a little over an hour to complete. Since this is the foreground, I wanted it to have more details.

The trees in the background are complete. I am kinda fond of that evergreen there. I started blocking in the shadow parts of the mermaid.

I started work on the mermaid. I didn't want her tail to be the same green as the rest of picture (it would have blended in too much), so I made it a soft teal. Once again I put a base coat of the YR01 under the teal, so that way she is not standing out obnoxiously. 

The water was the last thing to add. I was procrastinating with the water. I wanted to see how everything looked with the background before creating the lake. I haven't done a lot of water pictures so I was a bit worried how it might turn out. Overall, I'm pretty happy.

I added the finishing details with colored pencils. Now the mermaid has eyes and doesn't look creepy! Yay!

Overall,  am extremely happy how this turned out. I just wished the picture and scan came out better. It's more rich then what it shows on the screen.

Well, the next thing on my schedule (Schedule? What schedule?) should be a simple sphinx that I'm working on. It should be up within a few days. Till then, keep an eye out. 

Title: Mermaid Lake

Paper: 9x12 Strathmore Smooth Bristol

Medium(s): Copic marker, Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils

Derwent Inktense

Hello all! In late April I went to the art store to have a look around. I came across a 24 set of Derwent Inktense pencils. I had a 40% coupon on me, so I thought "why not?" I've been itching to try them for the past couple years, and I'm happy to say they are worth the excitement. The Inktense come in a total of 72 colors that can either be bought individually or in sets. The colors in the 24 set do have

a nice variety of color to create different types of pictures. The great thing about limitation is that it really works on your creativity.

The Inktense works very similar to watercolor pencils, they're water soluble. The big difference is that when wet, they turn into ink! Unlike normal watercolors/watercolor pencils, once completely dry, water cannot reactivate it. You cannot rework the colors, but you can add multiple layers over the dry ones and make the picture more rich in color and make certain aspects pop more.

These pencils can either be used wet or dry. Dry, they tend to have a deep richness to them and become translucent when wet. They do dry fast though, so it can be tricky trying to avoid those "blooms"(You can sort of see it in my iris blue on my color chart. I added a bit too much water...oops). An aqua brush(paint brush you can fill with water) works really well with these. They can be wetted on paper, or if you want to use a more painterly approach you can take a brush and wipe it on the lead of the pencil to collect the pigment. Whatever works for you.

Overall, I really love these. I love the way the respond to water (more so than my watercolor pencil set I owe). Perhaps with time I by their other colors separately. I brought them over to my friend's house and we were both messing around with them, having a blast.

Here are a couple paintings I created with them;

                            Sunset:

  

              Peaceful Valley: 

'Sunset' on 3.5 in x 5 in Strathmore Visual Journal watercolor paper
'Peaceful Valley' on 9x12 in Canson XL watercolor paper

Whether you're a hobbyist, serious, just like messing around, give them a shot.

Experimenting Fun

 Of all the art I created using markers I never really attempted realism. So I push myself to create this lovely test piece. I mainly wanted to improve upon my eye drawing ability to further try to make them realistic. Along the way I decide to experiment with coloring skin. Overall, I am very happy with the result. Coloring with markers is trickier than using colored pencils due to the fact I'm working with ink. Whatever mistakes I do make require more finesse to fix, if possible.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a lot of process shots of this piece. The digital camera has officially crapped out and died. I've taken some pictures on my phone, but I prefer camera quality over iphone. Looks like I have some money to save.

I set down some blue-violet to mark where the darkest shadows are going to be.

Some pictures of the skin being worked on. I mostly went from light to dark without blending first. Once I was pleased about the color placement I then went back to blend everything to help smooth it out.

Title: The Eyes Have It

Medium: Copic markers, white gel pen, Copic opaque white

Paper: 9x12 Strathmore Smooth Bristol