Inspiration

  • Photo of a sketchbook, showing a watercolor painting of a woman in a dark pink dress. She is holding a potion up to a window showing the full moon outside. Rays of moonlight emanate from the potion. Next to the sketchbook are two paintbrushes and a watercolor tin. On top of the opposite page of the painting is a plastic palette filled with various colors of watercolor paints. Text overlaying the image states: Creating fantasy inspiration boards
    Inspiration,  Traditional Painting

    Creating Fantasy Inspiration Boards

    This post comes from working through a short Skillshare class by Gabrielle Bricky called “Create Inspiration Boards & Streamline Your Artistic Process” The whole course was only 10 minutes, but I found it very inspiring! I liked Gabrielle’s approach on organizing Pinterest boards — so much so that I finally kicked myself in gear and organized my entire Pinterest account, ha. Which was amazing to finally clean up. I made most of my many boards private, but then opened up the four that I made for this class on my public Pinterest Profile.

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  • Blog post thumbnail showing a collage of five drawings of my original character Ariennha. They are quick sketches showing an elven woman with curly red hair.
    Drawing,  Inspiration,  Life Musings,  Sketchbooks

    Sketchbook Share: Ariennha

    Last post, I mentioned a series of OC sketchbook pages I filled, starting with Reiellasara and now moving on to Ariennha. Ariennha is a character very close to my heart, even if I haven’t drawn her much – I’ve spent many an hour daydreaming stories and world building in my mind over the years. She’s definitely got Mary Sue energy, but I honestly do not care, I love the character. But why haven’t I made very much art of those daydreams? The trick to getting those ideas down as drawings is to just Nike-style “Do It”.

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  • Marking Making Part 9 title card, with supplies and drawings arranged in flat lay photo
    Drawing,  Figure Drawing,  Inspiration,  Intuitive Art

    Mark Making Part 9: Various Colored Pencils

    Continuing the mark making project, these drawings are from the end of April. The delay was in the scanning and cropping, ugh. Oh well! These were fun – I did one intuitive drawing piece first, which was a sort of surreal landscape. For the rest, I decided to follow the same path from my graphite pencils post and create gesture drawings with some stylized faces thrown in the mix as well. It was a lot of fun and quite relaxing. The light pencils on dark paper was a nice challenge. It provides an opportunity for the pencil to add light to the forms, rather than the normal shadows created with…

  • Goddess drawing - Finding Center featured image
    Inspiration,  Life Musings

    Grounding and Centering

    Lately, as this new routine of isolation and extra caution settles in, I’ve been turning to nature and spirituality for comfort and guidance. I wish it hadn’t taken a crisis to help nudge me into this direction, as I’m realizing just how much I was missing having spirituality in my life as a primary part of every day. Spending more time in nature, reading books I’ve been meaning to get around to, journaling more (in my private, personal journal), tending to my altar: it’s all been helping me to feel more grounded and centered. I’m feeling more motivated, knowing I’m trying to align many parts of my soul, including my…

  • Marking Making Part 8 title card, with supplies and drawings arranged in flat lay photo
    Drawing,  Figure Drawing,  Inspiration

    Mark Making Part 8: Graphite Pencils

    Yay! Graphite pencils! And I decided to do several gesture drawings and warm up pencil drills for this one, as I own a lot of 2B, HB, normal #2 pencils, and mechanical pencils. It would have gotten quite repetitive to make general abstract lines with all of them. Especially given it’s all the same grey color. Not that I didn’t do a few sheets of plainer mark making – though even then, I choose a few classic drawing drills with ellipses and lines, compared to the more intuitive drawings I’ve been doing with the other mediums. I had a lot of fun drawing very loose and carefree with most of…

  • Marking Making Part 7 title card, with supplies and drawings arranged in flat lay photo
    Drawing,  Inspiration,  Intuitive Art,  Life Musings

    Mark Making Part 7: Crayons and Other Nostalgia

    So this one was on the principle that if I’m using all my art supplies, the little kid ones count too! I bought these crayons and markers way back when I was first working through The Artists Way. I thought making art with them would be a fun “artist date”. I can confirm, drawing with crayons is a) fun b) satisfying to my “inner child” and c) like sooo easy to relax, because who cares what it looks like, it’s just for enjoying the moment of creating stuff! Little kids get this stuff right off the bat, but we can remember that carefree creativity through some repetitive effort *grin*. I…

  • Marking Making Part 6 title card, with supplies and drawings arranged in flat lay photo
    Drawing,  Inspiration,  Intuitive Art

    Mark Making Part 6: Ballpoint Pens and Highlighters

    Today was a low day, not much to talk about. I managed to do some yoga in the morning after a long shower, so that was nice. Sat out on the apartment balcony and video chatted with my family. Read more of Below the Root. Sketched with colored pencil sticks (aka, part 10 of this project). Still have a headache from allergies. >_< Today’s post are the pieces I did with the pens kept with other office supplies such as tape and paper clips. I wanted to include them in this project because using ballpoint pens to sketch can be fun. I also have occasionally used a highlighter to add…