• A digital collage showing shooting star designs to the left and fire designs to the right.
    Digital Painting

    Quick digital paintings inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle

    I’m still planning to make time for day 2 of 14 days of observational drawings in pencil…buuut I felt the inspiration to make some digital paintings, late last night and today. ^_^ Ricky and I saw Howl’s Moving Castle in theaters last night as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2024, and when we got home, I painted a quick shooting star study based on the scene where Howl catches Calcifer.

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  • A college of two digital paintings, one of colorful crystals and gems, and the other character art of a female mage. Text on top of the image states Let's be messy
    Digital Painting,  Life Musings

    Let’s be messy

    I say, there is no ideal way to start posting art online when you’ve been on hiatus. Or at least, I’m not aware yet of how to approach it without it feeling extremely uncomfortable and clunky. So here I throw up my hands and say “Whatever will be, let’s just go!” 2024 has been a messy year, so why not just spend the last few months of it scrambling to figure out what I want to do with my art?

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  • A featured image collage, showing various looping marks and drawing drills to practice line work. The background is digital, and on top are three photos of copy paper sheets with various drawing drill marks. Text top top states: Chaotic Drawing Drills.
    Digital Painting,  Drawing

    Chaotic Drawing Drills

    I’d paused posting in here for the later half of January 2024, as some very serious health issues have been happening to a close family member. That’s as much detail as I want to give here on my blog for now. How does one stay creative in times of extreme stress? Drawing drills have always been my go to, but even those have felt like a challenge. There are so many variations on drills, and they’re all meant to be very simple: draw ovals, practice line confidence, etc. Recently, I stumbled on a practice of outlining looping marks. The approach is very chaotic looking, but overall I’ve found it’s a…

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  • Featured image collage of five work in progress sketches of a female character with long wavy hair. She is wearing a wrinkled dress that ties at the neck and has long flowing sleeves. Text on the image states: Fumbling Through Sketching and Inking with Procreate.
    Digital Painting,  Figure Drawing

    Fumbling Through Sketching and Inking with Procreate

    Now that I am pretty well set on Procreate brushes (what with testing out all the default brushes and my mini-shopping spree on brush packs that followed), it’s time to put them to use! Alas, I’m still feeling clumsy and hesitant with my lines and this post shares my stop/start progress on this drawing from the last couple days.

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  • Collage of many images of squares of brush swatches, showing many different marks and blends of the different default brushes from Procreate. Text on the collage states: Trying Every Procreate Default Brush.
    Digital Painting

    Trying Every Procreate Default Brush – Test All the Brushes!

    This was a fun mini project for the beginning of the year and perfect for working on while I wasn’t feeling great. I promised myself I would try every default Procreate brush at least once, before allowing myself to buy custom brush sets. And oh, how motivating that was! I finished these relatively quickly over a few days, and it was very satisfying. I learned how to loosen up in my drawing approach on the iPad overall. So: now to share a ton of swatches with all the brush tests!

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  • An image collage of four digital paintings, showing wispy cirrus clouds in a blue sky. Text on the collage states: Digital Painting Clouds in Procreate. Cirrus clouds!
    Digital Painting

    Digital Painting Clouds in Procreate: Cirrus Clouds

    More cloud studies, but this time getting more comfortable with Procreate. As evidenced by my last post, my inner visual library of clouds is pretty stagnant: 99% puffy cumulus clouds. Here, I’m focusing on cirrus clouds instead: wispy and cold.

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  • Image of an open sketchbook showing lace designs on either side of the page, drawn in pastel fine liners and markers. Cursive text on top of the image reads: Lace & Cloth Studies. To the right of the sketchbook on the table in a ribbon of lace, a few pens, and a pink mechanical pencil.
    Drawing,  Sketchbooks

    Lace & Cloth Studies

    Hooray for another longer holiday weekend. 😊 Feeling a bit better from the flu. I’ve pretty much just been testing out Procreate brushes, rather than working on any new artwork. It’s certainly a low-key, peaceful art practice. But I’m thinking tonight I might be able to do some more smaller studies, similar to these lace ones I created in late November. And there are a couple cloth studies and lace doodles from this past Wednesday done in Procreate.

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