Morning routine that creates inspiration

Working WITHOUT AI

I hope you all are doing well. We are saddened by the fact that the US Soccer Team is out of the tournament. However, we love the visitors that are still here enjoying our country. They have been a delight to host. So many charming moments. We especially love Norway in my house, LOL. Now that the USA is out, I’ll be cheering for Norway. (And Argentina since Messi plays for Miami.)

So what do I have to show you today? I just saw a story on the news about an AI actress that is starring in a new movie. Really? An AI actress? So many human women that can act in a role and they pick a fake generated image. The anchors went on to discuss how much of what you see on Social Media is AI generated. Do you know the percentage because I didn’t? It’s 70%. Eeuuu. Another reason to offload Social Media.

BTW….my art is human hands and human ingenuity. 

Morning routine

Before that story on the news, I was already working on this post. Actually, the images for this post. 

Every morning, I have a routine which is simply known as my morning routine. I have a morning pages routine and a daily “comic” routine, plus I set up my calendar/Bujo for the day. I have tried several formats over the years but I just surrounded to my three book practice. And after many types of books I have tried, I am picky about each one I use. For my morning pages book, I normally use an Archer & Olive B5 dot grid. I am currently using a backup since my B5 Archer & Olive book hadn’t arrived yet. I don’t like the backup because it is a softcover and the pages are terrible for Tombow play.

(I have to add this before moving on. Archer & Olive has wonderful paper. It does not bleed through with the Tombow markers. They are hardcovers. They are by far my preferred book for my B5 morning pages and my A5 Bujo. I have tried SOOOOO many books and I keep going back to Archer & Olive. They are worth the price. The only thing I don’t like is paying for shipping, which is usually why I wait for their sales.)

In my morning pages book, (currently a 2 page spread),I track the weather, I write on one page for at least 5 minutes, I have a column for ideas, a box for gratitudes, A box for a quote, an affirmation and a spare box. I also have a section for a blob that is scraped with a blob of Goldens High Flow Acrylics. It is the blob that is the subject of today’s post.

The Blob

The idea for doing the scraped acrylic blobs came from Carla Sonheim. Although I took a variety of Carla’s courses over the years, it was Carla’s Sketchbook Revival presentation that earned her spot in my daily practice. I believe I have been doing the scraped blobs since 2019 (?), so that’s 365 days times 6.5 years, give or take. That’s a lot of fodder to fall back on for inspiration.

I am not going to explain the process but if you would like to learn it, I would suggest following Carla since it was her idea. You’ll learn a lot of fun sketchbook exercises from Carla. 

At the bottom of the page, you see a little red blob. I use a Lamy Safari with a Medium Nib and spin the page around until I find something in the blob and then I turn it into something with ink. 

I move on to my trusty black Bic pen and try drawing it with the Bic pen. Sometimes this second drawing is a whole new version, and other times, like about, it was meh. So then I was like….hmmm, let me try using by Arteza brush pens. I sort of like how he turned out and then it was at that point that I thought I would use this for my post.

The top image (yes I was working from bottom to top, my blobs are always on the bottom of the page) was sketched using an Arteza Brush pen. You can see the dark patches where I wanted to blend them with a water brush, only to find that this paper didn’t allow for that. The ink stayed put. I am stuck with this book for the next 70 days so I’ll have to live with it. 

It was at this point that I took this photo with my iPhone.

Developing a character

You can see my note on the page that I liked the bottom one the best.

This next process is when I want the characters to stay the same  as how I drew them. If I redraw them freehand, they don’t come out the same and sometimes that’s OK, but in this case, I liked the bottom one just as it was in my book.

I Airdropped the image to my iPad, and pulled it into Procreate. Redrew the line in black on white background. I then exported the image to my photos. Airdropped the line drawing to my MacBook, pulled it into my photos so that I could print it out in the size I wanted. Then I printed it out, trimmed the image to the size to fit in my sketchbook.

At this point, I slid the image under my working page in my sketchbook. I put my light box behind that and redrew the image in my sketchbook. I used some acrylic markers to play with color. These acrylic pens don’t blend very well and I can’t layer color because layering just covers the color below. It’s also hit or miss when trying to do highlights so I used a white gel pen and a grey wash pen for shadow and value.

Not being satisfied with the color, I proceeded to tweak it a little with colored pencil and more grey wash pen.

At this point, I am looking at this and it’s a start. I am going to continue this in next week’s post where I more into the process of how much further I can take this character.