I Draw and Paint Stories
Enchanted Forest Surprise
How this one started and what I ended up sketching were very different. I started with a ghost telling stories to animals in a forest and ended up with a Halloween glamp-site in a forest with the ghost telling stories.
I also thought about doing a gypsy wagon with a fortune teller for the animals but I’ll do that one another time.
Here is my interpretation of today’s prompt
Inspiration for the typewriter came from the Museum App. The Museum App is an iPhone App where people post their photos in the hope that they inspire an artist.
On the typed page, I included a quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Enjoy!
Short post, just sending along today’s Halloween Challenge Sketch
And why I don’t do Inktober anymore
Good morning! I was debating on whether to send a post 2 days in a row, but I know many of you have told me you like to see my daily October posts. I text them to my grandkids every day. My 2 year old grandson apparently likes looking for things in the sketches so I guess that means I need to add more stuff. Lol
For those new to my art, October used to be Inktober for me. I would diligently do my ink sketches using the suggested prompts. I eventually incorporated the prompts into my “Drawcatsformom series to add to my “little witch” series that I was doing for my mom.
In September of 2020, we had lost our gorgeous 5 year old black cat, Cleo, to some unknown malady. October came and it was hard because she was my muse for a lot of the “little witch” series. Plus I was inserting her into my plein air sketches. Cleo was painfully missed.
The final nail in the coffin for Inktober was the prompts have nothing to do with Halloween at all. When October comes, that’s all I want to do is create Halloween and Autumn art. Autumn was my mom’s favorite time of year and I love this time of year, too, so why was I creating non seasonal art, just to follow some challenge?
Last year I found Flori Fama. She was doing a Halloween Challenge with cool prompts and we started the sketches in September so that when October came, we had our ideas.
We are encouraged to use juicy autumn color palettes. No brainer. Bye bye Inktober.
This year’s prompts are Flori’s Challenge, Year 2.
Today’s prompt is:
Don’t Crop my Circle
(So I made a maze…a real one that you can print out.)
There are two versions today, traditional and digital.
Enjoy
I am still doing them
I just want to first welcome my new followers! I appreciate you all; every subscriber!
I know many of you have been following me a long time. The past couple of Halloweens, I really haven’t been posting thanks to the tech companies that feel it is ok to steal art. Yes, all of this talk of AI? Those companies like Meta, ChatGpt and all the others, scrape images to train their AI so when you post anything anymore, you are giving them free information and images to use.
This is why you’ll see my posts here and on my website.
But I digress.
Some of you who were with me in Chincoteague last month…that post is coming as well.
Halloween takes a lot of my time. Last month I painted in a plein air event and I researched and sketched my Halloween thumbnails. This month, my sketches are progressing to small 4×6 drawings/watercolors in a small sketchbook dedicated to just Halloween.
These small works are still sketches but more detailed and getting a feel for final pieces. They aren’t polished but I would like to take them to the next level. I like doing them and putting them in dedicated sketchbooks because I enjoy flipping through them, lol.
Maybe I’ll turn them into a book? My family gets these daily. Let me know if you’d like me to post them daily, otherwise I’ll just send these out once a week.
The prompts for these sketches come from a small group that I belong to moderated by Flori Fama. I am so glad a found another Halloween addict lol.
NOTE: all of my reference images (if I need any) come from my own live sketches, my plein air paintings, my own photos that I have taken, or I use the Museum App where folks post their own images for artists to use. I have a ton of fodder!
NOTE 2: These photos are “as is” and taken with my cell phone. These are more of a “show and tell” and not meant to be polished portfolio pieces. I am showing you my process.
Day 1 – Scary Weather Vane
This is the color palette I am using. All of the sketches this month will be with this color palette.
My color palette
Day 2 Black Pumpkin Hearse
I chose to use orange instead of black because I could make the orange work better on this paper. If I did this digitally or with acrylic gouache, I would use the black. Plus, I like Orange. My “horses” are a cross between horses, thestrels and camels.
Day 3
Day 3 – of tombs and gloom
This one was inspired by sketches I have done back in NY.
I used mostly this sketch (below) for my inspiration and yes, I actually sat in a cemetery and sketched this. The tomb (above) was from a photo I took at St Peter’s Cemetery in Old City Philadelphia.
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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.
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 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.
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.
Happy Independence Day!
Last week, I wrote to you that I was finishing my “dailies” sketchbook from the past two years. This week, I started a new one and I am really excited that the Leuchtturm1917 square sketchbooks now come in lavender.
What’s so exciting about that?
I do a small daily sketch and it takes over two years to fill these sketchbooks. Being able to carry around a lavender one just made my day. Lavender is such a perky color and is so inviting that I can’t wait to draw in it every day.
When I start a new sketchbook, I like to adorn it with something so it isn’t just a blank cover. With all of the black sketchbooks I have, decorating them also made it easier to identify them so I could quickly grab any specific sketchbook I was looking for. Sometimes I decorate them by decoupaging copies of my own art to the cover. I also like to use stickers that people or businesses give out, or even the ones they give you when you vote.
For instance, the bottom right sticker on my new daily sketchbook is a perfect example of a travel sticker that I purchased while visiting Cedar Key, FL.
I also love product stickers like the Sweetwater coffee stickers, on the lower left of my sketchbook, that were shipped with the coffee I purchased for my husband for Father’s Day. I was delighted to receive the Sweetwater stickers because we were introduced to their coffee when we spent those few days in Cedar Key, FL. It seemed perfect to put those stickers on my new daily sketchbook.
I have been wanting to make stickers for many years as a fun way to share my art. Over the past year, I made 5. While I was selecting stickers for this sketchbook, it only made sense that I would advertise my own art on the sketchbook, too.
I designed 4 stickers in past several months and I ordered them from Sticker App. I started with a circle shape but I have a few ideas for shape outlined stickers.
The first batch, I ordered them at 2 inch but when I received them, I realized I should have gone larger. The next two I designed and ordered them at the 3 inch size. I already have designs started for two more stickers. I am really excited how they came out.
I haven’t made up my mind about how I want to sell the stickers. I might offer them for sale for a small fee to just my Substack subscribers since I don’t charge a fee for membership. Or on an on line shop. I have to figure that all out, yet.
The upper left hand one is Dickens and the quote is something my husband says all the time. It seemed applicable to use it for the cat.
The Surfer Teddy sticker was inspired by Mike Lowery’s sticker workshop (which is how I learned how to make stickers) where Mike drew a surf board and a guy on a board, I think. I went with Teddy on the beach in his surfer duds and gear.
The middle sticker is Lucy, who is indeed, the Back Seat Badass. Lucy is a total coward until you put her in her car seat. Then, she morphs into the Back Seat Badass. She’ll tell everyone off from that back seat, human or animal. Lucy LOVES riding in the truck. She’ll stay in there all day if you let her so she can tell everyone off. LOL
Take her out? Nervous Nellie.
Enjoy!
Trying to get back outside more to sketch. I started this post last Thursday evening but as I was typing it, my daughter sent us a text
“I feel like there’s no way you guys didn’t hear that explosion? I just saw it on FB”
So, I didn’t finish this because we sort of were a little distracted…lol…
We had scooped up the dog children and put them in their car seats and drove over to the water. The city has been redoing the waterfront and it’s starting to come together. The trees still look like they are having bad hair day.
We parked a few spots down from a tiny car and I decided to sketch a car butt. Hey, it was there, ya know. It beats sketching just the landscape.
We left around 8:20-ish. Give or take. If we had sat there for another half hour or so, we would have see the New Glenn rocket explosion. The irony of this? We have cat 5 rated windows and slider installed at our house. Which makes the interior of our house sound proofed. When our daughter sent us a text, I was typing this and hubby was watching TV.
We drove down to the riverfront but by the time we got there, it was a low fire so we came home.
Nothing to see here.
A week later, today, apparently not everything was ruined so they may be back up and launching by the end of the year.
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