Pastel

P is for Pretzel

| Gina Lento

I belong to an illustrator’s group and we recently had an A-Z challenge. I played with all sorts of lettering… I thought of all sorts of ideas, notes jotted, ideas written out…. but couldn’t get anything on paper until we did a Zoom last week and a pretzel was one of the objects for us to draw. Many of the illustrators commented about drawing pretzels and where you could get the best pretzels or whose bagged pretzels were the best. (I kept quiet, knowing that the Philly Pretzel is the best soft pretzel, especially right out of the oven.)

I sketched a bunch of Pretzels. Tried different versions. Tried pastels, tried gouache….

Until finally, my finished piece.

P is for Pretzels

I separated the different types, soft, hard, candy covered and I just had to add a pretzel bun.

I have done something horrible

| Gina Lento

Or maybe I didn’t

It depends on how I look at it…

With fresh eyes….

I’ve hacked up a bunch of my art

😱

I have a bin of unframed art and I needed a new project. I had put the art in a bin for a later time when I might touch it up. An idea came to me for how to permanently seal my pastels. Why not repurpose some of this half baked art?

Hack Girl came into being…

Most of the art I was Ok with hacking it into smaller sizes or sealing the pastels that were done on paper and then hacked them!

All but one.

One didn’t seal up nicely and it wrecked an image I liked and I was like …

“WTF did I just do?!! What was I thinking?”

Oh well, too late now.

It actually doesn’t look that bad and I will probably paint over it to pull it out. And make it better.

But it still left a pit in my stomach.

One piece seriously was Sh-t and now I’m like…

“Ooo cool idea for Halloween!”

So here is most of the hacked up art.

Onwards and upwards, right?

Haphazard Flowers

| Gina Lento

I was on a Zoom this evening with Carla Sonheim and a few other artists. Carla had some flowers that she encouraged us to draw via blind contours and I randomly placed them around the page. We were encouraged to use whatever media we wanted. I used a Caran D’Ache Neocolor II black water-soluble crayon.

I then colored them in with watercolor and used ultramarine blue washed around them. I just played with the various mediums, adding paint pens and other media. Then I scanned it in and tweaked it some more on Procreate. I did this all while making homemade candy for Easter. It was quite full day.

And yep, I printed it out on a 4×6 postcard to mail to my mom. No kitties today, just flowers.

People in the Neighborhood #1

| Gina Lento

This series of postcards were inspired by a Lesson in Carla Sonheim’s 2021 Year Long Class. There are 4 total which I will be posting over the next couple of days.

Kurt, Carrie and Sally decided that they wanted to go on an Adventure. Carrie’s dog, Melville and Kurt’s kitty, Boomer, joined them.

Wild Calico

| Gina Lento

Oh HEY! Where did this guy come from? The idea for this guy came from Carla Sonheim’s 2021 Sketchbook Revival lesson. The first part of the lesson is to draw a bunch of one liner subjects…cat, elephant, vase of flowers, toilets…..then we each picked one of our own to turn into a more finished piece….

Voila! Wild Calico!

Wild Calico doesn’t like to take baths and he loves to jump in garbage cans and dumpsters. Now he’s having a bad hair day.

Cloudwalker

| Gina Lento

Cloudwalker loves playing with the Snow and Frost Faeries. He loves to use his wings to make strong blizzards. He’s sad because winter is over.

This is the last page in my St Patrick’s Day sketchbook. I hope you enjoyed these pages. All of the sketches were very involved and had a lot of layers in order to produce each creature. There were a lot of steps to each page. I loved doing it but I am glad this sketchbook is finished.

I will to make a new sketchbook to start a new series/storytelling session for April. April is usually International Fake Journal Month. I have a few days to decide what I will do for April.