Days 7-10

Not very good, but I guess that's the point of this exercise.

I only spent about 15 minutes on this, but I think it is cute.

Again, not much time on this, but it is a quick sketch of an idea I have for a character.

I spent way more than 30 minutes on this, but I love it!

100 Themes

Many of you have probably seen this before, but just in case I am posting it here also. As soon as I finish my 21 day creative exercise, I will be doing this 100 themes challenge. The goal will be to create an illustration for each item on the list. If anyone else is taking part in this, please comment with a link to your blog/portfolio.

1. Introduction 2. Love 3. Light 4. Dark 5. Seeking Solace 6. Break Away 7. Heaven 8. Innocence 9. Drive 10. Breathe Again 11. Memory 12. Insanity 13. Misfortune 14. Smile - Doodled 15. Silence 16. Questioning 17. Blood 18. Rainbow 19. Gray 20. Fortitude 21. Vacation 22. Mother Nature 23. Cat 24. No Time 25. Trouble Lurking 26. Tears 27. Foreign 28. Sorrow 29. Happiness 30. Under the Rain 31. Flowers 32. Night 33. Expectations 34. Stars 35. Hold My Hand 36. Precious Treasure 37. Eyes 38. Abandoned 39. Dreams 40. Rated 41. Teamwork 42. Standing Still 43. Dying 44. Two Roads 45. Illusion 46. Family 47. Creation 48. Childhood 49. Stripes 50. Breaking the Rules

51. Sport 52. Deep in Thought 53. Keeping a Secret 54. Tower 55. Waiting 56. Danger Ahead 57. Sacrifice 58. Kick in the Head 59. No Way Out 60. Rejection 61. Fairy Tale 62. Magic 63. Do Not Disturb 64. Multitasking 65. Horror 66. Traps 67. Playing the Melody 68. Hero 69. Annoyance 70. 67% 71. Obsession 72. Mischief Managed 73. I Can't 74. Are You Challenging Me? 75. Mirror 76. Broken Pieces 77. Test 78. Drink 79. Starvation 80. Words 81. Pen and Paper 82. Can You Hear Me? 83. Heal 84. Out Cold 85. Spiral 86. Seeing Red 87. Food 88. Pain 89. Through the Fire 90. Triangle 91. Drowning 92. All That I Have 93. Give Up 94. Last Hope 95. Advertisement 96. In the Storm 97. Safety First 98. Puzzle 99. Solitude 100. Relaxation

Days 5 and 6

My 80's robot, complete with wrist bands, leg warmers, and scrunchie. He's dancing...doing "the robot" of course.



I don't know what this crazy old guy is pointing that gun at....maybe a dancing 80's robot.

Doodle on Crack

I doodle a lot....I couldn't stop adding to my doodle from a few days ago and it got a bit out of hand.

Day Four

Day four of the 21 day creative exercise. A little back story on this one....my dog is a little too friendly at the dog park. So we started calling her our little pug slut :-)

Day 3 and Illustration Friday

Day 3 of the 21 day creative exercise. Also my submission for this week's Illustration Friday topic "enough."

Sadly, this little guy would never be tall enough.

Day 2

I haven't been able to get into any books lately....maybe this is why.

Doodle

 

21 Day Creative Exercise

I've decided to start a 21 day creative exercise. It is best explained here. The rules I have set for myself are to spend between 15-30 minutes each day drawing anything I can think of, as long as I don't use any photo references. The reason for this is that sometimes I spend more time looking for the perfect picture of what I want to draw instead of actually drawing.

This is what I came up with for Day 1. I can't tell you what it is, but I think it is something I will revisit later. I think it could be really cool in color.

Linocut

1st attempt at linocut printmaking. The only paper I had was watercolor paper, so the print is too textured. Once I get all of the proper supplies I will try it again.

a few character sketches

Just a couple of quick sketches since it's been a while. I drew them after reading "How to draw comics the Marvel way."

The Marvel Way

Just picked up a copy of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way." Here is a quick sketch of The Kingpin.

Dubya in Photoshop

More fun painting in Photoshop......

Painting in Photoshop

This is my first attempt at painting an image in Photoshop. I inked the lines with the brush tool in Illustrator, then imported it into Photoshop. I also got a little texture happy, but I still think it looks cool.

It's been a while

I haven't had much time to draw or paint, but here are a few random sketches I did over the Memorial Day weekend.

This is another ink drawing I did....I'm still not happy with it, but there are some things I like. I was trying a different technique that I read about, but I don't really think it worked well so I probably won't be doing it that way again.


This is just a quick sketch of an old SUV that I did with markers.


Another marker sketch. I think I went overboard with the circles at the top, but this has the potential to be something really cool one day.

Elephants on parade

This is definitely the best piece so far! I had some small pieces of clayboard lying around, so I decided to use that. I also used more layers of thicker paint, and I let the ink dry overnight, which was probably the most important improvement.

Gouache Fun

I had high hopes for this piece....the colors were great, and the ink was very black when I applied it. And then came the rinsing.....You never know what's going to happen when you rinse off the water, and I guess that is part of why people love gouache. What I did not expect was for all of my vibrant colors to completely wash off and for half of it to still be covered in ink. Hmmmm....why did this happen? Right now I think I just didn't wait long enough for the ink to dry. I figured 45 minutes or so was plenty of time, but it may not have been. Also, I think my layers of paint were too thin. I also had the same problem as the first piece with the paper ripping. I'm using professional grade 140lb cold press paper, so I wasn't sure what could be causing this. After it was semi-dry, I went back and added some color to the frog, but I don't like the way the ink spots now look washed out.

I have another idea to improve my technique, so we'll see what happens.

I'd like to add that this was not enhanced in Photoshop like the previous painting.

Don't resist

I just discovered the gouache resist technique and I fell in love with it! This is my first attempt. The only gouache I had was an old tube of white, so I decided to draw a polar bear. When rinsing off the ink, I rubbed too hard and ended up tearing the paper. The ink I used was also a little too watered down (I don't think I'll add any water to the next one). I adjusted the levels in Photoshop to make the black darker (it was more gray in the original). After the entire piece dried, I went back with some watercolors to add color to the sky and some shadows. I think I'm going to love this technique! I just bought a cheap gouache set, so stay tuned for more!

Karate Stags

Cartoon Doodles

Kira: ink & colored pencil in my moleskine

My second attempt at ink drawings....better than the first, but I still have some issues with shading.

Art DNA logo: Part 3

I wasn't completely happy with the way the logo turned out, so I decided to play with it some more. The biggest problem I had was that the pencil and brush were not intertwined, and therefore did not really resemble a DNA double helix. So I went back to my original Illustrator file, selected the brush & pencil, then used the pathfinder to divide the paths. Once that was done, I selected the paths I wanted to move and colored them accordingly. It's still not perfect, but it's getting better.

Art in my DNA: The Sequel

I finished the logo that I started yesterday using Illustrator. The text was done using the scribble effect, and everything else was drawn with the pen tool.

Art is in my DNA

This is a preliminary sketch for my logo. Being the science dork that I am, I thought incorporating the DNA double helix into the logo would be cool. So I had the idea of using a pencil and paintbrush.

A Scanner Darkly

This image was created using the tutorial here. It was painstaking work, and took the good part of a day, but I think it is worth it in the end.

Team Qualidation

Another logo idea...this is for my co-workers. I've recently learned a lot about making custom art brushes and transforming shapes. I like the retro look of it all.

more fun with the letter e

Ugly Fish Part Deux

Created in Illustrator CS2....I outlined the basic shape with the pen tool, colored it using gradients, then added the background.

Pattern

Pattern drawn in Illustrator.

I can use the pen tool!

I know it's nothing fancy, but I drew this in Illustrator completely with the pen tool! I was inspired by watching a tutorial on You Tube. The pen tool tutorial and many more are available at www.tutvid.com. Seeing it done makes much more sense than reading about it. I'm going to practice a lot, because if this is what I can accomplish after a 20 minute video, I may be well on my way to a thriving career quicker than I imagined.

In Memoriam

Lindsay Marie Harvey
July 19, 1982 - April 13, 2008

Check my poopdeck!

Another baby design (available here). This one was my little sister's idea. I hope I did it justice. I'm really becoming addicted to using textures and adusting the transparency to give a different feel to the image.

Ugly Fish

Random sketch using Pigma Micron in my moleskine.

Learning to Sew

I periodically read this blog, which features some incredible sewing projects. My favorites are her custom totes and clutches. As I've always been a pretty crafty person, and was also in need of a new purse, I thought I would try to make my own tote. The 1st problem is that I don't really know how to sew. I do have a cheap sewing machine, and have even used it once or twice....but for the most part, I can't sew. Problem 2 is that I have no idea how to make a tote bag. No big deal, I can just buy a pattern, right? Hmmmm....how exactly does one read/use a pattern? I was extra ambitious and decided I wanted a quilted purse. Have I mentioned I can't sew? The only thing I've ever sewn was an apron in 7th grade home economics.

Well, I finished. It took me a week to complete, and I definitely made tons of mistakes along the way. But overall, I think it looks pretty good!

Science in action

A lot of my job is sitting around and waiting for results. Today I had 15 minutes in the lab with nothing to do except wait. So I decided to covertly sketch a new employee who was busy doing her training. I managed to get the basic shapes down, but didn't have time to do much shading before I had to get back to work.

Will Cry for Food

Available here!!!

Fridays off!

I've started a new schedule where I work four 10-hour days with Fridays off every week. This means I don't have time to work on anything new during the week, but also that I will have an entire day to myself that I can spend drawing & painting. With nice weather fast approaching, I really want to spend those days off going out to different places around the city and just sketching for a few hours. Of course it rained all day on my first Friday off, so instead I spent the day finally putting pics from several trips into photo albums. I decided to sketch a few of the photos, so here is the first one. It is the California Lighthouse in Aruba. I went there several years ago....long before I ever thought of a travel sketchbook. The sketch is done using a Micron pen and my travel watercolor set in a moleskine watercolor book.