ICAD Cards: #45 - 49

Hey guys! I'm back with you guys again today, and this time with an ICAD update. Sorry that I wasn't able to post on the blog yesterday, but I've decided that I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I don't have to post on the blog EVERY day in order to be a success, which was pretty much my mindset before. I'll make it my goal to post every day, but if there's ever a day when I just don't feel in the mood, I'm not going to push it. I'm just going to do a post when I feel like it. Which is pretty much every day anyways.

So. Let's get started, shall we? Today I have a total of five cards to share with you guys, and each of these cards was done on the lined side with a pencil. These are my first pencil cards. And I rather liked the way that the majority of them turned out. I guess I was going for a sort of mini series. The first card was just playing around with different three - dimensional boxes in different shapes. I just wanted to work with these shapes; I've been drawing these little boxes for fun for a while now. And I just wanted to do them on a card. Don't ask me why, because I honestly don't know.

The next card that I want to share with you was composed of a bunch of noses. None of these are extremely good, but that's why we practice, am I right? I was working with realistic looking noses on this card, though I could have easily thrown in a couple of cartoon or manga noses into the mix, as I do with some of my later cards. I learned, from my dad, that noses are primarily drawn with shading. Though I think that part of the reason that these noses don't look very good is because they aren't part of a face. I mean, if the nose is part of a drawing of a face, then you can work the shading into the face as well, making it look better overall. I don't know though. That could just be a guess. Though I have done faces in the past with this type of nose, and they turned out fine.

The next card I was playing around with some different types of eyes. I did a pair of cartoon eyes, a single realistic eye, and a couple of manga eyes. I wanted a pretty good mix on this card; I might even go back to it. I'm not sure. I think my favorite eye is the manga one to the far left. I just love the shape of it. 

The next card is composed solely up of different sketches of lips. I did these in different ways; tried out different shapes for the different "layers" that create lips, tried different textures, different methods of shading, different lengths and heights, etc. I just really wanted to have fun with this. There are no lips here that are extremely "realistic", per say. But with a bit more texture, a few of them could be.

And then, of course, my final drawing that I want to leave you guys with this evening is a card that I completed just this evening. It was also done with pencil, the same as the rest of the cards, and on the lined side of the paper index card. I did a mandala. I think this is my first mandala for this challenge, and as I hadn't done one in a long while, I found it quite pleasing to do. It was quieting, comforting, and gave me a chance to play with line and design. And it was fun.

Anyways. That's all I have for you guys tonight. Tomorrow I will most likely be sharing with you guys my FINAL Summer of Color 2012 collection, and may or may not show a collective view of all of the papers. And maybe I'll mention something about the idea that I have for these papers that I've been doing. I'll see you guys then.

Realistic Tiger Drawing

Yo all you peoples!! Okay, so I'm back once more for a post with some more of my art. I'm glad that I'm finally managing to get into at least somewhat of a rhythm with my posting here, because I really like sharing it with you all! I guess I can only hope that you enjoy looking at it as much as I like creating and sharing it. So anyways, as a little idea of what I'd like to do, is to post on here daily. I know that sounds impossible, but I really think that it would encourage me. I don't know why I think that, I just do.

So looking back to the first picture on today's post, you see an art journal page with a zebra painted background and a little zebra doodle. This was a printable piece from Milliande's page, and it was also from one of her prompts. I know I'm a little late to the party as this prompt initially came out on January 1st, but when I find a good art journaling prompt series, I just can't help but play! It's simply not in my nature!

So as we look at this page, the first thing that probably pops out at you is the zebra. That's the prompt. Z for zebra. The zebra type background was drawn by me, freehand, and then painted with a paintbrush and acrylic paints. Black and white. If you look at the white sections up close however, you can see where some of the black pain mixed in and created gray. Though that's not quite what I was seeing for the page, I let it go anyways.

I added the doodle and a couple of spritz of glimmer mist, then stamped a few words and doodled a bit with a marker. So far I am kind of liking where the page is going, but it's far from done. I don't like it currently. But I have a vision for it, so I'm going to keep going and try it out anyways. As far as I know, it should work. And nobody's going to tell me otherwise. :P

Next up on the list of things to show you guys is a card. It's a card for today's challenge on 365 Cards. To use a bit of pink on a masculine card. Now I'm not so much of a card person, but when I do make them, I have fun with it. So I don't know why it doesn't happen more often. You see, I think what happened was when I discovered art journaling, the more structure aspect of cards and scrapbooking just didn't seem fun. The pleasure just disappeared. And when I'm crafting, the last thing I want it to feel like is a chore and that I "have" to do it. I need to have fun.

That's what gave me the idea to start putting pictures in my art journals. That would give it the same type of art journaling pleasure, with the pictures, memories, and practicality of a scrapbook. I may try that out tomorrow, though I'm not sure. I'm considering joining a monochromatic challenge for scrapbooking and entering art journal picture pages instead of the average type of layout. *shrugs* We'll see.

So now I've got another crochet/yarn arts type project to show you guys. I do quite a bit of crochet and knitting work over time, and if you've ever done that for any extended period of time, you know that you come up with tons of little scrap ends that are really short - anywhere from 6" to 3 feet. That you can't do ANYTHING with, but feel horrible throwing them away. So here's the deal. I had been stashing these little thread ends for about a year when it finally dawned on me - why not just create my own pattern just to use these up?

It's done entirely in single crochets, making it extremely simple, and it's fun to work up since you are constantly changing color, thus you never get bored of the project. Plus, all of the little thread ends are constant reminders and memories of finished/half finished projects that have fond memories attached to them; who would have thought that yarn could be so sentimental? I sure didn't. :)

And now, what you've all been waiting for; my first EVER realistic drawing. All in pencil, on an ATC sized cream cardstock. I can't tell you how long I spent on this single card - it was for a swap I'm in, and I thought it was worth a shot. If I had to give it a guess, this single card cost me about 3 hours of my life. And 2 of those were spent perfecting the eye. I guess you can imagine how late I stayed up last night. :P I thought I couldn't draw, but I guess I was wrong. Okay, very wrong.

This is a perfect example of how you should never doubt yourself when it comes to art. I spent four to five years thinking that there was no way I could POSSIBLY draw anything realistic. So I resisted the temptations I had to try. But here I am, my first try EVER to do something realistic and it turned out almost photographic. I know. It's strange. But don't doubt yourself. I learned that the hard way.