Greetings Commrades! Thanks to you all for the fun of this month! I have loved doing this, and thanks to Michelle for the idea/link to TAD! It’s been great for the FLOW. 
Following on yesterday’s theme, Russian poster style mashup with aquatic life…
i like russian poster style, and lately i’ve been wanting to draw a giant squid, because someone at work had a cool sweatshirt with some on it. but i opted for an octopus, and decided to mash it up with the russian poster thing. i’m not sure if the green takes away from the russian feeling, but i like the result anyway. long live the sharpie! i also like that octopusses have so many legs, and the russian text on the drawing translates into “Our strengths are uncountable.”
and so they are…
In California, the camelias were in bloom. In MN, nothing is in bloom…yet. It was nice to get a preview.
Crochet amigurumi
Wool wrist cuff (fastens with gigantic snap)
Filigree brass, glass and wood necklace.
Magnets, glass and paper.
Gift tag
Paper box
Pouch (made from two pockets off an old wool coat and other wool bits)
I’ve been increasingly unhappy with the sloppiness of my recent submissions. I admit, this was mainly due to my exhaustion after a long work day and forcing myself to get something, anything, finished and submitted. Since today was my day off, I decided to spend a little more time on my submission. My goal was to attempt to recreate the look of an engraving. I don’t think I succeeded, but I learned much about the medium.
Day 22 Thing: More doodling in the paperback. This time with rough, spirally circles which I actually expanded upon by using them in my …
Day 23 Thing: A very rough, preliminary idea of what my business cards could look like. I am struggling to find something I can repurpose/reuse for cards (and will probably just go for professionally printed instead). But in the meantime I found a previously-painted section of watercolor paper that I then sketched over…
I would like to go for a unique shape/size such as this square version, and may go back to punched holes rather than circles…
A few days ago I saw this tutorial on Crafty Chi’s blog about making rubber stamps from old corks. I meant to do it then, but other crafts called to me and after seeing Kimberly Pye’s Korkinesse yesterday I was reminded that I hadn’t yet to try making the cork stamps. So today I made one of a little bird.
The image reverses when stamped, something I forgot. Luckily, I chose something that didn’t matter. Carving into the cork was easier than I anticipated, but it did make a mess and I had to be careful around the more narrow areas. The cork surface isn’t the best for stamp. It’s uneven, and the holes need to be filled in. I’d have to get a matching ink pen to fill in the gaps, and as you can see I used a ballpoint pen on the one on the right and it shows. This was definitely fun and inexpensive, using materials I already have so I think I’ll be playing around with these little guys.
I didn’t even get started on this until around 10:30 pm. Completely the wrong type of paper for marker. I wish I had been alert enough to do justice to the hair.
One day, when I have ample time and am not exhausted, I might be able to do one of these I’m actually happy with.
I drew these from photographs, for an illustration I’m making for my job. It’s for a story about the other kind of WASPs—white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I’d never tried to draw a real bug before (though I did draw a finger puppet and a pin two years ago); they’re, um, complicated.
Update: Here’s the final illustration—
Another busy day, and tomorrow will be worse. Expect tomorrow’s thing very late.
For some reason, I believe that if I can’t draw in ink, then I can’t really draw. I invested in a fancy micron marker to legitimize my ink experiments. This was the best one I did on the night of 2/17.
Once I get this “ink is king” notion out of my system, I’ll return to graphite, my fave medium.
So, what does one do when their thing is absolute crap? They start all over again.
My mistake was that on the first drawing, I attempted to do a marker wash over pencil and do my hatching later. Big, big mistake. Copic marker seems to lock pencil in, therefore completely ruining the drawing. Stubborn fool that I am, I tried to fix it and ended up with a crapfest. I almost abandoned it, deciding instead to do two things tomorrow. But I don’t work like that. I’d have stopped posting all together.
So I did another. Not possessing the fortitude to hatch my shades, I decided to do my tonal work in a sort of jazz-era cubist fashion. It’s dramatic, it’s different, and I’m not sure I like it.
