THEADANAARTS

Saturday, June 13, 2009

I've been taking photos and doing other things instead of drawing

Bottles and Buildings

Friday, February 20, 2009

Another Night in the Mirror

Decided I needed a new Facebook profile picture. I was loving on the ballpoint pen last night, and definitely got into the trance for a little while. There are things I would fix if I were to go back again, but on the whole, I'm satisfied.

Ballpoint pen.

Little Girl

Drawn from a iPhone photo of one of the little girls I babysit. Doing this loose sketchy thing with ballpoint pen after trying a failing to do hard contoured lines. Filling in the small defining planes.

Ballpoint pen.

fishes

Watching Blue Planet and loving the swirling schools of fishes.

Ballpoint pen.

More Cats, Okay, I can't help it.

They are always around, especially when you're laying on the floor. They like to be where people are. I like Chris' feet in this drawing, and his hands. I don't know why Sydney has a big Cheshire cat head.

Ink pen.

Sydney

Sydney has this weird almost human face, which is funny since she seems not to consider herself a cat and hates the other cats. But Chris says that she gets the least love because the other cats are so pushy and demanding and always around, so I decided to draw a portrait of Syd for posterity since she is a fancy lady. She looks like she is lost in the cosmos.

Ink pen.

A Very Busy Valentines Day

Enh. Spent the day working and spent the evening with my sweet boy. Not much time left for drawing, but I tried to record the days highlights with some drawing (and writing). Really good pictures may be worth a thousand words, but I few crappy words are a whole lot better for noting the day's events.

More ballpoint pen, which has it's own charm, I'm realizing.

Hulk Smash!

Finished reading Planet Hulk, lent by Rob. Really very good, and sad and tragic and man, the Hulk just can't get a break. Sketched this from the cover. I have a newfound respect for comics artists. I had a healthy dollop already, but man, that is a LOT of finished drawings. And all that perspective and forshortening and figures and whoa. Could I ever do that? Would I derive satisfaction from drawing the Hulk in five hundred different poses? I think I'd derive satisfaction from being the artist on a finished comic, but wow, is that a lot of work.

Ballpoint pen.

Tiffany Aching

Reread _Wee Free Men_ and _Hat Full of Sky_ and did this quick sketch of the main character. Flat flat flat, I know. Drawing without a visual reference usually results in this. I wonder if this will always be the case or if exercising the drawing muscle every day will help with that. I don't think I get into the same mental space when I draw from my imagination. The act of looking is just so different, and going into that trance and then coming out again to something finished is something I enjoy immensely.

Ballpoint pen.

Shapes that cats make

I feel like I'm cheating when I execute drawings quickly, but some days a quick drawing is all I have the energy for. Despite its quickness, or perhaps because of it, I like this brief look into the many shapes that cats make.

Ink pen.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman

Quick sketch from an old yearbook photo from senior year. I have a lot of love for lines of contour and ignoring shading. Is this part of my personal style? What is that, really?

Ink pen.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Chris, Concentrating

Chris occasionally gets mesmerized enough by something (usually a video game) that I can draw him for a few minutes without him catching me and grumbling. Thanks, tougher-than-expected Necromancers!

Colored pencil.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Hawk

Chris drove me to work this morning, and on the way we passed a hawk that was lying dead on the side of the road. Chris being Chris, he went back after dropping me off and took the bird home. He couldn't figure out how it had died, and judging from the clarity of the eyes, it had died very recently. No bones appeared to be broken, and the feathers were all in a healthy condition. Quite the mystery. It's a beautiful bird, all told, and drawing it was very meditative.

I'm really proud of how this turned out, especially since ink pen with no preliminary sketches can be very unforgiving.

Ink pen.

Random Characters

Did a daily drawing at Bleys' birthday. I like to draw random ovals and circles and then fill them in with faces.

Pencil on paper plate.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Catstle

I hate this and wouldn't even be posting it, but I didn't draw anything else yesterday. Yuck. This sucks.

Colored pencil.

Rooftop Garden Plan

Based on the Square Foot Gardening method. It will be on the rooooooof.

Colored pencil.

Mulberry Mirror

Dragged the bathroom mirror into my drawing nook and used the color Mulberry. Liked how this turned out, especially the spare strokes in the face. Hmm. People use erasers sometimes. I don't think I even have one down here. Not that I really draw with anything erasable anyway. Hmm. Is this okay?

Colored pencil.

The Hours

Nice representation of my very busy day off that also included a free massage! And it was a really good one, too! This was fun to draw, even if its not technically impressive or anything.

That awesome inky ballpoint pen.

Self Portrait

Used a mirror. And a ballpoint pen. Eyes are a little weird, but I like what happened with the mouth. It's nice to not look like I'm wearing massive amounts of lip liner. That's always bothersome.

Inky ballpoint pen, which I like.

Woo Stillers

My lame and late night attempt at a Super Bowl Ring. I wonder what the real one looks like...

Pencil.

Ava the Birthday Girl

Gator and Bun have a happy and healthy four year old daughter! Happy Birthday, Ava-- your party was a lot of fun. Thanks for the cake and ice cream and lasagna, and enjoy all those presents. :)

Ballpoint pen.

Bracelet

Another one to color digitally. Started drawing the beads going around clockwise, it only occurred to me when I was about seven beads from the end that had I paid less attention to the proportions, I could have drawn myself into a corner and not been able to fit them all in. But I did fit them all in. You can check them against the scan of the bracelet itself from a few days ago!

Ballpoint pen.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Today is Thursday

Boots everywhere. House a mess. There are still french fries on the table and I just don't feel like dealing with them. Clothes need to be sorted and put away and washed and I need to make cookies and presents and the bathroom is smelly, but that's okay, because here are some daily drawings.

Felt tip pen is the bizzity bomb.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Scholar Ling AKA Silver Phoenix

Chris has been playing lots of Jade Empire on the new XBOX360, so I've been staring at this character a bunch. Pretty visually interesting game, though its hard to figure out exactly what she's wearing when she's always going around exploding people.

I know that I could go upstairs and draw and have a ton of reference materials, but I am full of excuses and lazy. So I'm just going to be glad that I can still just make stuff up on paper. It's funny, but I am starting to feel less afraid of a blank page. Less fear, but it's still tempting to start writing instead of drawing. I SHOULD try to play around with some new materials, or paper, or location, but the warm warm heater is here in the basement, and my supplies are in the cold cold attic.

Ballpoint pen.

White Cat in a Snowstorm

Remember the joke of drawing a little triangle in black and it being a polar bear in a blizzard? Yep. Also, I was tired! I meant to draw more, I really did.

Black permanent marker.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Good Evening

My silk painting artist friend Diane Tuckman sent me a lovely white ceramic candle holder shown at top right. Max sat still for 30 seconds while I drew him, and we watched more of our Netflixed Rome last night. Yay, Rome. I'm getting to the point in the series where the plot got a bit fuzzy for me, so it's exciting. Same with Battlestar Galactica, but that's besides the point. Look-- three whole shareable drawings in one night!

I love a felt tip pen.

Chris in the style of Dave McKean

He was concentrating very hard on the new XBox game, so I took that as my cue to draw draw draw before he started making faces and telling me not to draw him. It looks very McKeanish, doesn't it? The secret is: no eyelids.

Colored pencil.

Elise in the Land of Contour

Elise is ever-helpful for cracking the artistic whip over my head, but especially when she's had a few drinks and yells, "Don't take that pen off the paper!"

Pen (firmly) on notebook paper.

Rob!

Rob, who just recently joined facebook! Muhahaha!

Pen on notebook paper.

A God for Yesterday

Quick study of a small statue.

Pen on notebook paper.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Recent Beadwork

The leftmost piece is going to whomever it fits better between my mom and my sister. The center piece I made tonight, over at Em's house using her very cool materials. The last piece was commissioned by my mother. I hope she has something that all that pink will look good with, but those are the colors we talked about... :D We'll see if she likes it!

These are made of beads, nylon coated wire, some fancy golden wire, various plastic, wood, bone, minerals, semi-pecious stones, silver findings, glass beads, and glass beads I made myself (the large ones on the bracelet), as well as crimp beads, little wire protector things, silver toggles, and fashioned using needlenose pliers, a crimping tool, and even those funny little right angle needlenose pliers.

How about THAT?

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Today I Made Some Things

See next post.

Colored pencil, nice and sharp.

Blue Bird

From an iPhone photo taken on the Aviary trip on Monday. Quick sketch last night.

Colored pencil.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Braddock Dragon

Drew this while celebrating the inauguration at Coral & Dale's House. Elise saw me staring around the room with sketchbook in hand, trying to focus, and suggested the large dragon perched above the TV. Rawr. This is one of those that I should try digitally painting. Hmm.

Felt tip pen, ballpoint pen.

My Cynical Red Pen

Threw some red marker up over one of the failed Polamalu profiles. I had had a long tiring day and made the mistake of looking at some really nice work over on the Deviant Art site, and well, if there's any response on my part, it is perhaps that I won't know the point of it until I am finished doing it, it being a drawing per day for 365 days. I feel like I'm... exercising. Or maybe exorcising. Maybe both.

Pen, colored pencil.

Polamalu Touchdown

We're going to the Super Bowl! Yay! I made five or six abortive attempts to draw an actual portrait of Polamalu from a photo, and just failed, so I did this cartoony thing instead. It seems a lot happier than I actually felt after failing to draw well, but it exists because Chris said something along the lines of, "How can you be grumpy when the Steelers are going to the Super Bowl?" So... yay!

Colored pencil.

Annoyed at Work

Customer service, while something I can excel at, is not always something I enjoy. I'd like to be as rude as this picture implies, but I'm not, really. I think this was the day I was already annoyed about other stuff. I'm sure Facebook remembers. Drew this at work.

Ballpoint pen.

The Doctor

Shut up. I've really been enjoying the new Doctor Who series, and David Tennant, and if I wish I had a sonic screwdriver, that's my own business. From a photo.

Colored pencil.

The Empress

Fashion magazines are good for something other than teaching you how to properly shape your eyebrows. Sometimes the photo shoots are actually cool and inspiring. I took a little more liberty with this one, because I like how it seemed to be Mother Nature in her bower, even if the original photo was a little more pale and consumptive. Pregnant belly!

Colored pencil.

The First Rule of Fight Club

After indulging in a lot of artistic laziness and whining, I cranked out this Tyler Durden quickly and liked it quite a bit. I really enjoy drawing from photographs, even if I my more cynical side makes me feel like just another Photoshop filter when I do.

Colored pencil.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Restless

Not much point in writing about this one.

Pencils.

Contracepcion

Drawn following my nightly sacrament. I love Middle Ages and Renaissance religious art, and I'm always looking to subvert it for my own mythologies, the earthly as divine and all that. I've never actually taken communion, but I've been taking birth control pills for about a decade. That's some kind of faith, right?

Pen, Markers, Colored pencils.

Not a Good Day

Turns out this was my one day a month where I cry at the slightest provocation. I didn't really think I'd be able to draw much of anything, but here you go!

My pen is very soothing.

SLACKER

Nullianac from Imajica, some random doodles. Not feeling it, really. A theme in the coming days. Woo.

Pen.

Boy

Just some boy I was thinking about. Not a perfect likeness, obviously, but some proper elements.

Pen, markers.

Easter Island Shadows

Drawing from memory is difficult, as is drawing from imagination, as is color, and lighting, and I'm going to go ahead and state for the record that this whole endeavor is hard and largely unsatisfying. I kind of liked how this turned out, though. Cute. Much much better than the other thing I tried to draw that night.

Felt tip pen. Markers.

Waiting at the bus stop

Strange thing, waiting for the bus and watching people go by in their cars. I can see them, smoking cigarettes, eating sandwiches, talking on cellphones, but I can't imagine what they think when they see me, if they see me. So, I took a bit of an outside perspective on this one. I think I'd feel a sorry for me, standing in the cold while they've got their heaters blowing.

Or maybe they think, "Why she's got her foot stuck out at that funny angle?" No, no, I'd say. That's just the way it's drawn. Couldn't get that quite right.

Colored pencils.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Silk WIndows

So... color. Color is tough, because I really like lines. Color is like this whole other subject that's messy and subjective, and often very difficult for me. Except when it's not! I was looking at the little window in my door, and thinking about designing stained glass for it. I started to draw these out, and they reminded me of the silk painting templates I worked with while taking classes with Diane Tuckman.

So these are little silk windows, and I do actually want to turn some of these into silk paintings. I used colored pencil, markers, and a felt tip pen.

One of the Birds

This is from an iPhone photo of one of Dale & Coral's birds. Colored pencil.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Scribble Elf Girl with Butterflies

This is the problem of having big paper and a small scanner. I should really limit myself to letter sized or smaller paper, but this one was unavoidable. When I had some of my coworkers over for the holiday party I hosted, some of the kids did a little coloring and left these scribbles large sheets behind. Loath as I am to throw away any piece of creative work, I decided to use them as my own little Rorschach test. The scribble is in black, my lines are brown.

I used the same technique a few days ago on the 30th of December.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Cow Skull

Nice inky blue pen. Chris' cow skull. Slightly earlier than right before bed, but still the last thing I did all day. Wanted to do a really loose sketchy drawing, but some anal retentive instinct kicked in, and I started outlining planes without really taking a long view of the entire skull. Composition suffered a bit, but I went back in with more sketchiness in mind, and got it going more toward my initial ideas with the shading and contrast.

Friday, January 2, 2009

I <3 Lamp

Day Two: Again, a right before bed sketch. It's a good thing I keep that small pad and pencil right there on the table, too. I kinda like the way this turned out after running it through Auto Contrast in Picasa. It's like inking, but the click of a button instead of inking supplies, which I don't have.

But now that I've got myself thinking about it, I want to do some ink drawings... just like Amy was so fond of doing in high school. *muses*

Bad Kitty Quick Sketch

One of my New Year's Resolutions focused around artistic discipline. I'm going to do a Drawing Per Day in 2009, and this is from the first of January.

I was pretty tired when I made this. One of the big things I'm realizing at Day 4 is that I need to set aside actual real Time in my schedule to draw, and not just make it a last minute thing.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Dwarven Particle Physics

This is a drawing on top of a scribble leftover from the holiday party. Original scribble is in orange.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Model Mayhem

I've been doing a number of photo sessions with 1st Black Studios (aka Rachael's Tyler), and so I made a profile thingie (pending approval), here: http://www.modelmayhem.com/793034

It may include, y'know, photos. Of a professional grade. Eventually.