Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Playing with art

Today was the start of something new again for me. I had so much fun with the Joynal class by Jane Davenport, learning to draw better, I now feel confident to start something fresh.
As you all know, I am always looking for a new art technique to explore. I spent the last 48 hours roaming the net and couldn't find a single thing that was like what I had in mind.
So what to do? Just dive in and make it up as I go. Sometimes the best art comes out when your not thinking about it too much or learning from someone else.
I am totally obsessed with my journals at the moment, in particularly my old children's book journals.
So I begun my new page.
I used my altered vintage girls annual childrens book journal, gesso, paint spritzers, magazine clippings, acrylic paint, graphite pencil, prisma pencils, tombow markers, gel pens and a white and black paint pen. I really wanted to incorporate my own drawings with the shiny magazine clippings.
So here is my page for the 1 August 2013.
I love the whimsy and the different textures and colourings. I am really happy how it turned out and hope to fill my journals pages with this new look I have made.
Thanks for visiting!





Monday, July 29, 2013

Developing a character

This morning I woke with one task in mind. Developing a brand new original whimsical character for my next journal. If you have ever tried this before you would know how hard this is.
You have to think about face styles, body style, hair, choose from millions of types of lips and eyes and ears and noses and hands and feet and clothes...lalalalalalala
Oh my gosh.
Well how did I go about it all you may ask?
First I started with a little research on the ever so faithful google. I looked up favourite artists, downloaded other peoples cute drawings, looked in books and even resorted to looking at a few cloth dolls I have made.

I got them all together on the kitchen table and started looking at what I liked and disliked about each drawing I had gathered. I then tried to sketch all the things I liked into the one character. Sometimes this doesn't always work because they just don't match. For example you can't have a cute toddlers head on a long thin body etc.(Well you can if that's what your after, but I was not.)

With a lot of thinking and a bit of practice I did manage to come up with a new character that i feel fairly confident in capturing over and over within my journal pages. As this is the main thing to look at, you must be able to redraw that person in close likeness each time.

I found that I had a tendency to like certain features such as a flatter oval type head, long flowing hair covering one side of the face, lolly legs and a quite simple face with rosy cheeks.

Below you can see my sketch page surrounded by inspiration, with some practice sketches and in the middle of my sketch page is a little character that started developing.


At this stage I'm still not quite happy. She isn't quite my own yet. So I kept on. Here are some ore rough drawings.

it was at this point that I felt the nose and eyebrow were right and the little cheeks, but my character still needed some fine tuning. Kept on experimenting with hair and faces and her little body and clothing will develop later on. A lot of people name their character of course, now this is the super hard bit. I think as I develop a sound understanding of how she is drawn her name will just appear.



 Ill keep working on her tomorrow and show you the end result of my new character in my journal as soon as I'm finished altering her. She still needs a full body to work on and a clothing range. I want to try and keep it all as whimsical as I can. I think I need to also work on a mood board for her. Basically a mood board is her face done over and over with different expressions such as, happy, sad, angry, etc.

Well this sure has been fun. If you have developed your own little character I would love to see, so let me know!

Bye for now,
Sonya





Sunday, July 28, 2013

Journal Play

So I have been so happy in the course I am doing right now with Jane davenport. Throughout the lessons we have created pixie's, mermaids, fairies, unicorns and I have learn't so many drawing tricks. I am in  love with the mixed media journal I have created. It is by far my favourite journal now.
Yesterday I created these whimsical giraffe twins. The aim was to put a whimsical face on any animal we desired. Jane added antlers and ears to her whimsy sisters. I chose lovely long necked giraffes for a bit of quirky fun. Here they are. I am all ready to add my journalling.


Today I also played with a bit of my old art. Using my photo computer program which was just a bit of fun, I tinkered with my images. It was great to see how my art takes on a totally new look with a bit of color saturation and tweaking. I think the images would be great to use in another journal. Really the possibilities are endless. i feel some more creative juice about to start spilling out onto my pages.


Original                                                                              Enhanced 1
                    
 Enhanced 2

 Original
                     Enhanced
                 

                                              and I particularly like how the following ones turned out.

    Original                                                                                        Enhanced







                                                                   

                                       


                        


Friday, July 19, 2013

A New Art Course

Hi everyone!
It has been some time since I have posted as I have had a bit of a art vacation. Meaning I've been knitting and crocheting instead LOL.
So now after knitting 2 jumpers and a scarf and my arms are killing me, its time to get back to my true love of drawing and painting.
Many times after having a break from art I feel the need for an online 'inspirational' course, to get the good juices flowing through the fingers once more.
This time I have selected a course by the wonderful fellow Australian artist, Jane Davenport.
I have taken a course with her previously (I heart drawing), learning to draw fashion type figures and faces and although not really my taste of art, I learnt many things I didn't know about illustrating the human figure. (Jane has some great secret tips she has designed herself to teach you)  Before that course I only drew faces, and after time that can become very repetitive.
Now I am taking the exciting online course called 'Joynal'. Joynal  is all about whimsy and magical fairytale creatures and beings in a beautiful journal. Again we will study faces and figures, but this time, leaning more towards whimsical rather than fashion or realism.
The lessons are quite pricey at $165.00 and it has taken me a year of consideration to finally take the plunge but now that I have started I wish I had leapt sooner. It is so much fun and Jane also shows you how she alters old children's books into art journals which I absolutely adore!
If your interested in Jane's courses she has a few different ones to choose from for all levels of artists and different prices. Visit her at :  www.janedavenport.com
Our first lesson is to do a warm up drawing of a face and the second drawing of a figure. Here are mine.