As is standard with me, as soon as I say I'm going to be on top form, posting on my blog daily, I post nothing for weeks. I should just not say anything. Plus, I promised a month of inspirational drawing ideas. Well, I do kind of have one of those for you. Quite unintentionally really.
So, this was yesterday. A small group of us had planned to meet for our friend
Karrie Brown's birthday in what was being called a 'Doodle and Afternoon Tea'. A sort of mini sketchcrawl.
After the first destination we had arranged to meet at was closed for 'emergency maintenance' our plans had to change, so we ended up at
Staircase House - the oldest town house in Stockport - and while we didn't draw in there we (some of us) raided their dressing up box.
The kind people of the museum even let us take the costumes out on the town. Or specifically to the market. So with three of the group dressed up, in costumes that spanned the ages and messed with history, the rest of us got to draw them in various parts of the market.
It struck us that this is a great idea. Some of us already do urban sketching, and sketchcrawls, and we also do alternative life-drawing - with clothed models - but this brought those two things together.
So, just like above, getting models to pose in-situ was really good fun. And, at moments, also quite surreal.
So, that's my suggestion/idea. Give it a go. If you know anyone nuts enough to walk around in costume, in public places, rope them in. Otherwise hire someone! We intend to do more of this in the future.
I love it when things work out like that. Serendipity, I guess they call it.
Then it was back to afternoon tea and more drawing.
Oh, and here's another idea. Something I try to do lately. I always try to take some different pens and tools out with me on these little jaunts. Whether its a sketchcrawl or life drawing. I take things that I wouldn't normally draw with.
It forces you to use something else apart from your old favourites. Cos if you ain't got it with you you cant use it.
Like yesterday, not a fine liner in sight. I took marker pens (Letraset Aqua-Markers to be specific) and a brush pen. So, I know it's a real old cliché, but my idea for today is to get out of your comfort zone. I did and I'm pretty chuffed with the results.
Just a quick glimpse at what I'm playing with right now ... more elephants of course. Though I shall be starting on a new animal soon as well. Experimenting, I love it.
Wishing you a wonderful week. Cheers.
The Jaguar E-type has recently been voted Britain's favourite classic cars in
this poll. I was commissioned to produce a drawing of it. It's not surprising that it is in the number one spot as it really is a thing of beauty.
I used pencil (a soft thick 4B) and marker pens, to make this drawing, both of which are drawing materials that I've recently started using. I've never been much of a pencil girl. It doesn't really do it for me, but I kinda like these soft pencils now and again. The marker pen has been a revelation and I can't get enough of them these days. I did all the darker tones and areas with the markers, and it struck me that at one point I would have filled all that in with tiny cross hatched fine lines. Just the thought of doing that, now, brings me to tears.
You can see the rest of the list of Britain's favourite cars, and if you vote you can actually win this drawing
HERE.
As I was whinging about, in my previous post, these days I just seem to be drawing on-the-go. Stood in a café or on a street corner.
Which has also had an effect on the pens I've been using.
When you need to get the information down on the page quickly (it's been very cold here) the fine nibbed pens I would have normally used are just not going to cut it.
I'm actually really enjoying using markers. Plus, more recently, my eyes have been paying the price for years of obsessively drawing tiny things.
So, using markers actually mean I can actually see what I'm actually drawing. Plus, they help get drawings down on the page very quickly. As, I said it's been very cold.
Exhibit A....
This is one of the projects I've been working on recently, for an art college class. Yes, birds and mail art. Wonderful. Loads of cutting, slicing, collaging, and then drawing and painting, was done. I ended up with a couple of options to work on, and liked them both but ended up picking this one below for the final review.
I went through a bit of exploration and research and managed to develop quite a fascination with ravens, sifting through poems such as Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven', folklore, fairy-tales, fables--almost picked Aesop's The Crow and the Pitcher--so it isn't too surprising that I went with this pair in the end ... In Norse mythology, Huginn (from Old Norse "thought") and Muninn (Old Norse "memory" or "mind") are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world of Midgard, and bring information and news back to the god Odin. Flying messengers. Perfect.
I've depicted them as a white and black raven, and addressed the envelope to them. Their names are written in ancient Nordic runes just above their respective beaks. Yes, there's a message inside as well, written on rice paper 'parchment'. Private, of course. Let's hope that the envelope will eventually be returned to sender (me!) with a postal mark to show that it's been in the system. Here's a glimpse of the bit of mess I made while researching and working on the project ...
Here's the back of the envelope with a depiction of the Nordic mythical Tree of Life, Yggdrasil ...
The ravens and the tree were paper cuttings (my sketch book suffered somewhat) that I painted (watercolour for the birds and some marker pen on the tree) and collaged onto the envelope. On the front I'd also glued crosswords (to symbolize thought, naturally) onto the original white envelope, and then placed a thin sheet of rice paper over the whole thing so that it looked like parchment, slightly aged. I quite like the result, what do you think?
The other attempt at mail art was slightly a different one: I made an envelope from black paper and then cut straight into it, collaging and shading only the white bird on the front. Then I placed white paper inside the envelope so that it showed through the snipped out leaves, flowers and insects.
Simple, but I think it's quite cute. The back is a more abstract representation of a (meaner) raven and its wings, can you see it?
I did like this black and white bit of mail art, but once I'd begun on the research for the winged messengers of Odin, I fell in love with them and that was pretty much that. I think I made the right choice picking them as my final piece, what do you think? There are infinite possibilities for both options though, and I may end up using them somehow on cards and other goodies, so keep an eye out for them up at the Floating Lemons shops in the near future ...
Meanwhile, I wish you a fantastic week. Cheers.
Still without internet! I'm sitting at the pub down the road trying to finish up the newsletter for this month as well as the free printable "I Choose" design for October. Pretty apt once again I'd say as I've definitely been scaling heights this past couple of months. The move to the United Kingdom has been a huge one and real life intervened with all the usual little bumps and glitches that accompany such a big event. But ... I've found a temporary home in the beautiful countryside of Oxfordshire, the dogs are happy, the friends are hugely supportive and art college has been an amazing experience so far.
Here's the design for this month:
My 'mountains' have been almost as numerous of late, and just as colourful. I wouldn't change a thing. I'm hoping to be back online by the end of next week - apparently there's a fault in our landline and an engineer has to come out and check it. Fingers crossed. Let's hope the landscape ahead is slightly less bumpy.
Oh yes almost forgot, the above design is of course available as a free printable (along with the past 9 monthly designs for 2014) for all subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just click here.
I should be back to regular blogging soon! Wishing you mountains of joy for the coming week. Cheers.
Remember the exciting news I've been holding onto these past few months? Well, it's all happening now: I've moved from France to the English countryside. Why? I'm going back to school! To be precise, I'm going to attend, for the first time ever, art college. There's a ton of reasons for my doing so, and I'll chat about them as we go along to classes together this year, but it's a huge step for me and wonderfully exciting. I'm looking forward to learning tons, and to adding depth to my work and my life. It's never too late.
Which is why everything has been slightly haywire, upside-down, inside-out and choatic lately, and I have to apologise again for the lack of updates here, but you'll have to admit that it's for a brilliant reason and that you can't help but feel happy for me ...
I did manage to find time here and there to tackle a few more Spoonflower daily drawing challenges, though I was left far behind during the packing and moving bit of my journey. I'm still going to carry on and complete their themes despite the fact that the spoonchallenge is officially over today. Still, it keeps me therapeutically content having my pencils, pens, and trusty moleskine journal in hand.
Here are another 5 of the Spoonchallenges:
#SpoonChallenge 6: LEMON
#SpoonChallenge 7: BOOK
#SpoonChallenge 8: ARROW
#SpoonChallenge 9: TEA
#SpoonChallenge 10: TOAST
I have a ton of mundane practical things to take care of before courses begin mid-September, but today is Sunday and it's lovely and sunny here in the English countryside, something not to be taken too much for granted. So I'm having a short but, I think, well-deserved break with tea and the papers in the garden of wonderfully welcoming friends where I'm staying for the moment. Join me ...
Wishing everyone a glorious week. Will update again very soon! Cheers.
I've been so extra busy this past couple of months that I've barely had time to draw. So you'd be forgiven for considering me certifiably insane when I tell you that I joined the one month Spoonflower daily drawing challenge ... but you see, it's because I couldn't make time to draw that I joined it. I needed that push, excuse, motivation ... to pick up the pens or pencils again and indulge in some much needed creative therapy.
And it's been wonderful. Fine, I was a bit late with a couple of the pieces (busy busy busy, remember?) but so far I've managed to keep up - by the skin of my teeth perhaps, but still. Here are the first 5 themed sketches, drawn in my moleskine sketchbook:
1. CACTUS
2. MOUNTAIN
3. TREE
4. LANDSCAPE
5. RIVER
I'm quite pleased with myself. I had tons of fun, and there are loads of ideas that I can use and carry on playing with, from each of the drawings. But the main thing is (have I mentioned?), I had tons of fun.
One of my in-progress pieces was also featured in the Spoonflower blog round-up of drawings from week 1, how absolutely cool is that? Can't wait for the coming week - and it's not too late to join the daily challenge if you wish to. Just pick that pen/pencil/brush up, and then #SpoonChallenge the results onto your social media ... for details and the daily topic, check out the Spoonflower blog. Wishing you a fantastic week. Cheers.
This piece was drawn in coloured pencils as an assignment for my MATS Bootcamp e-course. It started off as a preparatory sketch in my moleskine, but I got carried away and ended up putting down layers and layers of colour. This was the result, "I Choose to Embrace the Unknown":
As always, I'm offering all the "I Choose" designs monthly as A4/A3 free printables to those who sign up for the Floating Lemons newsletter, so if you want to print them out at home for your personal use, or pass them onto friends, just click HERE to subscribe.
I sketched out quite a few ideas before the drawing above insisted on picking itself as the final. Here are some of them, and the prep sketches that refused to stay preparatory ...
All in all a wonderful nautical exploration. Hope you've enjoyed a peek at it as much as I enjoyed working on the whole project. Wishing you a fantastical day. Cheers.
I'm working on a few different projects at the moment, all in progress, all squeezed in whenever I have a few minutes free. Here's where I was at the beginning of the week:
I'm glad to say that I'm pretty much done with the "I Choose to Fill Myself with Positive Energy" text design for the April free printable (for subscribers to the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter of course!), and I'll reveal all when the time comes. Meanwhile ...
I went a completely different direction with my Jelly assignment for MATS Bootcamp, and have managed to totally confuse myself. Should I go with something more along the lines of last weeks sketches, here, or stick to a slightly more geometric rendering of jelly moulds, as above? argh. We shall see. I may have to sketch a lot more jelly before deciding.
Meanwhile, here's the progress on a sketch I'm doing that will, perhaps, end up as a Thinking of You card up at the Two Smiles for HP (Hewlett-Packard) site.
I drew it, scanned it in and decided to experiment with some brand new digital pastel brushes that I purchased from Kyle T Webster. Oh my, I love them. Now that I've been deprived of Corel Painter (it just will not work since the last OS update and I don't want to invest and buy the upgrade only to discover that doesn't work either. I was, needless to say, hugely disappointed) these, along with his real watercolour brushes, are making digital painting a delight once more.
Here's a quick peek at what I've done so far ...
I'm using them exactly as I would my pencils on paper and there are layers and layers of colour being built up. Still have a way to go as yet, but I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out so far.
Back to work! Wishing you a wonderful day loving what you do and doing what you love. Cheers.
I've been working hard this week on some of the many changes that are going on behind the scenes in my life. But managed to take time off to play with the watercolours and marker pens. Painted a Tree of Hearts - no idea where that came from but enjoyed myself in the process - and then began work on some sketches for MATS Bootcamp, an exploration of jelly!
Am not sure where the tropical fruit jellos, or cupcakes or mice came from but I had fun with them. I'm trying to capture that gorgeous translucent gloss of the jelly and I may have to continue with watercolour now and see how that develops.
I'll leave you with an oldie tune, let me know if you remember it!
Jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibble wobble, wibble wobble, Jelly on the plate.
WIshing you a day full of inspiration. Cheers.
This will be the last of the cupcakes on this sweet-obssessed week, I promise. Well, for just a little while anyway ...
I've been working on cleaning up and digitally repainting the Quirky Cupcakes that I doodled at the beginning of the week, so I'll show you those first ... one with a blue boat balanced atop a sea of icing, another with quirky red hearts, one with a cheerful red cherry perched up high, and finally an pink and white iced cupcake with colourful round sprinkles.
Had enough of cupcakes yet? I hope not, as I have one more ... I used the Photo Inspiration: Pink Cupcake from earlier this week and digitally painted over it to produce the pink iced cupcake below:
It's a completely different look and style from the ones above it, that were doodled with marker pens and scanned in. I quite like both interpretations really.
I'm beginning to think that the Quirky Cupcakes might make for a cute pattern collection ... even on bedsheets and wallpaper, perhaps for a kids room? A cupcakes shower curtain? Well, I'm going to give that a go next week and will show you the results once that's done.
Which one of the above cupcakes would you eat first? Cheers.
I love the fact that I'm putting a doodle up for the first day of the New Year, as this year I'd really like to approach my art with a more relaxed feel, and put my perfectionist-bully away -- and these little sketches are so enjoyable, drawn with less 'serious' attention to having a 'final result' in mind.
The fact that this particular doodle is of a heart is perfect too, as it's a reflection of my gratitude for everything in my life: being of sound body and sound mind, having a roof over my head and food in my mouth, and being able to work at something I love, as well as having such amazing, positive support from my family and friends, both off and on-line.
Here is the original doodle, sketched out in a hand-made book crammed full of lovely, coloured kraft papers that I found at one of the local markets. There's a particular joy I find in drawing in a book that has been created with love, especially when you get to actually meet the people who crafted it so beautifully.
And here's the doodle in close-up ...
As usual I got carried away, cleaned it up and then played with colours, placing it against ... red (the original), blue (see below), lime green, yellow (I didn't put those up here as I thought it might be toooo much), then changed the black outline to white and set it against a pink and black colour scheme ... and really, I could have covered all the colours of the rainbow, I was having so much fun, but I stopped there. For now.
Valentine's Day is coming up, and as we're trying to get some new designs up for it, my Heart Motif (in all its colour variations) will be joining the queue, so watch out for it on cards and gifts at my online stores soon!
2012 was my year of education and of building a stronger foundation for the future. I've made huge changes in my life and work, all quite amazing, and I'm now hoping to build on those, and look forward to exciting challenges this year. I am filled with gratitude.
I have a long way to go as yet, but I'd really like to thank my online friends who've been with me from the beginning of my journey, when I stumbled around trying to draw straight lines (of course I now know that they don't have to be straight, but I had to figure that one out bit by bit), and those of you who have recently joined me, for being so hugely supportive. I would never have continued with my art journey these past 6 years, without the encouragement and motivation I found online. Blessings, and a brilliant 2013 to all of you. Cheers.
I tend to doodle whenever I have a bit of free time (rare I know, but not highly unusual), so I have bits and pieces scribbled everywhere and I've been going through them in search of inspiration for patterns and art.
Here's one that I drew, with marker pens (or felt tip pens), in one of my little moleskines and that I'm seriously considering turning into a pattern collection ...
I do like the colours I picked for this. What do you think? A viable pattern source? I shall work on it and let you know how it goes. Cheers.
Original doodle art © Mariana Musa for Floating Lemons
More creative exercises to play with. This time I picked up my black pen and scribbled unplanned 'marks' on a page, then decided they somewhat resembled leaves and so drew a whole lot of those, spacing them out in a grid. After which I sketched out their outlines, and finally, still exploring and playing (couldn't stop myself!), I added colour.
The original marks were made on paper but I scanned that and the outlines were worked on in Photoshop. I filled the colour in with marker pens on paper as well, and that too was then scanned in and finished up in Adobe Photoshop. Had tons of fun.
Now I just have to figure out what my next step might be ... Cheers!
BTUWDSAW2S3D
Liked this doodle enough to fill it in with colour. Just for fun. Cheers.
I am, very slowly, learning more about Surface Design. And discovering that I'm loving it. It's certainly not a simple process, but I do love puzzles and that probably helps, as putting the separate pieces together to make a cohesive (and aesthetically pleasing!) whole is definitely a large part of the overall process. I just hope that I'm getting it right.
Following on from my Daisy Joy, I've drawn 5 Poinsettia plants in the same style, and attempted once more to create a pattern from them. Here's one of the painted Poinsettias, and below that are the fabrics I've designed from them.
As the Poinsettia plant is so closely associated with Christmas, I've picked cheery seasonal colours for the backgrounds ...
Poinsettia Joy dots Fabric Collection
Poinsettia Joy red Fabric Collection
Poinsettia Joy green
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Doodling again, in my little Moleskine journal. Marker pens, Pilot drawing pen. Very therapeutic, though I wouldn't want to speculate on what it says about my state of mind. At least the colours are relatively calming ... Cheers!
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Rocket red yellow
A few months ago my sister asked me to design a space rocket for the birthday party of a young wannabe-astronaut, an event she was helping out with. So I drew her the above image and apparently it was very well-received by the little spaceboy.
I took another look at it recently and decided to work on it a bit more, so I redid the rocket in 5 different colour combinations before uploading the lot onto just about all the available products at Zazzle. Here they are:
Rocket blue green Rocket blue pink
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These little digital doodles of mine are nothing particulary special as far as Art (with a capital A) is concerned, I know. They aren't meant to be. They are bits of colourful fun that pop into my mind throughout the day, are quickly sketched down into my book with marker pens, scanned in, and then digitally painted over whenever I have the time to do so.
I like them. They're cheerful and bright ... and perhaps they're trying to tell me that somewhere deep within this rather cynical husk there's still, rather well-hidden perhaps, a sense of uncomplicated joy left.
Above is Colored Pencils and below is a Red Coffee Cupcake. Enjoy.
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Another one of my doodles, originally drawn in marker pens in my Moleskine Ideas Book and then digitally painted in Corel Painter 11.
I'm a bit behind with everything -- I've been working on a job, trying to sort out the business side of things, and have just completed a clean-out of my computers by reinstalling the operating systems ... always a stressful procedure although this time it went relatively well and I didn't end up bashing my head against any walls. Still, it takes two days to back everything up, reinstall programmes, then transfer the lot back. But it's all done!
I'm itching to lose myself in a good, long, therapeutic coloured pencil drawing, but I'll have to wait another week as I have a long to-do list that's screaming for attention. Priorities. Cheers.
Pink Owl cards and matching gifts are at: Pink Owl at Floating Lemons @Zazzle.
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Every Sunday I make the attempt to pry myself away from my computer, or whatever I'm drawing at that moment, and just go sit still for a while on the sofa. Taking a Break, I think it's called. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't. Why do I force myself to do this? Because I've discovered that my one remaining brain cell truly needs that time in order to process everything I've seen, heard, smelt, touched and absorbed during the week ... and churn it all out into ideas for drawings.
I normally have my large Moleskine ideas journal with me, and just start doodling. Thinking processes are on pause (difficult for me to do I swear) and images are instead allowed to flow through freely. Some of them work and are turned into drawings, some become colourful doodles, others just die away or wait on the page to be rediscovered some other time. I thought I'd take you through one of those little doodle ideas and my attempt to bring it to life ...
Here's the first scribble on a small corner of the page:
I liked him. Not an original idea by any means but then what is, nowadays? Then I drew him again on a separate bit of sketchbook paper, and coloured him in roughly with marker pens:
After which I scanned him into Corel Painter and started the basic painting:
The finishing touches and a clean-up in photoshop:
After which I worked on opening up that little tummy cupboard to place a gift inside it:
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