Used watercolour pencils for these, in attempt to play with the unfamiliar looser feel of brush and paint, while still managing to control finer details with the far more familiar pencils. I did several base washes for the background texture and used pencil on the final layers for the bitsy bits. Discovered that the quality of the watercolour paper makes a HUGE and wonderful difference too. Learning as I go along.
As for the macarons, I found them in a new stall at our Friday morning market. Such lovely vibrant colours. Had to buy them! Especially as they were obviously home-made and thus wobbly, wonky, slightly squished with bits falling off ... thus quite perfect as far as I was concerned.
My problem once I've finished any drawing is the design part of the whole process. As I have no formal training whatsoever, I find it truly difficult to figure out how to present my drawings so that they look appealing on the products posted for sale at the online stores. It's tough and sometimes takes far too long as I fiddle around with ideas. I normally end up uploading two designs: one of the drawing exactly as it is against a white background, boring but safe; and two, with whatever background I end up with -- here's what I did with these macarons:
Not quite sure how well that works as I've been looking at it far too long and thus have lost all sense of judgement. Just plain lost all sense, really. Wish I could take some courses in basic design. Am exhausted now as I've been working pretty much non-stop for weeks. My nose has drawn blood from the grind-stone. I've a drawing in progress (faithful pencils again) that I shall complete slowly, but I may go back to doodling for a bit to give my fuzzy brain cell a chance to re-energise. Cheers.
5 Macarons and 5 Macarons stripes gifts and cards at Floating Lemons at Zazzle.
I'm posting all 3 variations here. Wasn't sure if I was going to post this first watercoour attempt at all, but fortunately I'm no longer as easily embarrassed by my mistakes as I was when, er, younger. It's my first attempt at watercolour in ages and I've only ever 'wet the brush' before, so please forgive the utter awkwardness of the piece. I did have tons of fun playing with the paints. It's just obvious that I need a LOT more practice!
Not one to give up easily on anything, I decided to get the watercolour pencils out and see if I could "fix" the above painting. Here's the result:
Love the vibrancy of the pencil colours! I may use these more often, they just zing off the page and they went on smoothly over the paint. It took longer to finish than I'd anticipated, but then isn't that true of anything worthwhile? It is far less detailed than it would have been had I started off with pencils, and is more a stylized version, but I'm not unhappy with the result.
I then placed it into photoshop, separated the tomatoes from the background to prepare them for uploading onto products at my stores, and then placed them back onto the digitally 'repainted' background once I'd cleaned them up a bit. Here's the result just so you can play "Spot the differences". You shouldn't really be able to spot them immediately, as the intention is to keep the cleaned up piece as close to the original as possible.
How did I do? Well, I'm definitely going to keep painting. Might try acrylics next but perhaps I'll find a less ambitious subject for my first piece. Cheers.
Well, Having drawn Bertha I had to do Bella as well. So here she is, And I've included the step-by-step progress as I did in the previous drawing. Still a lot to learn but I'm pretty pleased with these first attempts at watercolour pencil :) Here's the final drawing with water added and some touching up with the pencils after ...
Here it is with just coloured pencil before the addition of water:
And here's the first pencil sketch:
And finally, the photograph I used as reference. I miss my dogs!
Well, Having drawn Bertha I had to do Bella as well. So here she is, And I've included the step-by-step progress as I did in the previous drawing. Still a lot to learn but I'm pretty pleased with these first attempts at watercolour pencil :) Here's the final drawing with water added and some touching up with the pencils after ...
Here it is with just coloured pencil before the addition of water:
And here's the first pencil sketch:
And finally, the photograph I used as reference. I miss my dogs!
Red Hot Mug interpreted as a card and Love card on Zazzle :D
I miss my Daylight Lamp!! I used it to draw by, in the evenings, so I could still see the true colour of my pencils. As it is, I had to stop last night in the middle of this drawing as I no longer knew what reds I was using. and I continued it today in the clear light of day, sitting by the window.
I bought this lovely deep red mug at the markets last week. I haven't done it any justice as far as its real colour is concerned, but this was my attempt nonetheless :) I used watercolour pencils so scanned the above once I'd finished drawing it in case I destroyed it when I "painted" the water on. Below is the final result, which turned out neither as well nor as badly as I'd imagined:
Liz B, who runs A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, highlights a new blog every week in her Blog of the Day posts. The blogs range from reader to professional (librarian, bookseller, and publisher) to author blogs and represent the interesting and informative in their field. Thanks to this feature on Liz’s site I’ve found many delightful blogs that I never would have discovered otherwise. I’ve always wanted to do something similar here with the new, intriguing, or just plain pretty blogs that I run across in my lit-blog surfing, so I’ve decided to borrow Liz’s practice* and make it my own.
To that end, let me introduce the first blog of note in what I hope will become an ongoing tradition here at Bookseller Chick central: Twisted Kingdom.
Twisted Kingdom (the blog) was created in September 2006 in response to perceived lack of fantasy review sites on the web, especially when compared to the abundance of romance reader review sites. As Nath, one of the founding reviewers of Twisted Kingdom, explained to me, “There's been a lot more paranormal romance on the market in the last few years, but there are still many fantasy books in which romance is very limited, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't appeal to romance readers. So we thought it'd be fun and helpful to start a review blog for fantasy/paranormal books.”
The blog recently experienced a rebirth in March, and the reviewers—Ames, Dance Chica, Kailana, Mailyn and Nath—have made a concentrated effort to post daily since then. In addition to book reviews categorized by their fantasy type, readers will also find a fantasy dictionary (where the reviewers attempt to define Urban Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, etc as well as give examples of books that fit that subgenre) as well as guest posts by popular authors (Kelley Armstrong was the latest to post this month).
Twisted Kingdom is open to submissions from fantasy authors (including self-published) from the category of Young Adult fantasy on and is looking to make a name for themselves. If you’re interested in getting your book reviewed, or just reading up on what others think of the newest fantasy releases, this is a blog to check out.
Here’s hoping this rebirth leads to a long and fruitful life for both Twisted Kingdom and the Blogs of Note** series.
*Liz, in theater they claim that borrowing is the greatest form of flattery and please know that I’ll work to uphold your tradition of blog coolness.
**If you have any suggestions for blogs to be included in the blogs of note series, please email me at bookseller {dot} chick at gmail. All blogs of note will eventually find their way into the side bar column of links for a permanent home.
It's not copy-catting -- it's an homage! Great idea, BSC. There are a lot of bad blogs out there, and I appreciate guidance to the good ones.
thanks a lot for doing the first column on Twisted Kingdom!
You're very kind. Especially since it would be so easy to make fun of my defintion of a day (a week...ten days....).
Anyhow, thank you!
hey cool, am always on the lookout for more review sites. ta for the link.
Fantasy sub-genre definitions *snickers in sympathy* oh, poor, deluded fools...but good luck! tis verily an endeavor of an epic scale, so tis.