365 Day Art Project: Week 2

Week #2 in my 365-day art project was all about COLOR!

I’m really very excited because I feel like I learned a lot! You’ll see that I got a bit experimental  too.  Who knew I had it in me?!

NOTE: I decided instead of spamming you with tons of drawings in one post, I’ll use my blog posts to highlight the best of the week. If you’re interested in seeing the entire week’s progress, please feel free to check it out on my Tumblr. For some reason, I feel like it’s okay to spam people on Tumblr…but not you, dear readers!

I started off this week pretty normally, but by the end, I diverged quite a bit from what I’m used to.

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~Monday: Lola~

(Another drawing of Mika for his doodle contest!)

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~Wednesday: A Study in Something~

Things are starting to get weird…

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~Friday: Babel 121:~

By Friday I kinda felt like I was going mad with this new-found love of color. I felt like I needed to color everything and use everything in my power to do so. Yeah…two weeks in and I’m already going insane.

So, I decided to test out the watercolors my friend gave me for Christmas!

I’ve never really used watercolors before, so I didn’t wanna jump into a full piece just yet. Instead, I went with some warm up pieces to start. I saw this excellent idea a while back about making pixelated water color paintings, and I figured this would be the perfect time to try it out!

My first subject was the cover for Mumford & Sons’ album Babel. I swear I like their photos more than I like their music. Not that their music sucks or anything, but damn, they take a mighty fine photo.

Aren’t the colors in it just gorgeous?!

Annnd, here’s my pixel painting version!

So if you stand really far away and squint, you can totally see Mumford & Sons in there…right?

Right?!

Here, I’ll do it for you:

SEE?! Mumford & Sons! I freakin’ told you!

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~Sunday: CAROLS 91~

I had so much fun with Babel that I wanted to do another album cover. Seriously, I’d suggest any artist to try this–it’s so fun and relaxing, and an excellent way to practice mixing colors, too.

This time, I made the squares quite a bit larger so I could focus more on water color techniques. I also chose an album cover with a brighter color scheme to test my chops.

This time I used Ayumi Hamasaki’s CAROLS. Ugh she’s so perfect. ♥

And here’s Ayu (sort of) in all of her pixelated gory:

And just for fun, let’s compare:

Cool, huh?!

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I had a lot of fun working on these.  I think I stayed up (waaay) later than I should have, and I probably annoyed a few people on my Facebook page with all of the statuses and photos of my water color palettes I was posting. Eheheh. Sorry, guys.

So now that I’ve got watercolors under my belt, I wonder what kind of crazy shenanigans I’ll run into this week!?

Stay tuned to find out ♥

365 Day Art Project: Week 1

Did you all think I fell off the bandwagon that quickly?!

Well, I’m happy to report that I didn’t!

In case you all missed last week’s blog post, I’ve embarked on a new year’s resolution to do at least one drawing/piece of art per day. Whether it’s a finished piece, a little sketch, or any other mark on a paper/canvas/my face/my cat.

So far, so good!

Here’s my first week in review:

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Day 1: “The Ugly Squire’s Beautiful Day”

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Day 2: “Find a Reason”

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Day 3: Kishi Bashi

I really like how this one turned out. I’m having fun experimenting with techniques and styles, as you can see!

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Day 4: “9 Thick Chicks” and “Audrey Hepburn from Memory”, respectively

More style exploration!

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Day 5: “Just a Mermaid” (I’ll probably color this one very soon!)

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Day 6: Origin of Love

(A piece drawn for Mika’s doodling contest–I’d appreciate if you could vote for my entry here! ♥)

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Day 7: “Mantra”

As stated in last week’s post, I’ve been reading a great book called Kick-Ass Creativity, and this is a mantra from the book that I’ve decided to make my own! I’ve been trying to find a positive mantra that felt right, and this one clicked right away as soon as I read it. Not only is it relevant to my art, but to my life as a whole.

Woohoo! I did it! And it was fun! Can’t wait to see what happens next week!

Talk to you all soon!

Throwback Thursday: Art Journaling, Past and Present

Art journaling became very important to me a little over 2 years ago when I became very depressed. The thought of creating art, let alone getting out of bed in the morning, was physically and mentally overwhelming. While those were some of the worst days of my life, I’m really thankful for them because in the depths of that sadness I learned a lot about myself as an artist.

I literally could not even handle looking at a blank piece of copy paper. To me, it looked gigantic, empty, and void of all hope. But I didn’t know what else to do; art was all I had and I knew I had to do it no matter what.

So, I decided to work smaller. I bought myself a little 4×6 notebook, something that could fit in my purse, under my pillow, in my car, or anywhere else I might need it. Not threatening at all!

I resolved to fill every single one of those pages. For me. Not for Tumblr, not for Facebook, not for mom and dad, not for any single person except myself. I needed to be selfish and indulgent. To create art for the sake of creating art, to express all those thoughts and feelings that were eating me alive.

Every single drawing in this notebook is a self portrait, even if it’s a flower or a boy or a single word. They’re all a part of me. If I have anything to do with it, most of the entries in that notebook will never be seen until the day I’m dead and buried. Some are silly and selfish, some are still painful to look at, and some of them kind of amaze me.

Here are some of the entries from 2010 that I’ve decided to share:

Obviously, a lot of different stuff going on there. But just having that little place to escape to helped me immeasurably. I experimented with tons of different styles, medias, and ideas I never thought of pursuing. I think not caring how the entries turned out made it a lot easier to take the cap off of my creativity.

Even though I don’t journal as much as I used to, it’s still essential to my life as an artist. I think every artist needs an escape.

Especially now that I’m doing art professionally and I have clients who need their pieces to look a certain way, I really need that time and place where I can create whatever the hell I want, where I can be snarky, sad, happy, funny, rude, or just flat out weird. It’s so important to stay true to all of these things about me and nurture them, because if I’m not, well, what the hell’s the point?

Obviously, I don’t have as much time to go all out on them like I used to, but I still have fun with ’em!

Haha…life is so filled with ups and downs. I really don’t know how I’d handle it all without art. I really and truly feel like I would die. So it’s a pretty damn good thing I keep drawing!

So if any of you are experiencing an artist’s block, going through some hard times, or are totally frustrated with how your art is turning out, get yourself an art journal. Just do it. Don’t think, just create. I swear. You’ll learn some incredible stuff about yourself.

Until next time! ♥