Nebulae and Galaxies

For many months, I have been obsessed with painting a nebula. This is what motivated me to finally buy some acrylic paint. I've tried 5 times already and I'm not close to making something convincing. It just looks like a few colourful stains on a black background.

I think I have finally found a good video tutorial to use:

Bookmarking this for later!...

Electronic Art

While I was looking for the best way to colour my drawings and failing miserably to find the right markers, I spoke with a fellow artist (Facebook page and shop) who does a lot of electronic art using Adobe Photoshop. After looking at his wonderful designs and getting a few tips, I opened my Photoshop wannabes (Gimp and Inkscape) and watched a few tutorials online and got started. It's worth noting that both Gimp and Inkscape combined are a very good replacement for Photoshop. It's not Photoshop, but it's still very close and you can still do some really good designs with it.

At the time, I was obsessed with (recapturing my youth) the imagery of My Little Pony (or MLP for the Bronies out there) and I started designing a few ponies of my own.

Pagan Pony

Hippy Pony

Punk Pony

With time, I managed to get the hang of it although I still, for the life of me, can't manage to do some decent shading work so for now, it's going to be bold two-dimensional designs.

I have phases when I'm all about electronic art and other times when I go back to being 'old-school' and feel contented with just using pen and paper.

Here are a few non-MLP electronic drawings:

I love skulls and crochet, so why not both?

Done as a way to motivate my daughter to eat more veggies!

My ever present raven

How magpies are made

Hooded Crow

The difference between a crow and a hooded crow

Tools of the trade

When I started drawing regularly, I used what was in hand: felt tip markers and colouring pencils. These can be found in any good supermarket worth its salt. Over here in Germany, the most popular brands are Stabilo and the more upmarket Faber Castell.

I tried colouring pencils first and I then soon switched to markers because I was looking for a bolder effect. Being colourblind, some shades are not as easy to distinguished as others so markers were the way to go as far as I was concerned.

I came to the point where I discovered that markers are excellent to colour smaller areas but not so much for bigger surfaces as they leave marks and stripes. I then started to look into all available options and through a friend of mine, I came across bigger, 'juicier' markers, like the Posca markers.

I ended up deciding against it because it had more to do with paint than with markers, so instead I turned towards Edding markers and so far, I haven't looked back. They have a really wide range of markers for all occasions (even markers for clothes!). I remember first hearing of them when we were building our house and my husband asked me to get some in the shop. I couldn't believe the wide range of choice there was but I finally found what I was looking for.

Maybe the slight downside of Edding markers is that it's difficult to find markers with a tip smaller than 1.5mm. I sometimes need to do very small drawings and I need to use a different brand of marker that is not always waterproof. Maybe I need to continue my search and go to bigger shops in bigger cities.

While I have found a good brand of markers, I still felt the need to continue to explore my options and I then started to look into painting. The first type of paint I wanted to try was watercolour and I completely fell in love with it! It can be tricky to use but it gives the most beautiful effect. The brand of watercolour paint I use is Lukas. This is the most widely available brand in my area and it's very easy to refill (I use pans instead of tubes).

After getting excited with watercolour, I kept getting the advice to try acrylics. So after a while, I caved in and I bought a basic set from Lukas. I have to say that even though I was looking forward to it, I was disappointed. It may be versatile but it's not as intuitive to use as water colours. After trying it out a few times, I still feel I haven't gone past the skill level of a 4 year old... So I'm not quite sure what to do now, if I should continue my (seemingly vain) efforts or if I should just give up and master watercolours instead. So far, I have been leaning towards the latter but only time will tell!...

Still, I'm having a lot of fun trying out new media. There are still a few that I haven't tried yet and I'm looking forward to trying them out when the time comes.

(The now defunct) Lunch Box Project (November 4th, 2013 - March 16th, 2015)

A while ago, while looking for some inspiration, I came across an article about a Dad who was a professional illustrator and who was doing a drawing every day on his son's lunch bag. I thought this was a brilliant idea and I decided to do the same. Only over here, we don't really use lunch bags but lunch boxes and so I had to improvise. Instead, I drew on a small piece of paper and put this piece of paper into my daughter's lunch box. Everything was well and good until one day, not too long ago, the ink of the drawing leaked on a piece of apple that was in the lunch box... A friend of my daughter told her that she would get poisoned if she ate the apple, so she didn't and asked me to stop putting in the pictures... I felt like the evil stepmother in Snow White...

"QueenSnowWhite" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:QueenSnowWhite.png#/media/File:QueenSnowWhite.png

In order to view the pictures I took of those drawings, follow this link.

Birds! Birds! Birds!

Since my daughter started to get interested in flamingos, she kept asking me to draw her as many flamingos as humanly possible. Here are a few ones I managed to keep:

Flamingo Pirate! Invitation for my daughter's birthday

Picture I did for a colouring book

Failed attempt at painting a nebula...

While the flamingo is my daughter's favourite bird, mine are the crow and the raven...

Very first attempt at drawing a crow/raven

Done for a writer friend of mine

Done on the computer using Gimp

Earlier crows

Hamlet crow (I did some extensive research on Renaissance ruffs. I am now an expert!)

Prehistoric crow

In my futile quest to attract crows, I have attracted all sorts of smaller birds (wrens, mostly) by throwing seeds every day to feed them. Unfortunately, things have gone out of hand!...

First comic strip!

First post!

During the next few weeks (and months and years if I remain optimistic and focused), I will be posting a few of my past drawings and various illustrations. I have a lot of catching up to do so there will be a lot of posts today and tons of pictures too.