#29faces Challenge: The Last Leg of the Journey!

Even though I haven't posted for the last few days and updated on my progress with the challenge, I have continued to draw and paint my daily faces and I am very pleased to say that I have completed the challenge. It has been a challenge particularly for me since faces are not my forte. I have seen myself grow in confidence and be inspired as time progressed and I am very proud of what I have achieved.

Along the way, I have met extremely talented artists and I have seen mind blowing works of art. I am truly humbled to have been a part of this vibrant community and will definitely miss it.

Without further ado, here are the last faces of the challenge:

Day 23:

I went back to the Evil Queen. This is one of my favourite characters from the Disney movies. It was really interesting drawing an older lady as the features are so much more complex than those of a younger lady.

Day 24:

Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. After drawing the complex Evil Queen, I needed to draw someone cute for a change!

Day 25:

 After watching Brave with my daughter, I just HAD to draw Merida. She is definitely one of my favourite Disney Princess. I just love how unconventional she is and how free she is. However, I felt too chicken to tackle that glorious hair of hers and I was too afraid not to do it justice so I picked a picture of her with her hair imprisoned in her headdress.

Day 26:

I had just finished to do this sketch and was not really planning on colouring it but after posting it on the group page, I decided that I hadn't done it justice so I went back and coloured it. I have to say that I'm particularly proud of the skin colour I used, especially for the cheeks. Mixing colours in watercolour is something I'm just starting to do. Because I'm too lazy to go to town and get some flesh coloured pans, I tried to use what I had in hand, and make some flesh colour of my own... This is one of the rare cases where laziness paid!

Day 27:

Back to a quick and easy sketch of Leela from Futurama. Nice and easy with bold colours (and my very own brand of purple that I mixed all on my own!)

Day 28:

This is one character I have been meaning to draw for a long time. It's Arale from the manga Dr Slump.

Day 29:

This is a completely new and original creation. I wanted to do something big for the last day and I hesitated between winging it or picking some very elaborate sketch and in the end, I winged it. One of my favourite artists is Tim Burton. I love how eternally startled his characters always are. The lines are often simple but always effective. I more or less inspired myself from someone I knew a long time ago and I put a spin on him. I am desperate to practice nebulae and this was the perfect occasion for it. It was a bit tricky staying within my lines but I did it. And I had to add a raven because I'm all about ravens. Somehow, I feel that the background should not be white and I might change it at some point. This is by far the biggest portrait I did (A3!).

So this is it for this challenge!

Catching up on the #29faces challenge!

I am way behind on updating the blog and I am missing days 20 to 22, so here they are:

Day 20:

Day 21:

Day 22:

Days 18 and 19: #29faces challenge

Here are my offerings for days 18 and 19 of the #29faces challenge:

Spontaneous fountain pen drawing

Gimp and Inkscape collaboration

The Deadpool Traveler's Notebook Project - Part 2

LMC TN - Almost finished!

Little leather charm I made for the LMC TN

A6 TN that will be called Lil Wade (front)

A6 TN that will be called Lil Wade (back)

One on top of the other

From top to bottom: Lil Wade, natural leather A6 TN, Big Wade, Original Morgan LeFae's Trinkets LMC

All filled with notebooks

This was quite a journey and I learned a lot on leather and how to use it. I doubt I have learned everything there is to learn about it but it's still a very good start:

- Already treated leather is REALLY hard to work on and modify, ever after filing it...
- Markers seem to suddenly die when they are used on treated leather...
- I can use kitchen scissors to cut leather circles!
- A 50 Cent coin is the right size to make a charm.
- China ink is a good replacement for markers although many layers are needed.

I wanted to wait for a while before I completed the red LMC TN (Big Wade) because I originally wanted to do a lot of sketching inside the cover but because it was so time consuming and more or less pointless to do this on a treated surface, I have given up on the idea. One thing that I wouldn't mind trying is spray paint. I would create a stencil and then spray some paint all over. Ideally, if I'm skilled enough and if the spray paint sticks to the leather, I would love to do something like this across the front and back cover of Big Wade:

That would look pretty amazing!

However, if I do that, I will have to wait for the summer to do that so that I can do this outdoors. So watch this space as there may be more to come at a later date!

The Deadpool Traveler's Notebook Project - Part 1

Before going to see the Deadpool movie and since discovering that you can actually use markers on leather, I had been thinking about making myself a traveller's notebook (TN for short) in red with some Deadpool illustrations. I wanted to do one in large Moleskine size (LMC) and so I started to take some measurements. I already have one TN in LMC size from Morgan LeFae'sTrinkets and I really love how the size is so portable and still big enough to doodle, paint and write. When I measured my TN it was slightly bigger than A4 size by half a centimetre. The difference was too big to just wing it with an A4 piece of leather and I definitely needed something bigger. So I looked for the next size, which is A3 and once I did some calculations, I figured out I could definitely pull off an LMC TN as well as an A6 one!

I went to all the textile and furniture shops that I could find in my town and the general answer I got was that it was difficult to find the thickness of leather I needed for my project.

So I turned to eBay and found what I was looking for.

I ordered my leather and when it arrived, I noticed that the 'inside' of the leather was not suede, like I usually see on other pieces of leather and discovered later that the top side was also treated and polished.

My project isn't finished yet but I wanted to post a few pictures of what it's looking like so far.

Back side of the piece of leather. Completely waxed!

Right side, looking really bright!

The 2 A6's

After the drawing

Both the A6 (top) and the LMC (bottom)

I guess I should have known that the top side was waxed but the penny didn't drop until I started drawing on it and that the marker started to go all funny and stopped working all together. I finished the drawing with some China ink and this morning it's looking slightly sticky. I would love to do a little Deadpool logo in the back of the leather and maybe also write Deadpool above the main drawing but first, I'm going to have to test on the leftover bits of leather.

I'm planning on cleaning the leather with some acetone and then using a file to make it a bit rough. I wonder how it's going to look once I finish to use the file... I hope the paint is not going to leave the drawing. But if it gives it an edgy style, I might try it on the LMC...

Watch this space for more updates!

Days 16 and 17 of the #29faces challenge

Here are my two sketches for days 16 and 17.

Day 15 - #29faces challenge

This is actor Sung Kang from the Fast and the Furious movies, eating chips as usual ;)

Arts and Crafts Afternoon

Last night I was looking into leather and how it could be worked on. So far, the only way to decorate leather was to use acrylic paint. I looked further into it and realised that you needed a special type acrylic paint that was suited for leather, which I don't currently have. Then suddenly, inspiration struck me and I started to wonder whether it would be possible to use markers instead of paint and after further research, I saw that it was possible!

Over Christmas I had made a small Traveler's Notebook (TN) with plain non-dyed leather and I still had some bits that had not been used so I took them and proceeded to use some of the markers to test my theory. And it seems to work! I made a small bookmark with one of the pieces and it turned out really great!

Because I only have 2 (well 3 if you count grey) coloured markers in red and black, there was really only one subject who was acceptable for this mini project...

Here are some pictures:

Day 14 - #29faces Challenge

Happy Valentine's Day for all those who celebrate!

Here is day 14:

This is Maleficent from the Sleeping Beauty fairytale. As a child I had never been to big a fan of Disney Princesses because I had the feeling they were never strong enough on their own. I always admired all the evil queens of the stories because, despite being full of spite, they were still very ingenious on their own. Plus how awesome would it be to walk around in a majestic (if slightly crazy) headdress with a raven as your pet?

Days 12 and 13 - #29faces Challenge

This is for day 12 and this is my daughter made with markers and watercolours. It's probably one of the first times that I managed to get the skin tons so well. I have done it by mixing some beige, yellow and a touch of pink. I have increased the amount of pink around the cheeks to give her a rosy look. I also tried to not draw or paint the pupils and it doesn't look too bad, so this is something that I might have to keep in mind for the future.

Day 13 looks like this:

This is Hiro Hamada from the movie Big Hero 6. I took this picture from the manga and I really like how his hair is so messy and spiky. I'm not quite happy with how the mouth turned out but it will have to do for now. One thing I really liked is that I could easily use my basic colour scheme of 3 colours with black, red and grey and it looks great.

Days 10 and 11 - #29faces challenge

I'm a little bit late to post so here is day 10:

I doodled this one evening and I didn't use a safety net any pencil first, which is highly unusual for me.

And on to day 11:

Back to my old stomping grounds with this sketch of Sailor Moon. I discovered the series when I was already going to the university and at the time, it was not so cool to reveal that you were still watching cartoons at the ripe old age of 20. So I watched it in secret but now that it has become cool, I can proudly come out of the anime closet and say, I watch Sailor Moon and I like it!

Day 9 - #29faces challenge

This is a face I picked from a Panini sticker album about an anime series I used to love back when I was 11 about football (soccer). It's called Captain Tsubasa. Every now and again, I see either manga books or DVD box sets popping up again so the series still seems to be relevant even today.

This was not one of the major characters but one that had a distinctive face so I picked him for today. I may go back and pick one (or two!) of the main characters, for old time's sake. To be honest, I don't know which name he got either in the original Japanese or in the English version. In the French version he was called Bruce.

Happy Year of the Monkey!

Happy Chinese New Year to all those who celebrate!

I am following a really cool account on Instagram called Ouchii World (@ouchiiworld) and they have made the cutest sketch of a monkey. I decided to doodle it in my Hobonichi Cousin on today's page and here is what it looks like:

I really love the bold lines and simple colours that they used. Unfortunately, I didn't have any beige marker so I used yellow instead.

You can check out the original monkey here.

Hobonichi Challenge - Catching Up

I believe I haven't posted the last few sketches I did for the Hobonichi Challenge, so here they are:

My last drink

Cherry tomato (faceless fruit scares me!)

Button

Days 7 and 8 - #29faces challenge

Here is my offering for Day 7:

This is a portrait of John Constantine from the Hellblazer series. It was bound to happen as I like this character a lot. This was not the picture I had originally intended to draw but my muse decided otherwise and this was the picture I ended up with. If I remember correctly, it's the latest incarnation of Constantine that is being shown in the new comic series of Constantine. I wasn't too fond of his hair so I just skipped it!... I really like how rough his face still looks like.

Day 8:

This was something I doodled while watching TV with no clear idea of where I was going. I had started with Harry Potter and the others came along.

When I was spending my semester abroad at the University of Wolverhampton, England, I met plenty of people and since I'm not that good with remembering faces, I decided to draw a cheat sheet for myself that I carried along. In it, I would draw each person I met with their name and nationality (there were many nationalities and I also needed to differentiate the Germans from the Austrians) and their characteristic that made them unique. It really helped me a lot and it looked a lot like the Harry Potter drawing I did above.

#29faces challenge - Days 5 & 6

It seems I have forgotten to post the last few #29faces challenge pictures for the past couple of days so here they are:

Day 5:

In case you didn't guess who this is, it is Neil Degrasse Tyson. I have only recently been made aware of how awesome he is and I thought he would make an excellent subject for the challenge. I used markers mainly with 2 different shades of grey and black.

Day 6:

This is a sketch of one of my favourite comic book characters called Nemi by Norwegian artist Lise Myhre. You can follow her on her Facebook page.

29 Faces Challenge - Day 4

My take on Lisbeth Salander from the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson. I based myself on the look given to Rooney Mara because it was so extreme and simply because I wanted to draw a mohawk.

I really liked the book series although I got lost somewhere in book 3. I also watched both the Swedish movies as well as the American remake. While I tend to be against remakes of classical movies, I have to say that I liked this particular remake. One thing I was looking forward to when they announced that they were making a new (American) movie (after the extreme disgust I felt when I heard the news) was to see how they were going to interpret Lisbeth. She is such a strong and unique character and I was afraid that they would glamourise her too much but they kept her as understated as she was in the books and this is probably the reason why I liked the movie.

Hobonichi Challenge - Day 3

29 Faces Challenge - Day 3

Taking myself completely out of my comfort zone with this pencil drawing! No markers there and trying to get as much detail as I can bear!