Sketch Diary: Inked sorceress in blue

This was one of the first drawings I did with my new fancy shmancy lightbox. Why did I wait so long to get one?!?! They're awesome. The blue ink was a random impluse I indulged because I felt like playing with my pen nibs. I was struggling to get the thinner long lines to be smooth. But I didn't really care about this drawing. I thought the original sketch was meh. But I actually like how this ink version turned out with the etching and such.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 13 - Worried look in blue

Time for my blue period! Hah but seriously, brush pens are fun. I took more time on my lines for this one and I think it paid off. I was able to get those skinny lines and some nice fat ones, too. I dig how she turned out.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Horned girl blue colored

I uh... I can't remember if this was pre or post Copics when I colored this beauty. Wow. Welp, here's to 2008 in all it's glory. Jeezey Petes. Why did I use the same blue for the... no, I'm not breaking down a drawing from  years ago. Totes not worth it lol. NEXT PLEASE

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Star girl digital

So along with traveling a bunch this summer, I ended up totally cutting myself off from my desktop computer without really noticing. It was pretty weird. I think I was just really burned out digitally. I ended up spending a ton of time cleaning out my material stuffs, cleaning in general, gardening, and trying to spend time each day on myself (meditation type stuffs).

Can you see that in the sketch? I'm tired of being stiff and uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. Feels like all this time spent on myself is paying off. Unfortunately, all that meditation did NOT include drawing of any kind so I barely drew anything this summer. But I'm excited to get back into being creative everyday. Or at least creative in a drawing kind of way. I still think downsizing and reorganizing my kitchen cabinets requires its own creativity haha.

So to the universe I say - take time for yourself. It may seem like a lot of work to slow down and calm your mind but trust me it will pay off.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Colored - Portrait of a girl in my mind

And POOF just like that, it's colored in. I was trying out a couple different techniques and such on this so I'm relatively pleased with how it turned out. Skin is still a bit... blotchy. But that's what happens when I use cheap copy paper hah. Maybe I'll call her Cotton Candy Girl.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Fairy Princess from Faeriecon East

Ah an oldie but a goodie. I sketched this during Faeriecon East 2010 after seeing a beautiful cosplayer there. This sketch only has a small amount of the detail she had put into her costume though. It was really impressive at the time. So I just scribbled down the stuff I could remember. Then I colored this while in Japan, 2011. Not a whole lot of color though... I think I would definitely color it differently nowadays haha. Just because a costume seems white as snow, that doesn't mean there are no colors there.

I miss costuming. But I like that I've incorporated some of my costume pieces and style into my day to day wardrobe. Win some, lose some.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Big hair, big lips, and first go with Krita

OH YEAH. Now we're talking. Finally found a painting program that actually works with my super old Wacom tablet, Intuous 2. I had just about given up and was looking to buy a new drawing tablet this year because I miss painting digitally. Thankfully, another artsy friend (Nathalie) introduced me to Krita, a wonderful FREE paint program.

Krita appears to be open source and already, for me, has far surpassed Gimp. I never got the hang of Gimp, too many things were different from Photoshop and I had grown up on photoshop, I even use it in my career so it's a daily thing for me. But I don't really like Photoshop for painting. I like things like Open Canvas and Sai much more. So when I upgraded to Windows 7 and the sensitivity stopped working for my Wacom pen, I thought all was lost.

For some crazy reason, Krita works and works really well. To do the sketch above, all I did was install the program, open a new document, didn't change any settings or preferences, and sat down for 15 minutes. This is just the basic brushes setting so I CAN NOT WAIT to try the specialty brushes. After my 15 minute doodle, I immediately went back to the download page for Krita and made a donation because hot damn, this program is nice.

After I spend some more time with it, I'll do a more in depth review of Krita. I have high hopes. Have you tried it yet? What were your thoughts on it? What's your fav paint program?

Nathalie and I are hoping to figure out how to do co-op painting via Krita but if that's not a thing, I hope the developers can figure that out because this will be the perfect program for that. Also, live stream painting? I think it already has a record feature but not sure how good it is yet.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Mermaid hair in a frame

Taking me back! I still get good feels from looking at this piece and remembering how cool I felt while painting it. They sketch alone, I thought, was pretty awesome for my skills at the time and then the actual execution of the colors was quite exhilarating. I think this was 2010 or there abouts. Maybe a good one to hold onto for an OC. I'm so bad at creating original characters... correction, I make them all the time but I very quickly move on to the next one. I should commit to one, at least.

So this was one of my 'just starting out' watercolor pieces. I had (and still have...) no clue what I was doing. I was just putting brush to paper and seeing what happened. Man... it's really making me miss doing watercolors. Just one more reason to get my craft/art/sewing/book/misc room cleaned up so I can get pack into these things again. I certainly don't have to have my art table to paint but it sure makes things easier and more enticing. It's almost there! Just a couple more big projects to finish and it'll be ready for war.

With love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Pink haired centaur girl

Throwback to 2011 - lots of random marker practice pieces that year. I still love this drawing, not exactly sure why... there are a lot of things I would fix (if I was into that sort of thing hah) like the skinny arm in front, the odd shoulders, the 'thighs' are too small for my taste, and that hand. Obviously, I had such a hard time with the one hand, I had to hide the other! But with all that, I still like her look. Looking inside of herself, seeing without sight. And pink hair?! I mean who doesn't love pink hair?

with love - M