Sketch Diary: TBT - Elf girl with wings inked

Throwback to 2011! That was 7 years ago... I'll let that sink in for a minute.

I'm happy to say, I still enjoy this drawing. This was when my drawings started to feel less flat. They started to feel more fleshy, like they take up space.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Armored blonde elf

An throwback oldy! Hailing all the way from 2008. Probably colored in 2009. Still struggling with drawing hands...2018 haha.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Teal hair elf portrait

So this was sketched in college and colored a couple years later with Copic markers. This was one of the first marker drawings where I started using a color palette more. Nowadays I do little color blocked mock ups on a separate page to try out color combos because that's just not something I can easily visualize yet. It's way easier to just try it out on a small thumbnail first. A lot of weird things going on in this drawing. But as a whole, it still makes me happy.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Cute little ears portrait ink

Throwback to 2006! Whoa now. This is one of those drawings where, as soon as I see it, I'm transported back to when I sketched it out. I remember vividly drawing this portrait and being so proud of myself. I don't remember inking this at all... but look at those little ears!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - the Trio water, air, fire

Taking me back to college here. I remember working on this sketch for my illustration class. I was working on adding themes and little stories to my sketches. Obviously, these are some of the elements - water, air, and fire. But I think I also was meaning them to be representative of the Fates, too. Water is the old crone, steady and powerful. Air is the young maiden, whispy and wild. Fire is the matron, passionate and relentless. Or something like that. Sketched in 2007 but probably wasn't colored until 2009 when I started playing with prismacolor markets (before I discovered copics).

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT- Centaur with green hair

I know, I know... my titles can be so literal. But that's what it is! I'd rather that then people think it's something else and click on it and be like 'oh... well bye'.

This is super old - almost a decade! Looks like I colored it in 2009 or 10 when I first started using Copics. People seemed to reeeeeally like this sketch back when I first uploaded it online. Idk why though. I always thought the proportions were wonky. Mysteries of the universe hah.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Orange hair, don't care

This little note card is throwback from 2010. I had all these postcard size cardstock paper things, originally meant to be used material for wedding invitations for someone but ended up not being used. Not one to waist good card stock, I tried out my Copic markers on them. The weird background of the cards (kind of marbled) didn't quite work though and made solid color areas look blotchy. Also, I wasn't so good at taking my time with blending yet. The white you see is acrylic paint added at the end. I don't do that method anymore but could see my self going back to it if I worked on bigger pieces. On small things like this though, it's way easier to just use a nice gel pen or something similar.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Medusa crazy hair woman in ink

Holy smokes this thing is old! But I still vividly remember drawing this and being so freaking proud of myself haha. Still am. This was definitely a trophy of a point when I was really taking my drawing seriously. September 2004 was the beginning of my Senior year of highschool and there lots of cool artsy things going on for me. I was in AP Art Portfolio and was learning how to build a real collection of my own work as well as trying all different art mediums from acrylic paints to soft pastels to dress making to knitting to digital painting (with a trackball!!!).  So hopefully I've improved since then but it feels good to be able to look back and still be proud of all that I accomplished at that time.

Try not to beat yourself up, fellow artists. It's easy to do. The real challenge is appreciating each drawing what it is and what it's taught you. I may not want to stick every drawing on my fridge but you better believe I make sure to thank each one... some just might see the recycling bin sooner than others.

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: 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: TBT - Ram's horn guide and her ward

At the time, I had some kind of story in mind for these two. They never made it so far as to have names but they had personalities. The girl/woman there with the horns was this kids guide, his guardian. I think the idea was that she could only be seen him and other people that had their own guardians. Now in my defense, this was before I knew about Deathnote and such so no, I was not pulling my idea from there. It was more of a Faerie world kind of thing.

The young man pictured here, clasping his papers tight was supposed to be a bit melancholy and his counterpart was the opposite. She was realistic, however, about his chances of not making it ie. being killed by some monster or another sometime soon. She just had a good hold on making peace with whatever might happen before it actually happened or something like that. Something I find myself aspiring to quite a bit nowadays interestingly... Maybe I should revisit the idea.

Oh and she isn't really a she... or he. Just a being. No private bits to speak of and no need for that sort of thing for any of the guardians. There was a reason for that... but I can't remember anymore. I just knew that I didn't want any sort of sexualized relationship between the guardians and their wards, it was to be more... simple but also much more complex.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Colored redhead like fire

Soooooo old! This is from 2005?! Madness. Still kinda love it though. Always grateful to that first set of Prismacolor markers. The didn't like to blend much but the colors were bold and I learned a lot before saving up for my Copic set in 2009. Of course now I like to go back and use crappy materials sometimes because they help challenge certain skills. So... irony.

Use what you have, people! With enough patience/practice and a little ingenuity, you can make art out of anything.

with love - M

PS
Note for my own sake - this was inspired by Catherine! She's one of the few true redheads I know. Thanks for being fabulous, Cath!

Sketch Diary: TBT - Colored kinda 2 dudes posing

Like my mishmash title there? Well that's all this is. I don't recall having any real characters in mind here. Nor did I even bother to finish coloring this a the time, way back in August 2010. Just another sketch in a sea of sketches. This was rare, however, because they were distinguishable as dudes. Drawing ladies all the time made me pretty good at ladies but dude bodies were/are a challenge.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Lounging elves

Roll back to 2010 again. These girls were from a serious of drawings where I was playing with this elf idea. They eventually had clothes that were attached to their bodies sort of - like a jewel was a part of their bodies and the cloth would attach to the jewel and drape accordingly. the green hair with yellow highlights was appealing at the time, too.

I love the figure on the right, not so much the one on the left. But I was having fun playing with poses and body angles.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - colored baby sphinxes

D'aw aren't they cute. This is an old doodle from 2010 on a postcard size cardstock. I used copics for this but I definitely didn't know what I was doing.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Vanity Fair boys

An oldy but a goody. I still love to watch the Vanity Fair movie with Reese Witherspoon, though I'm not a huge fan of her in a general sense, I felt like she was perfect for this character. Also loved the military boys - as seen above. Well, I gave them Utena colored hair but whatever. This was a fun small sketch done on card stock, meant for printing invitations and such, postcard size. 

I've been cleaning out my art/craft/sewing/book room and found the leftover blank cards. I might go back to doing small ones like this again to give away to people or to send with letters. I'd like to find little sleeves for them so they don't get damaged in transit but they're small enough to fit inside a sandwich baggy... so I guess that works lol. Let me know if you want one ;)

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Self portrait in purple monochrome

Old school! And by old school I mean high school senior portrait class project circa 2004/05. I still remember how much of a challenge this project was for me. It was a great process.

I had to sit and pose in this little photo studio the teacher had setup in the basement of the school and let someone take portrait shots of me. Then I took the film (not digital) and processed it myself, darkroom and all. Then made a print of several of the photos, all myself. And finally, pick one and start painting a monochromatic piece in acrylics. The teacher recommended black and grey tones to make it easier (since the photos were black and white) but said we could do any color... so I had to do purple. Then I had to map the light values and make a sample palette strip that had an example of a gradient from lightest to darkest so I didn't get confused while painting.

Wow, it was really a lot for a single project. I'm still really proud of it, regardless of the oddness of some things in it. I think it was a great example of all that I had learned in that class and with that teacher (the lovely Mrs. Lacy XOXO). Maybe this would be a good project to do a redo of in digital form with my wacom, see how much I've changed. Maybe take a new self portrait photo... hmmmm.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Christmas in Nanao caricatures

Throwback to Christmas 2011. I made a sketch of each of the ALT's in Nanao, at the time, gave them the original colored drawings, and made this collage of all of them. It was a great exercise for me, thinking about each personality and what I imagined them doing. I really tried to keep it light and not be demeaning or anything, tried to let the sketch go where it wanted. At the time, I remember everyone really liking the drawings of themselves. But maybe I'm just remembering it better now that time has passed haha. Ah well, it's better that way.

My favorite is still Nicole's drawing. If you zoom in, you can see the snowmen she's making are actually evil snowmen. I think at the time we joked about building tiny evil looking snowmen on the cars in her apartment complex so it looked like a tiny invasion of evil cannibal snowmen. It was really funny at the time, I swear. There may have been alcohol involved. Almost definitely.

MISS YOU GUYS!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Scratch-art Vogue Princess

Many many moons ago, I was into the whole scratch-art thing. I never got very good at it but it was fun to do something that wasn't pencil to paper. Also, working in reverse lighting is hard to get use to - like seeing the darkest areas as the blank areas and the light areas as what needs to be scratched out. Highly recommend to help you learn lighting values as a young artist.

This piece is from highschool so ... 2004 maybe? Anyway, it's old. But I still like it. I used a page I clipped out of a Vogue magazine as a reference. Wish I still had it so I could show a side by side comparison. If any body finds it, like it to me, yeah?

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Pink haired girl

Thought the odd proportions are becoming more glaring as time rolls on, I still really like this. I had (have?) no clue what I was doing with my watercolors. No training, no practice - this WAS the practice hah. This piece taught me a lot. Still feels soft and warm to me and I feel happy when I look at it. Isn't that the point?

with love - M