Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Did Art :)

So last week I randomly generated a number between 1-7 to determine which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Geometric) I would draw from this week, and I got Geometric. 

Then one of my lovely readers, Z, bought me a coffee over on Ko-Fi and chose another category for me to draw from - Animal.

That means that I have two finished artworks for you!!!

"Bunnyboi"; digital; 2023 [ANIMAL] [Coffee]

I am.... so happy with how this little sketch came out! It's so cute and soft and sweet and I'm so impressed with the way I finally got some control over color and line. It's taking some time, but I feel like I'm really figuring Krita out.

Actually, the next image was created with me finally figuring out one of the things that bothered me so much about Krita and its color-picker. See, the default on Krita is the Advanced Color Picker, which is basically the square, circle, or triangle gradient that you click on to make your colors. I... don't like that, to be honest. It feels unnatural to me.

Turns out there actually is a way to manually input Hex codes into Krita, it just took a little digging on both Google and Krita to find. With the ability to take random colors on Coolors.co and plug them into Krita, I was able to make this week's Geometric piece:

"Lace Panes" digital; 2023 [GEOMETRIC]

I rolled some random colors, picked some random brushes, and scrawled out this fun piece for a Geometric fill, and to be honest, I'm not upset with the way it came out. Knowing now what I've learned from this piece, I think Geometric pieces will be a lot easier now. Turns out if you zoom in on the area you're going to fill and then carefully outline it with a freehand select tool, you can absolutely go to town on every single cell of a piece without overwriting the outlines! I look forward to making some fun stained-glass-like pieces now!

As for next week's Guaranteed Category, we've got... Location! So next week I'll 100% have a Location image finished.

If you want a say like Z had this week, you can send me a coffee over on Ko-Fi (it's not super expensive, I'm pretty sure it's just three bucks US) and leave a message with your donation telling me which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Geometric, Word), and I'll make a piece based off of that category for next Thursday!

How are all of you guys' art projects coming along?

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Got A Request!

This week I received a Ko-Fi request from the ever delightful Z who asked for something in the way of "MINERAL" for this week! He did add (in private) that I should try to keep this one G-Rated, since I did have that one mineral piece that was... shall we say... "upstanding"?

So this week, instead of choosing a rod-shaped mineral like an Emerald or other beryl, I chose the humble, bubbly Malachite! And to celebrate my 2-in-1 getting its new battery so it charges correctly and doesn't refuse to turn on, I did it digitally!

"Malachite"; digital art; 2023 [MINERAL]

I'm quite pleased with how the shading and highlights on the stone itself turned out. If I was to change one or two things, it'd be to add an underlayer with shading as well, so it looks less like a flat image. That might also be caused by the fact that there's an outline, which also flattens images.

You may have noticed this bears a lot of similarity to my favorite abstract art/geometric design element "bubble art", and I'll admit, I just really, really love the weirdness of concentric circles and ripples. It's probably from my lifelong fascination with water or possibly volcanoes. Why volcanoes? Because they change topography by pushing up on the earth. A volcano is similar to the splash of a drop of water in a puddle. Seismic activity tends to treat the earth more like a liquid.

This has been your brief window into how my mind operates: volcanoes = ripples = water = bubbles = art.

If you would like a say in what I draw (and a surefire way to force me to have something for the art blogs lol) then please shoot me a coffee over on Ko-Fi with a message telling me what category you'd like to see (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Geometric, Word) and I'll do my best to get it up here!

I'm going to try to challenge myself this week, too, so I'm going to roll an 8-sided die. 1) Animal, 2) Vegetable, 3) Mineral, 4) Dedbert, 5) Location, 6) Geometric, 7) Word, 8) roll 2x.

I rolled a 3 so I'll try to have another mineral of some sort here next week!

Anywho, the rest of tonight will be spent drawing and typing so I can get more written down for my manuscript (I wrote 135 words last night!). Hopefully I can hit the next story beat tonight, because it's a good one. Got plans for this Main Character that don't involve just futzing around in a rotted out village.

It's not a post-apocalyptic story, either. Or fantasy. Or Sci-Fi. It's... Fiction. Just Fiction.

And I'm having a blast!

I hope you guys are having as much fun in your creative projects!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

This Week Has Been Weird

So I normally complain about how tired I am and how I can't sleep and wah wah wah, but man, this week has been * ~ * w E i R d * ~ *

I slept almost all day yesterday. Seriously. Got up at noon. Went to bed at like midnight the night before. Did the same last night and slept til nearly 10AM. It's snowing, so it's all quiet out there like I like.

Don't know what it is about taking care of a couple of very old, shockingly chill (though occasionally naughty/ridiculous) Jack Russels, but I've been helping out on Mondays & Tuesdays, and it has meant totally-zonked Wednesdays and barely-functional Thursdays every time.

Frankly, I'm okay with it. I have rarely slept so well.

Kind of annoying to miss out on a whole day of progress, but that's just life.

Speaking of progress, uh... not much has been made on that shawl. I've worked on it for a total of... less than 20 minutes.

I cannot be sorry about that when I've actually finished three separate pieces of art for you guys today!

"Side Eye"; graphite on sketchbook; 2023 [DEDBERT, ANIMAL]

This first image is a fun little sketch of our boy Dedbert giving a Look to a confused little squirrel. This was composed and sketched during coffee while the snow fell softly, right before the snow stopped, in fact lol! I love drawing little scenarios where Dedbert, who is actually only about the size of my head, is much bigger than other animals. I have a Beanie Baby nearly his size, after all...

"Independence"; Digital; 2023 [WORD] [GEOMETRIC]

Did I use the ol Red White & Blue to signify Independence? Yes. Did I also use the letters of "independence" to plot out the shape here? Yes. It's been a hot minute since I did any bubble art. This one was made in Krita with a few different brushes. Sadly, my 2-in-1 tablet computer croaked, so I did this using my XP-Pen and my normal laptop, which... doesn't always work out great for me. See, when I use Krita on the 2-in-1, it lets me draw around things without buffering. On my laptop, it buffers and that's why the lines are more jagged. It's very frustrating.

You know what isn't frustrating? This last piece:

"Mountaineer"; digital; 2023 [LOCATION]

Oh boy am I satisfied with the way this sky turned out! This is another blender/brush combo experiment and I'm thrilled with how it came out. Especially the way the colors are blended on the mountains. That's the blending stump on Krita used against several other brushes in multiple colors. The sky is all pens with the first wet blender in Krita. The water was made the same way. The trees are several brushes and pencils in shades of green blended down with the cotton bud blender, and the ground is one of the watercolor brushes with a pallet knife blender run around it.

I will keep experimenting with ways to blend colors and build depth, I think, because it's really fun to experiment.

All of these images this week were requested via Ko-Fi, so if you'd like a say in what I paint or draw next week, feel free to drop me a coffee over on Ko-Fi along with a message telling me what category you'd like (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Dedbert, Word, Geometric) and I'll make it happen, no matter what life tries throwing at me. Come dogs or blizzards or insomnia, I will make the art!

Speaking of making art, I have been working on that manuscript, still. Today's word count was a whopping 365! That means that since last Thursday I've gotten 1077 words done. Not as good as some weeks (I missed a few days like yesterday, wrote less than 100 on others) but that's still more than my goal of 700 words a week!

And how about you guys? How have your creative projects been going? Have you guys been getting anything done? Are you looking forward to working on something artistic? I hope so!

As for me, I'm going to go back to bed - yes, I'm still sleepy and cozy and dopey. I'm okay with that. I got three pretty okay pieces of art and over 1000 words done this week. I did good.

And so did you.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC