Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have Plans...

I'm kind of wobbly on a lot of projects I had in the works, to be honest, and I apologize for my rampant inconsistency. I haven't been crocheting a lot, and it shows. I do still plan on finishing some of the things I've worked on, but... I have been bitten by a bug.

You see, I recently discovered the Art Doll world, and that has me fascinated. If you know me at all, you know that fascination almost always leads to some form of action, so as you may have guessed, I kind of want to start learning how to make art dolls. This means I've dragged out some of my old jewelrymaking supplies to use the wire and experiment with armatures.

I haven't made anything yet, but I do want to!

So what do I want to make?

Well, I have a love for dragons. I've loved them since I was a wee lil one reading Patricia C Wrede and watching the D&D cartoon on reruns (much to my mother's chagrin, since she hated that show). I also have a fantasy story I'm plotting out with the intention of writing it, and in that story, the main character has a dragon for an ally, but not just any dragon.

It's a special kind of dragon and I'm going to be experimenting to figure out what that looks like!

And if I can figure this out... I may have to start making a lot of these dragons!

So stay tuned to see if I can get beyond the brainworm stage and actually create this cute lil guy!

I have no pictures of the process yet, since, again, just in the brainworm stage, but as I plan and plot and experiment, I hope to take enough pics to satisfy you all!

So this is just a nice lil written update to keep me honest on this story, this idea, and this blog :)

That'll do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!

FC

Thursday Art Walk - Ah HA!

 

In Which I ACTUALLY MADE A DEADLINE lol

You may have noticed I've been struggling to get blogs up lately. I'm not sure if it's hormones, the weather, the unceasing grind of American life, or what, but I've just been exhausted. Not just tired - tired I can deal with - but bone-achingly exhausted. And before you aske, no I don't believe I have the 'Rona. I am 99% sure I don't.

Mostly, I'm just fat and stressed. Which makes me fatter. Which stresses me out.

But I digress, and you're not here for me whining about my balooning waistline.

It's October 1st.

That means you're probably here for Inktober....

But I'm not doing Inktober this year.

I know, I got alllll excited, but then the controversy of the guy who made Inktober possibly maybe almost surely plagiarizing his book on inking and... I just don't wanna get into it. I really don't. I don't want to get involved.

And I don't like this year's prompt list anyway, so it wasn't much of a choice.

Since I'm already working on a set of artworks (the Fruit Dragons!), I figured I'd just do that, but...

Then I discovered Witchtober.

Specifically the prompt list I found here.

So get ready for 31 images of witches, starting today with "Goth Witch"

"Gothic Witchling"; Ballpoint pen & graphite sketch; 2020

Slightly better lighting

You may notice that I still cannot draw feet. This is okay, though, because I gave my goth witch a pair of cute hoof shoes (or are they?!). I don't have a name for her, but she looks cool, and I wish I was her. I have ideas for what her hair looks like though - black near the roots, but turning more flame-colored towards the tips. That skirt is also made of fringe, so that's why it looks... hairy. And she has a raven for a familiar because I couldn't figure out what to do with that arm and I wanted floppy sleeves. Couldn't do a snake wrapped around her arm with floppy sleeves!

But I mentioned fruit dragons earlier!

Well... I'm sketching a scene with my Watermelon Dragon and a very unhappy knight.

"Mistakes Were Made" unfinished pencil sketch on printer paper; 2020

Yes, that dragon is currently spraying down that knight with watermelon juice while his horse ignores the attack and grazes nearby. The knight is fine, just confused and very sticky. I plan on redoing the lineart with either colored pencil or digging out some Sakura Pigma Fineliners if I can find any and trying those. The dragon itself is very smooth, though he'll have some stripes (green on green!), and his lil horns, wings, claws, and tailclub are all watermelon pink (with seed-shaped dark brown flecks on them!). I love him.

I think that'll about do it for me, today, folks. My shoulders ache from sitting over the ol tv tray and pencils. If you're wondering about what I use, it's simple: a mechanical pencil and a random BIC pen my old man picked up from some tech conference or another. It has a stylus on the clicker end!

I hope y'all get out there and draw, whether or not you use the Inktober challenge or something else. (You could draw 31 pictures of candy corn and I'd still be proud of you. I'd just be craving candy corn because I'm a freak!)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk - Fruit Dragons!

In Which I Drew A Bunch of Thumbnails

I recently started following YouTuber DrawingWiffWaffles, and while I don't know that I'll ever be as good at drawing as her (I do not have boundless quantities of patience and discipline for my art, you may have noticed), I am hoping to apply a lot of her techniques to my own art. Hopefully, that'll help me improve so I don't just... stop after sketching a little.

One of the techniques I'm taking right now is thumbnailing - essentially messy sketches that you use to refine final drawings. I'm very bad at letting messy things stay messy, but hopefully, you can see the sketchy thumnailiness of the following images.

I'm also stealing a prompt list that DrawingWiffWaffles used. The list is by @SeaLemon on Instagram, and it's 30 days of Fruits. I did the first 5 below, but instead of just drawing fruits (which, in hindsight, maybe I should've started with...), I decided to make Fruit Dragons!

1) Watermelon

I really like the idea of a Watermelon Dragon for some reason. The smooth, green-striped outside of a melon is fairly herpetological to me, and I like the bright pinks and dark reds of the flesh, the white pith before the verdant rind, the glossy, dark brown or black seeds... the fruit looks wonderful, and designing things to look kind of like it is fun!

This is also where I settled on how I'd draw my dragons - the shape of the fruit determines the shape of the dragon! I used all ovals to lay out how this dragon looks, giving him half-oval watermelon slice wings and watermelon slice horns, half-watermelon feet, and oval floppy ears! I like his sweet yet derpy expression, too. I'm super proud of him.

2) Blueberry

This gal is a bit odd, you must admit. Circles are not very dragony, but I liked the idea of making an almost medieval-style two-legged dragon, but I might take her wings (which are supposed to look like the flower-end of a blueberry but instead look like weird grass...). I tried to make her more birdlike - pigeon-toed, kinda goofy, bipedal, and round-headed... but I don't like the profile view of her face. It looks terrrrrrrrrible. I honestly don't know what to do for a face on a round dragon, though. Do I give her an extra bubble-muzzle? That might work! I like the almost scorpion-like segmented neck and tail.

3) Pineapple

As far as positions go, I'm pretty pleased with the smaller version of Pineapple, but I like the way the wings are folded down on the laying-down version up top. I want the wings, horns, ears, tail, and toes to remind people of the green top to a pineapple, but I'm struggling with how to get across that classic pineapple shape on the body without making him... spiky. I'll figure it out. Kinda happy with how I got the rounded cylinders of the pineapple to go together to make the body.

4) Lemon

Lemon was maybe the easiest to draw - mostly because I didn't give it a tail and I've got it sleeping in a nest! I really like the "lemon at rest" idea, and I'll probably keep it, though I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to really make it obvious that this baby is a Lemon Dragon (besides body shape - look at that lil tail nub!). I'm thinking I'll make the wings lemon wedges and give him little lemon pip horn nubs. Besides that, though, I think that might be my design, right there - right down to the lil floppy lemon-shaped ears! I like this one.

5) Banana

Ugggggh. I Hate how I drew poor Banana Dragon. I wanted to have a more Asiatic Dragon in appearance but I ended up with a messed up Muppet reject. I'll have to thumbnail this a bunch more to get it to work, but I still like the idea. Maybe I'll just draw a bunch of bananas in different positions, then put them together in Paint.Net or something to make the outline? And from there, I'll make the actual dragon? But yeah, not happy with Banana Boy here At ALL.

Still, this was just the thumnailing stage. I still have the actual sketching, lineart, coloring, etc to do.

My plan is to compose the image so the fruit itself is visible somewhere, either as a background in and of itself or as a background element. Maybe Lemon Dragon has a few lemons laying around? Banana Trees for Banana Dragon to hide in so I don't draw so much of it? I love the idea of Blueberry Dragon maybe trying to peck at some blueberries that have been scattered on the ground like some sort of derpy chicken!

All in all, this is a fairly successful experiment, and if I don't make all 30 dragons, it'll be because I get distracted... probably by Inktober, let's be honest lol.

I hope today's blog gave you a break from the State of Things as the are today. It's been a rough 2020, and I'm ready for something better, even if better can be hard to hope for. All I can say is this: Keep making things that make you happy, and share them.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC