St Patrick's Day watercolor illustration

Oh March, you craft-tiful month you. With every crafting opportunity you already offer, you bring yet another that almost slipped my mind: St Patty's Day. It was almost too late to make something.

Although I'm not even remotely Irish, I still love this holiday. There's something cool in making everything green. Oh, and rainbows and pots of gold, how can you not love that?

And oh yes, and when you lack frames, use whatever you can find. Like unused embroidery hoops. I can't be the only one with those around...

cheeky little fella

Why is it so hard to get good natural lighting at home? Oh yeah, we live in Portland now...

Want to join? Grab some watercolor supplies, draw something easy (like a shamrock), let your kid paint it or do it yourself, and frame it with the hoop. Have fun trying this out and let me know what you come up with.

I hope you have all the luck of the Irish this week. Happy St Patrick's Day!

Happy Easter! (And musings on drawing with kids)

Happy Easter everyone!

I try not to bring in religion to the blog too much, but I do hope you don't mind me celebrating some of the more important holidays for me. Easter is of course a big one, so I'd like to wish you all a blessed weekend.

I wanted to do a little illustration with an Easter theme, and N. of course wanted to join in. She never misses an opportunity to draw with me. In fact, it's one of her favorite things to do.

Here are a couple of things that I noticed when it comes to doing that:

1. No matter how stocked her crafting station is, as long as my supplies are out they're the only thing she'll use.
2. She will finish her work first, and then she absolutely must help me with mine. 

I used to worry and fret about her using some of my more expensive materials, but then...

I want her to feel free to experiment with art supplies and have fun with them, not feel like they're so precious she can't use them. She should also enjoy doing it, not worry about what I'm going to do if she adds something to my picture or spills some water on my watercolor.

So, with a herculean effort, I let go of it all. I let her use any and all supplies she wants (unless it's dangerous of course - no hot glue gun yet!), however she wants to, including on the picture I was working on. If it's something I really want to do alone, I wait until after she goes to sleep.

Today, we did these -

A long-haired girl on an egg hunt:

A bunny on a field:

Did you notice her addition to the bunny? She said it was a girl bunny and she needed a hair bow (which N. promptly supplied):

This hair bow makes me so happy. How could I ever say no to adding a hair bow to a bunny?

What are your plans for the weekend? 

A mixed media card }{ tutorial

I'm calling this post a tutorial, but in truth it's more of a process post. What I mean is, if you follow the steps, you may be using the same process I did, but most likely your card won't be the same. You might change the colors, the background, the final touches, etc. In any case, it's been a while since I did a tutorial-like post.

To be completely honest, I'm not 100% happy with how it came out at the end. So I'm asking for help. What would you have done differently?

This all started with an idea to sew ripped up music sheets together. I didn't know anything else about the project, only that it had to include that. The whole process went along without planning ahead - after each step I'd try to think "what's next?" So I gathered a bunch of things I might use, but here's a final list of what I did use:

• watercolor paper
• old sheets of music
• alcohol-free ink
• walnut ink spray
• sketch paper and pencil
• gesso
• watercolors (and brush of course)
• scissors
• matte gel
• ribbon
• small jewel
• sewing machine and thread

And the process:

1. Cut a piece of watercolor paper and sprayed it with pink ink. 
2. Then grab a ripped up piece of sheet music

1. Rip the sheet music into 4 smaller pieces and then sew them together.

1. Press the edges of the sheet music on the ink pad

1. Sketch some girls on separate piece of paper. This step in particular can easily be made simpler by using a stamp, like these.

1. Decide which image to use, color it (or not), and cut it. I used watercolor for this, but I've seen people do amazing cards with copic markers and other supplies too.

1. Decide on an arrangement on the background paper and paste it together using matte gel.
2. Put on the finishing touches, whatever you deem necessary. I added gesso on the girl for some highlights, as well as some darker colors for shadows here and there. Then I also added some thread using various decorative stitches to the side, then a jewel to her hat, and finally some ribbon.

So back to my question up there, what would you have done differently?

Intention }{ Illustration Fridays

"Perhaps not the best way to check his intentions after all..." 

Poor flower... And all for naught.

watercolor and gesso

Did you ever do this as a young girl? Did it ever work out?

Lighthouse watercolor

We're back home. Finally. 

I love traveling... Well, no, let me rephrase that. I love visiting new and not-so-new places far from home. But I hate the actual getting there - all the airport waits, the endless plane trips, horrible airplane/airport food. When I was younger and traveling without a child it didn't bother me so much. In fact I sort of enjoyed the anonymity of airports, the hustle and bustle of travelers. But now, it's all just too much for a little three year old and her mommy.

In any case, we made it back and we're settling back in. I haven't finished unpacking yet, but one of the first things I did was to download the pictures from my camera to the computer. Among all the trip photos I also found this old one that I had forgotten on the camera. 

It's a watercolor/mixed media I made for someone who's like a second mother to me. She loves lighthouses, and this one especially holds a lot of memories for us. At that point it was still unfinished, I added some seagulls, enlarged the rock, and glued the lace at the bottom. But then, I didn't take a picture of it finished...

What projects have you been working on lately?

Shoes

I love shoes.

I don't have many of them, but I absolutely love them. They can make or break an outfit. They make up for my lack of... stature (yeah, I'm a shortie). They can tell so much about the wearer too!

Look around you at the shoes people wear. See if they match the person (if you know them), or try to image what the person is like who wears shoes you find interesting. It's a fun "people watching" exercise in observation.

What kind of woman would wear these shoes?

Launch }{ Illustration Friday

"Launch"

When I got the prompt for this week's Illustration Friday, the first thing that came to my mind was this David Bowie song. Along with it came a little soldier boy saluting the launch. Don't ask me why, but he was there.

Notice however that I made one big mistake. I didn't mean for the launch to be of a weapon as I don't like what that implies. I much prefer space adventures to wars. But the rocket looks like a weapon. And so it goes.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Swept }{ Illustration Friday

The Illustration Friday prompt this week was "swept" and this is all I could think of. 

The husband came back for the weekend, and so tonight was the first time I sat down to draw something. 

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Beginner }{ Illustration Fridays

Beginner... There are so many beginnings. Every day is a new beginning, no? Every moment, we could choose to make a new beginning in one way or another, big or small.

When I saw the prompt for this week's Illustration Fridays, images began to swirl in my head. There were so many things I could do. In fact, anything I do at this point represents a beginning because I am a beginner in this world of drawing, illustrating, painting.

I chose to try two of the ideas I had.

graphite pencil on my sketchbook

N. reading a book, which she loves to do. She's beginning to sound out letters and find them in words in a book, though she can't string the letters and make a word yet. She recognizes all the letters though, and I'm pretty proud of her (gee whiz, she's only 2.5 y/o!). That's why I put the letters around her - this is what I imagine her thoughts to be as she leafs through her picture books.

watercolor and colored pencil on heavy weight watercolor paper

Spring is a new beginning every year - beginning of life, greenery, sunshine. Since lady spring has finally graced us with her presence I wanted to do something to honor her. I choose pink flowers, because they remind me of early spring. To me, these delicate light colored flowers represent the newly come, still shy palette of colors that will soon explode.

Happy Mother's day to all you ladies with little (or big) kids out there.

What comes to your mind when you think of a beginner?

Bunny postcards

It was supposed to be Books and Bunnies, but you see I'm having some technical difficulties with the "books" part.

I've been working on a "bookshelf" page that lists some of the books (eventually all of them) that are in my "crafty" section of the bookshelf. It's supposed to look like the tutorials page, but for whatever reason I haven't been able to get the thumbnails to work correctly. So, for now, the bookshelf is still WIP.

As for the bunnies... Who doesn't love bunnies? Or at least the picture/drawing version of bunnies? They are just so cute! So when Carla Sonheim wrote a tutorial on how to draw a super cool bunny I knew exactly what I'd do for B in the blogging challenge.

Unfortunately I don't have the type of pen she used for the exercise, and my pens just didn't want to bleed on the watercolor paper. So I improvised. I used a thin sharpie on watercolor paper and then just filled them in with regular watercolor. The scan didn't come out very faithful to the original, but you get an idea.

N. wanted to help, which gave me a really neat idea. Easter is coming up and it would be nice to send some Easter cards/postcards from her to family members. So here's what we did:

1. Cut watercolor paper in whatever size postcards you'd like to make. (we used 5x7)
2. I drew in the picture, without any attention to how good it was (we're not going for the MOMA here :)). Of course, if you're talented and want a nice picture that might be awesome. And if you have older kids, let them draw instead!
3. The little one painted with watercolor. I showed her how to do it first since it was her first time using watercolor (we always use tempera paints).
4. Write a message on the back (or front) and Voila! A small postcard a grandparent or other family member might appreciate. Easy peasy.

One more thing - I let her use my good paint, because I don't like the kids' watercolor they have available. It comes apart too easily and it doesn't look good. If you know of any good kids' watercolor, do share!

Do your children like to send cards or make small gifts for family members? What activities do you usually do when you want to send something?