Two more sketches for Inktober

Here two more sketches done in Crescent Rendr sketchbook.

Day 2

Day 3

I think I will start doing pencil work first and then ink them. Also, I will take my time with the drawing.

#inktober2016 #inktober

My first InkTober

This is my first time participating in the InkTober challenge. Last year I shied away from it because I am not good at inking, or ink work. This year I decided to embrace the challenge for what it is, an opportunity to practice, create healthy drawing habits and improve my skills.

If you don't know what it is, InkTober is a challenge created by artist Jake Parker, where artists from all around the world create a daily ink drawing during the month of October. The drawings have to be done in ink; pencil is allow for the under drawing. Post it online and hashtag it #inktober or #inktober2016.  If you need prompts, there is a prompt list for each day. I am not using it yet, but I might.

So in the month of October you might see some of my messy drawings, but hopefully at the end there will be some good pieces that will show improvement. I am not planning of do this challenge completely blind, without researching and study a bit. That is why I will be using some books to get some advice and techniques about drawing with ink.

Join me and other artist this month to create and to grow as artist and creative people.

What other challenges do you know of? Which ones have you been part of?

So far I know of 29faces challenge by Ayala Art and Inktober.

Cheap DIY Holiday Decoration

Inexpensive ways of decorating jars, candles, and more for any holiday season. Many of use buy lots of decorations and crafts materials and forget them in a drawer or just use them once. This short video will jumpstart your imagination with a different approach to using your materials. Great for home, office or as a little way to make your gifts prettier.





Music: "Deck the Halls B" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

DIY cheap canvas panel alternatives

Cheap, light and a great way to recycle and use the materials you have around. They will help you to go past the fear of messing up a good and expensive canvas panel when trying new techniques. 

Hope this video jumpstart your creativity and help you come up with more ideas to create your own canvas panels or painting surfaces. If you don't have canvas fabric you can use a few layers of a thinner fabric layered over your substrate or a thicker fabric and simply prepare it the same way I did here. 

There are other ways to create nice and inexpensive painting surfaces. Check some of my other posts for more ideas:

Painting surfaces: Art wood panels and how to prepare them for painting

Chipboard art journal

Digital portrait study and speed up video

 Here is may realistic digital study portrait, drew with Manga Studio 5x. I wanted to keep it within a one hour frame, but still went 5 minutes over. This was a great exercise to do and it was fun to learn a bit about how the program works and what I can do with it.

For reference, I used Rembrandt's Portrait of Haesje van Cleyburgh. There are many issues glaring back at me in terms of resemblance, but I am happy with what I have accomplished with the program so far.


Here is the speed up video, enjoy!!

Painting surfaces: Art wood panels and how to prepare them for painting

Art wood panels were used by the Old Masters, before stretches canvas appear and are still use by some artist today. They are a nice, although sometimes an expensive alternative to paint on. I found they are also a good option for painting studies and practice; depending on the medium used, both sides can be used saving money (as long as you find a cheap alternative) and space in your home .

They are also great for finished pieces, but I would recommend a good quality wood and careful preparation for that. It is important to seal and protect all the wood exposed surfaces.

Painting  on panel is a gratifying experience and proof to be a good support for different styles of painting. As long as it's surface is prepared with the appropriate medium (pastel ground, gesso, watercolor ground, oil ground, etc) it is a very versatile support. Also, the possible shapes are a great jumpstart for the artist creative imagination.

It is always interesting and gratifying to explore different art supplies and mediums, and so it is with different painting surfaces.

Here is a quick video briefly showing how I prepare my panels for painting and some of the other alternatives I have found to the most expensive art wood panels in the market.

Watch me paint a bit while I review a new canvas notebook and new brand of acrylic paint

Check out this speed up painting while I review Cottonwood Arts canvas notebook and a new brand of acrylic paints, Twinkle Verse The Essentials (available in Amazon).