Song of the Sea

I have a very good friend whose birthday is actually today (I should probably wait and post this tomorrow, after I've given this to her...nope, I'm not waiting!). Recently she took me to see the animated movie "Song of the Sea" - we both not only loved the beautiful visuals of the film but also the haunting Irish music. I wanted to involve the soundtrack for the movie with whatever I gave her as a gift, but online I could only find a digital download of the soundtrack for purchase. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized this was PERFECT - I would purchase the music and make my own personalized CD and CD case as her birthday present.

For the CD case I used a sheet of high quality watercolor paper which I measured, folded, and cut to size. The movie has lots of watercolor textures in it so I decided to take the ink and watercolor route with my artwork.

This photo was taken after I had started the inking process. It still needs more inking before I start painting -my friend loves dogs so although the dog isn't the star of the movie, he got a star spot on the front of this CD case!

More inking and I've started painting

More inking and more painting - plus I've unfolded the paper so you can see the start of my painting on the inside cover as well

A view of the inking and and painting on the inside cover - this is the main character who is a selkie, a little girl who turns into a seal

After I've finished inking and painting - the CD case flat and unglued

After spraying the artwork to protect it, adding a ribbon, and gluing everything flat (I got to pull out my old bookbinding tools, it was fun!) - here's the finished CD case!!

Back of finished CD case with song list

Inside CD case with CD in clear plastic pocket (which holds it in place really well)

Inside CD case with CD removed - along the rounded top of the rocks I have written some of the words from the first verse of the movie's main song

I am really happy with how the CD case turned out - I had a lot of fun painting and inking and I think the end result is beautiful and unique, which is exactly what I wanted in a gift for my friend.

~m.d.

Ouran High School Host Club - Group Painting

My very favorite anime is one called Ouran High School Host Club - no other anime I've seen can compare to the perfect balance of silliness and storytelling that leaves you with a smile on your face.

I love ALL the characters on the show (part of what makes the show so great is how each character is explored and developed) and have wanted to do a group drawing of everyone for a while now. ESPECIALLY because official OHSHC artwork is usually bright pink and filled with roses or over-the top silly. . . not really to my taste.

For this blog post, I decided I should start with the finished piece and then jump to the progression photos - so here's the finished piece I created! It is a watercolor and ink painting that has been digitally retouched with a digital background added (original size 11x15:):

Now, let's go back and watch it come together.

After my recent success working with watercolor postcards, I decided to splurge and buy myself some large, high-quality watercolor paper. I've been out of watercolor paper for a while and the stuff I used to use was low quality and would curl (the watercolor postcards have been so nice because they're the high quality paper and I'd never previously used watercolor on paper that nice, it really makes a difference!!). I bought the pad with the specific idea of this piece in mind - I knew I wanted to start on it right away.

The first stage was penciling out the outlines I would later be inking over. I worked from several different reference screenshots from the anime, so I focused on different faces at different times.

faces start as lose circles or shapes to block out the space, then I go back and develop the face further with actual features

developing the faces and beginning to develop the shape of the bodies now as well

Because there are more characters in this piece than I've ever had in a single piece I've done before, I was surprised at how long the pencil work took me (I worked almost nightly for at least an hour, took about a week). I had to be pretty patient as it came together, so I was very relaxed about my drawing schedule and would watch random shows on Netflix as I worked.

almost done with my outlines!

After I finished my pencil work, I picked up my graphic pen (which I hadn't used on a piece before) and started tracing over my pencil lines.

I decided I wanted to add an inviting hand to the character in the foreground and ended up not finishing the pencil work on the last two characters on the far left until after I had done some inking

finished inking, including going back and thickening lines to create a sense of depth

Spent a couple evenings laying in watercolor paint - and some highlights in gouache:

The traditional art finished, I took a photo and in Photoshop made some corrections -for example, some of the heads in the drawing were actually disproportionate to the bodies, so I fixed that (probably the most obvious fix). Then digitally added a background and all finished!:

. . . in case you forgot, here it is all finished!

I went with a cooler color scheme as opposed to my usually warm palette, so this piece stands out color-wise from other work I've done (which is kinda fun).

All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out :-)

~m.d.

i love strawberries

My very talented friend Naisi loves working with ink and watercolor, and as I haven't really played in that world I was inspired by her work to take the leap and do some experimenting. My friend works mostly on watercolor postcards, so I bought a pack myself as well as some permanent ink pens in a variety of tip sizes. I already had the watercolors.

The first thing I did was some free play with the pens to get an idea of what effect I could achieve with the different tip sizes. Then I looked around my desk to figure out if there was something worth painting. If you remember, I created a little strawberry pot arrangement out of clay (I have a blog post and pictures here) and I've been keeping it on my desk - so I decided I would paint a picture of it!

I started out, as I always do, with a pencil sketch of the planter. Then, I felt confident enough with my pens to select a tip size to trace over my pencil work to create the ink outline for my painting.

inking over my pencil lines - usually when I do watercolors I will just do pencil and paint directly over the pencil lines

finished ink outline after pencil lines have been erased

I completed the ink work but it was several weeks before I found myself with time again for art (which was last night, I'd had a bit of a difficult weekend so I needed an escape).

My original intention was to play with salting the wet paint to create texture to represent the dimples on the strawberries. Unfortunately, the scale of my painting was too small for this technique to be effective. Instead, I pulled out one of my smaller tipped pens and drew in the dimples.

after painting in the ink outline

I decided after painting my original ink outline that the piece needed some kind of border to look complete. I sat and thought about it for several minutes, then just started with a simple line border and built on it from there.

the finished piece with border

me holding the finished piece for scale - this is under my desk lamp

the painting next to the model - it's about actual size!

I think I'm going to do a few more little paintings like this - I'm glad I tried the technique, it was a lot of fun!

~ m.d.

Plans.

I prefer to do posts where I can share some sort of visual. After all, this is an art blog - so it feels strange to just type with no image to lead the words. Even when what I want to type about are my plans for future art -  for images that don't yet exist.

So I went digging in my bag to find something visual to share. I'm not at home, so my options are limited to what I have on hand. Luckily, I found a paper I doodled all over yesterday - I know, it's a doodle, but still. . .  it's SOMETHING:

a close-up taken from my doodling with a blue-tinted shadow - a lot of my doodling looks like this

Ahh - a visual. Muuuucccchhhhh better.

Now I've met the requirements for an artistic visual, I can switch subjects back to my originally intended one -  sharing some of my art plans.

I have a confession to make - I'm in a very frustrating stage of life right now. I feel like no matter how hard I push, I'm stuck. Everything seems frozen around me and there doesn't really seem to be a way forward.

On the flipside, I've realized that the static (yet, STABLE) state of my life means there's room for artistic growth!!

It's weird, because I'm so eager for change. I so wish things weren't as they are, and my situation was different. But maybe wishing that is wrong, because I have a unique opportunity with things as they are. I've been sketching, recording ideas, and making lists of things to do with my art. Things that if my life were different I wouldn't be able to pursue and realize.

This weekend I'm planning to start setting some of those plans in motion. My first step is selling more of my artistic creations through Etsy - and doing it more confidently. I've also been doing some painting (props for a convention) and it's made me realize how much I miss, well, painting. So after this weekend, I plan to set up in my garage (as I intended to do over a year ago) to start painting. I have sketches and ideas and I know exactly what I'm going to start working on and what direction I plan to take it in.

I also have piles of self portraits waiting to be scanned (I'm a bit behind again, it's been a busy summer as I keep saying. . . ) - it's already been 3, going on 4 months of portrait drawing! Ca-ray-za-eee.

I'll share some pictures - when those images go from planned to reality :-)

~md

"Silence is a Flower"

Sometimes in art making, your process takes you a little sideways. That is to say, you start out working on one thing you think is going to turn out one way, and it ends up leading you into something entirely different that instead turns out the way you thought that first project was going to. This piece is an example of that - behold, my original artwork designed for Seattle Sakura Con 2013!

Where it all went sideways is that I was actually working on another art project at the time I got an idea for this - mainly because the first project the technique I was using wasn't working out well. But I realized that with a different subject matter the technique would be just perfect . . and the idea for this piece was born.

The only prerequisite I had previously determined for this piece is that I wanted to include an original character of some sort ( which requires you to invent a new individual to portray rather than the pre-existing ones that you can borrow when creating fanart) and I wanted it to include original Japanese "calligraphy" (I put that in quotes because my brushwork is so very amateur). After my experience with the technique I was attempting, I added on to my list that I wanted to draw a woman in a kimono (the subject matter I realized would be perfect with the technique I was attempting). I then decided I wanted to imitate the drawing style of old Japanese woodblock prints (which I LOVE!), and sat down with my pencil and fine-tipped art pen and a book of my favorite prints for inspiration. The rest of the piece then came together as I drew, scanned, and layered.

On this piece, the kanji/hiragana - 言わぬが花 (iwanu ga hana) - literally translates to: "Not speaking is a flower." It's a Japanese proverb about both the beauty of silence and the wisdom of withholding.

The textures on her kimono (including the obi) are thanks to beautiful sheets of origami paper. I had to do a lot of color tweaking and shading to get everything to coordinate and flow together, and it was a lot harder than I first thought! But I think I got this piece to a good place.

I thought about creating another original anime-style character, but I've come to a conclusion. That conclusision is that I enjoy anime and manga, but I've always been more of an observer on that world of story telling. I enjoy being a part of that world by watching, but creating something original is different. Its more involved and engaged. And I don't feel like me and anime are at that stage in our relationship. At this point, I'm just content to keep staring at anime across the schoolyard and sketching little tributes in my notebook to the moments of awesome I glimpse ;-) Or something like that.

So this story of art-making ends happily - except there is that piece I was working in the first place that has been sitting unfinished while this other, new piece got all the attention. Poor little abandoned sketches. Well, they are my next art challenge, to be addressed this weekend . . .more art soon to come!

~md

**UPDATE POST-SAKURA-CON** I edited it again. . .