Recreating an old sketch to use on my Cricut!

I've kept sketchbooks off and on for years... simple, inexpensive notebooks I'd pick up either on sale or at the dollar store. While looking through some of my older sketches, I found several I'd like to make into stickers. I started with this strange little critter that seems somewhat frog-like.

My original drawing was fairly messy, but still fun.

He needed a LOT of work! The original photo of my sketch wasn't all that great, and he very much needed to be cleaned up and sharpened up. Because of this I brought the image into Photoshop and basically redrew the entire image.

Once I was finished, I saved him as a basic PNG image, then brought him into Illustrator to save him as an SVG. Then I had an idea...

I love the rough quality of the lines, almost like the tool marks from a chisel!

I recently saw a post on Reddit that linked to a really fun website called CuteCutter that helps you create simple SVGs of your images so that you can print them and/or cut them out on your cutting machine. I've done several images and I love how they come out... I'll be sharing more of those in the coming days, believe me. :D

I have to say I loved the way my original drawing came out using CuteCutter! It has an interesting, organic feel to it... almost like a linoleum print! It will definitely make an interesting sticker!

Also, once I finished cleaning up my drawing I decided to share an animated gif to show the difference between the two images. It's always good to start with the highest quality image you can, so that you can wind up with better end products.

Hopefully I'll be showing you some lovely stickers soon, including this chunky boy. I also have several other things to share coming up, so keep an eye on this space!

Til next time!

Last Sketchbook Update of 2013!

The year is winding down, and I'm sharing a last few sketches of the year. There's not much here, mainly because I've been fascinated by intricate patterns lately.

For those of you who don't know, I find drawing to be a wonderful thing. It helps distract me when I'm worried about something or having a bad fibro night. Because of this I tend to carry art supplies with me wherever I go. Nothing too fancy, just a notebook and some pens.

Ok, that's not quite accurate. I generally carry 4 black gel pens in different weights (from extra fine point to extra heavy), a few pencils and erasers, and something like 30 or 40 gel pens. And maybe a ruler or two, and maybe a couple of stencils for drawing circles or other shapes. Oh, and then there are the sharpies...

Let's just say I love color, lots and lots of color. I carry more art supplies than anything, because they're important to me. If you ever see me in public, I'll probably be doodling! But enough of that... on to the sketches!!

I doodled this onto a napkin after Thanksgiving dinner.

Flowers. I absolutely LOVE flowers. When we went to my dad's house for Thanksgiving, I wound up doodling on my napkin after we ate. I get really caught up in my head sometimes, so when I'm having a conversation, doodling something simple helps me focus on the conversation.

It sounds silly, but there are even studies to show that doodling can help people focus in meetings! Having a simple, mindless task certainly helps me turn off the internal chatter that seems to run through my head. That way I can actually pay attention to what's happening around me!

 
These three are related, although it's hard to tell. The left image is a copy of a drawing by Lorri-Marie Jenkins I'd found while browsing Stuffed magazine. I copied it, then colored it and added the white patterns. A few days later, I tried to draw some sketches in a similar style, but I don't feel like I captured it. Maybe it's my own style, but I don't really know. Then I did the strangest one... it started out being a woman, and then ... I don't know. It turned into some sort of woman/Dalek/duck combination. Don't ask, I don't have any answers.

But hey... this is how creativity works. Sometimes you get the Sistine Chapel, other times you get a woman with duck legs, a plunger, and... umm... whatever that silver thing is. They can't all be winners, right?

It's 6:40am, and I haven't been to sleep yet. Let's just show the rest of the sketches without much commentary, shall we?

This is the sort of intricate pattern I've been experimenting with. These take a long time to complete, but they're so much fun to do. I really, really love doing these!!

 

I hope your holidays are going wonderfully, and that you're having a joyous time. I'll see you soon!

Drawing supplies are cheaper than therapy. :D

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Drawing is wonderful for pain management!

You know, I'm dreading winter. If I'm flaring like this when the weather starts changing, I'm in for it. But hey, maybe this will be the winter that doesn't hurt me as much, right?

In the meantime, I've been doing lots of drawing and doodling. The above image is a background I painted, but the text was done in Photoshop. I have some more images too... enjoy!

Be aware, this is graphics-intensive. The images are optimized to load quickly, but there's still a ton of them.

Wreck This Journal: OMG, I can't actually DO that... can I?

I'm going to break away from the cosmetic goodies today to talk about something amazingly fun I've been playing with lately. A while back, a dear friend of mine sent me a wonderful package with awesome goodies inside. She'd seen a book that seemed like the kind of thing I'd absolutely love, so she picked it up for me.

When I opened it, I think the neighbors could hear my squeals of joy. Turns out, Din had gotten me a copy of Wreck This Journal, a book I'd been dying to get for several years! Isn't it fun when a friend knows you so well? As soon as I opened it, I couldn't wait to jump in.

This isn't your typical sketchbook or art project book. Instead, Wreck This Journal encourages the reader to stop thinking of it as something to be kept pristine and get messy with it. Crease the covers, rip the pages, fold corners down, spill things in it, tape sections together.

The concept is that in every act of creation, there is also destruction. If you're so worried about keeping something precious and untouched, you can never turn it into something else, something better... into art, for example, although I wouldn't call what I'm doing art. :D

I've photographed a few of my favorite pages I've worked on so far. For example, I absolutely love my little cheerleader! At the top of the page, you can see the instructions: Doodle over top of this page and in the margins. That's HARD to do! I got started with a tiny face with no boundaries- just eyes, nose, and mouth. Then came eyebrows, and hair, and soon I had a complete cheerleader! It was a bit surprising, even to me and I drew it!

The strange part is that I've always been slightly intimidated by a blank page, especially if it's in a nice sketchbook. There's something about sketchbooks that seem important to me, and I've always felt like anything I did in them needed to be worthy of being put into a nice sketchbook.

This, however, was just a page of gibberish. You can click the image to see it large enough to read if you like, and I read the whole thing before I got started drawing. Because it was unimportant, I felt able to let go and be free with my motions. Soon, I jumped into the other sections of the book.

One of the first instructions you're given is to scribble on the outside of the book, where the pages all line up. I decided to give myself a message with mine, and to the right you can see the three edges of the book in order, with the message readable.

Gel pens are fun for this, as are Sharpies. Also, I used nail polish over the blue heart at the bottom, mainly as an experiment to see if it would damage the book. It didn't, which is fun to know!

Speaking of nail polish... (oh come on, you knew I'd get nail polish into this post somehow!) There's a page that asks you to drip something onto the pages and then squish them together to form an inkblot of... well, whatever you dripped. Guess what I used!! :D

To the right, you can see the polishes I used. I dripped polishes in several batches, so that they wouldn't dry and would move well. I also closed the book, then massaged the pages a bit to encourage the polish to move and mix in interesting ways. I'm pretty pleased with it so far, and will be fiddling with it some more before I'm finished.

Once I took this photo, I realized I wanted to play with it in photoshop. There are several sections in it that really draw my eye and make me want to play. So... I did. This is one result.

I really like the color in this. There's just something visceral and organic about it, and I'd love to see it in a large print on my wall! Then again, the last thing I painted and put on my wall was a digitally-altered painting I made with cheap acrylics and typing paper. It came out awesome too. :D

So yea... If you like art at all, or doodling and sketching and drawing, definitely look at this book. It's actually changed the way I think about the things I make!

Til next time!

"Wreck This Journal" was given to me by a very dear friend. Hi Din!!

See my disclosure statement for more information.