Tweeking Complete

I know I haven't been good about keeping up with the blog, but I've just got so much going on lately, I haven't found time to draw anything. I finally got around to tweeking the portrait of my brother. The problem was that I had drawn his eyes tilted, but the rest of his face straight. So I corrected the bottom portion of his face, and he is complete.

I do plan to do some more work on the zebrog soon. There is a contest I want to enter that into and the deadline is November 2. I will probably try to finish it over the weekend that my fiance goes out of town.

I also have a few more pictures selected to do portraits from, just waiting on an order of paper from Dick Blick to arrive and I'll get started on those.

Portrait of My Brother

Ok, this one needs a little tweeking, but I just wanted to hurry up and post something to show that I am still working! This is another 5x7 portrait, this time on Uart 600. There is something off, that I can't quite put my finger on. I want to say it's the eyes, but when I measured everything using the line technique from Ann Kullberg's book "Colored Pencil Secrets for Success", the eyes lined up correctly with the reference photo. As did everything else. But something IS off. I have a feeling it might have to do with the tilt of the head. In the reference photo, his head is tilted, which is what makes his eyes appear lopsided...but in my drawing, I don't think I quite have the tilt. Over the weekend, when I'm not so tired and have more motivation, I plan to put it into Photoshop and overlay it on top of the reference photo and decrease the opacity to see if I can see where I'm off.

On another subject, my friend that I threw the baby shower for had her baby on September 4th at 6:02pm. She is a beautiful and healthy baby girl. I will definitely be drawing her in the near future. Oh, I just realized darnit, I was holding her at 6:02pm, and I didn't even say Happy Birthday. :( Oh well, she was sleeping anyway. I have to order more Uart paper so that I can start my drawings of her.

I am finding that I prefer the Uart paper. I like the texture...it takes alot of pencil. But, I am still learning. Colors don't exactly turn out like you expect them to on this paper, they turn out a little bit darker. But you can easily correct things by either going over them with another pencil, or by lifting the pigment with sticky tack. The only thing I don't like is the color. I'm finding that I don't like the look of portraits on the tan color of the paper, so I need to add a background color to make the portrait stand out. Eh...maybe I will go back to the Fabriano Tiziano occasionally, just for the colors.

I do want to try a portrait on Ampersand Pastelbord. I know that Nicole Caulfield doesn't like portraits on the pastelbord...but others seem to do fine with it. Might as well give it a try. I do like the pastelbord so far, as I'm working on the Zebrog. Speaking of which, my model for that drawing needs to go out to potty. I will continue to try not to let so much time go by between posts! Goodnight :)

Back in the Groove Soon, I Promise!

I know I haven't posted for almost a whole month, but things got really busy for me for a while. I got overwhelmed and very stressed over the baby shower, which turned out to be a success, despite the flaws. lol. I was rushing around til the very last minute, I had a "to-do" list I was following, and then guests started showing up early, the guest of honor showed up 45 minutes early, and I stopped looking at my list, got thrown off and forgot to do a lot of things. Sugar cookies didn't get made, the paper I had printed for people to sign didn't get put out, windows didn't get cleaned, the towels didn't come out of the dryer and get hung in the bathroom, and nobody thought to tell me that they had nothing to dry their hands on. I almost forgot about the favor bags, and 2 people had already left before I realized it. But luckily there was someone there that was able to take them to the guests that had left.

In the midst of shower planning, things got a little bit chaotic when I tried to get my wedding save the dates made at the same time. The house looked like a tornado had gone through it, which didn't make it any easier to have it clean before the shower. The Save the Dates were a lot of work to put together. They will be in the mail hopefully before the end of this week.

During the party, I have to admit, I have never felt so relieved. It was like a huge weight was suddenly lifted off my shoulders, and I am so glad to have it all behind me. Now I can just focus on my wedding plans, and relax for a little bit.

As promised, I was working on a lot of creative things for the baby shower, and now that it's over, I can post pictures. So here they are (in no particular order):

The concert marquee banner

Raffle Prize: Dinner and a Double Feature (basket with pasta, sauce, parmesan cheese, a dvd, microwave popcorn, 2 taper candles and candle holders.

The practice cake I made 3 weeks before the party, just to see if I liked the recipe, and if I could work with fondant, which is something I had never done before.

The favor bags. I made the Hello Kitty sticker for the bag. The CD is a sampler disc of Rockabye Baby! Lullaby renditions of rock songs, which was used for one of the games as well. The baby foot cookie cutter was because instead of finger sandwiches, we had baby foot sandwiches (I had cut the bread up with the cookie cutter). The Hello Kitty print out is a t-shirt transfer. The other Hello Kitty in the back there is a "Boo-Boo Hello Kitty", my take off of the "Boo-Boo Bunny". And a little rockstar rubber duckie. Also, attached to the bag is a Hello Kitty Fender guitar pick, attached with a mini clothespin, which ties in because we played a game called Don't Drop the Baby, where the guests each had to hold the "baby" which was a Hello Kitty stuffed animal, hold a cell phone to their ear, and hang as many clothes on a clothesline as they could in 30 seconds.

The diaper cake I made for the Mommy to Be, served as a centerpeice for the refreshments table

The cake

The raffle tickets that you got if you brought a pack of diapers with you. They were also available to buy if you wanted, $1 per ticket, or 10 tickets for $5.

The box for the cake, so the Mommy to Be could take the rest of the cake home with her

Cake pops. These were included in the favor bags as well. Found how to make these on Bakerella. These take a little practice to get just right.

The invitation

And I think that's about it. Well I made the clothes for the Hello Kitty stuffed animal we used in Don't Drop the Baby. But I forgot to take a picture of the Hello Kitty stuffed Animal.

Now that the shower is over, I can get back to my drawing. I think I'm going to take the rest of this week off to relax, and then over the weekend, I will pick my colored pencils back up and get to work!

Another Update on Zebrog

I added in some grass and a little more shading on her body. It's slow going, that's for sure. Pastelbord can take so many layers, and it eats your pencils up so much. But I'm really enjoying working on this one, and I am very happy with how it's turning out. I said that in the last post, didn't I?

I've also been do so much other creative stuff. I wish I could share it all here, but I can't do that until after my friend's baby shower. BUT, I can show you the chocolate I made at the Norman Love class that I took Wednesday night.

Isn't it pretty??? All nice and shiney. And it tastes soooo good. They are filled with Grand Marnier Ganache. They gave us the recipe for the ganache, and a website where we can buy chocolate making supplies. We also got a certificate for completing the class.

The class was a lot of fun. I was glad that my mom found out they were having the classes, because considering my fiance proposed with Norman Love chocolates, I was very interested in taking the class. The chocolates are so delicious. It's technically easy...you paint the mold, fill the mold, you dump it, let the shells set, fill it with your filling, let it set, then ladle chocolate over the whole mold and scrape off the excess, so you have a bottom. Pretty easy. But, MESSY. The instructor did everything so fast and perfect, and clean. lol. But we all got chocolate all over our hands, our molds were dripping with chocolate. Our chocolates were not nearly as perfect as the instructors'. It definately takes practice. We learned that if there is any imperfection in a piece of chocolate, that chocolate cannot be sold, it becomes a sample. I'd venture to guess that A LOT of "samples" were made that night. lol. But we got to take home everything we made, which was really cool. Because if you think about the price of Norman Love chocolate, I'd guess that we probably got to take home about $40 to $50 worth of chocolate. Not including the few pieces we got to sample there. So the class was worth it, in my opinion. He has several different classes you can take, so we want to take another one. But because the class is so expensive, it won't be anytime soon. You can check out his class schedule on his website. They're local classes, I'm not sure if he holds classes in other areas or not. But I suppose you could always call and find out!

Update on Zebrog and Blog Award

Well I got a little of the background started. I'm planning on it being an out of focus green foliage background. This one is really fun to work on, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out. Pastelbord takes a lot of layers, so it's going to need much more work. It's eating my pencils up like crazy.

In the end, I plan to varnish it like Nicole Caulfield does with her pastelbord work, and frame it without glass. This is only the second time I have worked on Pastelbord....the first time was a 5x7, so I wouldn't say I have too much experience with this. Plus, I didn't try varnishing that one, so that will be a first. I hope it works out. But she explained how she does it in the workshop that I took back in February, so I shouldn't have a problem. I hope.

Also, I got another blog award from Lori Talbert at Twin Cedars Drawing Board blog.

Thank you, Lori! I'm supposed to name 7 things about myself that I've never told before. That might be hard to do, so I'm going to take some time to think about that. I will post a blog award thread, where I will fulfill my duty to claim this award, and pass it on to 7 other bloggers.

I'll see you, in the future!! - Doc Brown, Back to the Future
(sorry, my fiance likes to imitate this line, it's stuck in my head because of him. lol.

New Project - Kahlua, the Zebrog!

I've been wanting to do this one for a while, but simply have not had the guts to try it. Zebra's are hard to do, all those stripes get so confusing, I end up erasing so much that I get frustrated and give up. I have attempted to draw zebra's several times, but they never made it past the initial sketch because it just didn't turn out the way I wanted. I have completed one zebra (just the head) and wasn't really that happy with how it turned out. I think I could have done better. So this drawing has just been on my "to draw" list (yes, I do actually have a list, lol) for a while now.

But I just recently saw a piece that Brandy Perez posted on her blog, that has inspired me to finally go for it. I really admire her detail and strive to acheive that kind of detail in my own work. For now, I can only hope that mine will turn out as good as hers. Her little Zemoo is adorable...hopefully my dog will be too.

So here is the first post, I'm sorry the picture is a little dark, I took it at 11pm with my ottlite over to the side. I will try to take the next update in full natural light.

This is 16x20 on sand colored Ampersand Pastelbord. I think it was a little easier doing the stripes on Kahlua, because knowing she didn't have the same shape as a zebra, I wasn't trying to follow them exact. Just as long as it looked zebra-ish. lol. Also, this time I thought to color in the stripes as I drew them, so it was a little less confusing on what was black and what was white. This one is proving to be fun instead of frustrating, so I may end up doing more zebra OR zebrogs if I'm happy with the way this one turns out. My fiance said that I should have drawn her attacking something, so maybe that will be next. I have plenty of pictures of Kahlua attacking random toys and tearing them to shreds, so that could be an idea for a future zebrog. lol.

Jelly Beans!

The other day, while getting some things for my friends baby shower at Michael's, I picked myself up a 12 pencil set of Derwent Coloursofts. Today I decided to test them out on my lunch break. I used an image from this month's colored pencil challenge on Wetcanvas, started it on lunch and then finished it at home. I did use 2 Prismacolors in there, because I couldn't get the right shade of puple or pink for those two jelly beans.

I really like the way the coloursofts go down on my sketch book paper. The Prismacolors and the Polychromos don't go on quite as smooth on the paper in the sketchbook. But the Coloursofts just glide right on. I think I need to get myself a larger set.

The jelly beans were a really good subject to try. The shineyness of the beans, and all the different colors in the shadows were a really good challenge. I'm very happy with how it came out.