Day 8/365: Angels and Devils.

Hello, and welcome to day 8 of my art project. Today's theme is Angels and Devils.

Please pardon the awful scan. Our printer/scanner two in one is a million years old, and it doesn't like shades of red, orange, or yellow.

If you missed yesterday's entry, then go read it. I didn't recycle my angel/devil heart theme, but I did want to do something else in honor of my friend's little brother who killed himself on christmas eve a few years ago. Also, I decided to once again go a messy route as far as sharpie coloring is concerned. I did have to use a pastel crayon for the skin, because my peach sharpies are too orange

I actually began working on this in the morning and worked on it bit by bit through the day. I really didn't feel well at all today, so that didn't help. I think my allergies are acting up. It has been uncomfortable to breathe all day, I've had a raging headache since yesterday, I just have felt achy and like shit. Maybe I'm getting a cold. I hope it's nothing serious because I can't afford to see a doctor. I think I'll leave it for a couple days, and if nothing gets better, then I'll make an appointment.

Anyway. Tomorrow's them is "Antique", and I think I may end up taking a picture for that one. I own some old antique stuff that I really like showing off.

Like these:

And these:

But enough of my random crap. I'm being honest with you. I could have just saved that shit for tomorrow and not have had to actually make anything new. I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE THIS.

Lol

I'm now off to brainstorm ideas for tomorrow, and play apps on facebook. 

Day 7/365: All the Small Things.

Hello hello hello. We've reached day 7. My little art project blog is officially one week old. I'm kind of proud of myself.
I know it's only been a week, but I feel like having the list to go off has definitely helped me. Already, I've come up with a couple of drawings I really like that I would have never gotten to on my own.
Since I've got a raging headache, let's get right down to business.

I have to say, I'm quite proud of this one. Also, as boring a font as Times New Roman can be to type in sometimes, I think it looks kind of spiffy in drawings.

I had originally considered doing a few small things, like a beetle, a butterfly, and then a hummingbird, but my sketches of beetles and butterflies just didn't look right. I don't know. Maybe a hummingbird was easier to settle on because just a couple days ago I drew a sugar skull style sparrow. I must say, I've been come quite taken by that sort of sugar skull style. I may let it rest for a little while now, but I like it. It's vibrant, and colorful. Maybe I'll get around to drawing an actual sugar skull, and not just birds with sugar skull styling. But "Death" is the theme for day 77, so I've clearly got a while before I have to worry about that.

Tomorrow's theme is "Angels and devils", and I must say... I might recycle an old theme of mine. I used to draw a lot of hearts with devil horns, and a devil tail... but also with a halo, and wings. I may just try to revisit that. Or perhaps, I'll do another version of this piece:

I drew this after I heard a friend's little brother had killed himself on Christmas. I only knew his brother slightly well, but it still really got to me.

Actually, I still have a few myspace messages I exchanged with my friend's brother, saved at the back of my inbox. He was sixteen years old. I didn't know him very well but I can't bring myself to delete those messages. And it still bothers me when I think about it. Especially since... he kind of expressed a small bit of interest in me, and I told him to call me back when he was legal.

I still feel kind of bad about that, and it gets me wondering. If I hadn't basically pushed him away and if I had taken any interest in him... would he still be here? I'll never know. So I try not to mull over it too much.

Maybe I'll do another piece in his honor, involving an electric guitar. He could already play really well at sixteen. That's another thing that depresses me. He could have gone so far.

But that's another regret for another day. Regretting things you cannot change is no way to go about life. That is easier said than done, though.

Anyway. Stay tuned for tomorrow's piece. Have a good night.

Day 6/365: Alive.

Howdie howdie howdie, and welcome to day 6 of my art project. Today's theme is "alive", and seeing as I am not feeling particularly eloquent with words today, let's get right to the art.

Lyric stolen from the song "I'm Alive" by Jackson Browne; today's piece was an experiment in more than one aspect.

For instance, I've never drawn a robot lady before. Also, after reading a coloring tutorial on deviant art (which you can see here) , I decided to try my hand at reflected light. I.e., what sort of colors the robot would reflect from the moon. Obviously, I'm kind of a noob at it, but I like how it came out. I am going to experiment more with shiny and reflection sort of shit, because shading is an area I've always kind of been lacking in.

Also, I am not neat at all when it comes to working with pastel crayons. I like getting my hands all messy, and just totally smudging the shit out of everything, but I did try to contain myself on the tree. I didn't spend much time on the tree because frankly I didn't want people to focus on it too hard. Which I suppose they will after I say that. Lol. I don't care.

If you're wondering, the reflected light on the robot lady was colored pencil. My pastel crayons are huge and thick. Not good for exacting work. Lol.

Tomorrow's theme is "All the Small Things". I may or may not go the Blink 182 route with it. Maybe I'll draw bugs. Or something else tiny. Or maybe I'll take a picture of a cute, tiny toy teacup I have. I haven't decided yet.

Speaking of tomorrow, the Oscars are on tomorrow.  I'm hoping that The King's Speech wins something, and whatever else I picked on my Oscar ballot. Lol. Not that it matters. But I'm usually a really  big loser when it comes to Oscar picks. I can't decide whether to pick what I want to win, or who I think will actually win. I tried to go with the latter this year. Lol.

Well, I'm off to seriously contemplate making another cup of one of my favorite teas (Constant comment), and do other internety things. Also, to brainstorm ideas for tomorrow's picture. Toodles.

Day 5/365: Air

Hello, ladies and germs. It's day 5 of my little art project, and I think things are going fairly well. Today, I can actually show you something I've done that I really like.
Since I'm really not in the mood for a bunch of jibber jabbering mumbo jumbo, let's get right to the art.

For the love of all that is holy, please lighten up your screen settings a bit. Also, the quality may be lacking, because this was way too big for my scanner, so I had to take a picture of it with my digital camera.

The lyrics are from "Blue Blue Sky", a song on the album "On Air" by Alan Parsons. 

I drew the inspiration for the sparrow from googling a bunch of pictures of sugar skulls and sugar skull tattoos.  It was actually a lot of fun, and I might actually do more in that sort of sugar skull style. It's right up my alley.

I might actually submit today's picture to my deviantart, I like it so much. I don't use pastel crayons very much, but I do like working with them. They're a nice change from my exacting sharpie outline stuff. I like that I can just scribble with a bunch of different colors of pastel and just get my hands all dirty by smearing everything together. It's great fun. Not very neat, but fun.

Anyway, I really don't have much else to say at the moment. Tomorrow's theme is "alive", and I am going to be very tempted to do something that involves lyrics from "I'm Alive", the song or album, by Jackson Browne. Who I share an October 9th birthday with. :3

Anyway, I'm off to do internety things until I decide to get off my butt and get the laundry out of the drier so I can fold it and put it away. LOL.

Day 4/365: Aged

Today, I broke the rules. Actually. There are no rules. I said I was going to do a drawing every day, but mentioned I might supplement the list with photographs. Today, I didn't use a photograph, but a collage I made.
Today's theme was "Aged", and I decided to make a small collage of Paul McCartney pictures, out of the blue.

I have to tell you, if you have your screen set to a dark setting, unless you change it to a lighter setting, this will look a little dark. I edited it on our other computer, with the LCD screen, so naturally everything shows up super light on that one.

I used Paint Shop Pro 8, which I am slowly forgetting how to use, because I don't have it on this computer anymore. I use GIMP on this one.

I have to say, GIMP is a really good free program, but these types of collages are exceedingly difficult, what with the layer boundaries and crap. So, I don't really mess with trying to make collages in GIMP. I save that for the other computer.

Now, I hate having to say this, but that collage is not the best one I've ever made.

This is probably the best one I've ever made.

This is another good one. I took the picture in the background.

I admit. Today was a really uninspired day as far as art. I watched Howl's Moving Castle today (which I checked out from the library), and I fell in love with it again. Hayao Miyazaki is a god.

I just... wasn't feeling it today artwise.

Tomorrow's theme is "Air", and that idea might actually lend itself better to photography, or another collage. Or you may get another drawing. I'm not really sure yet.

I guess what I'm saying is that, you can expect a new piece of art every single day, but it might not be a drawing. My drawing ability is nowhere near the level that I have in my head, so I can't always physically do my ideas justice. 

So, be it a photo, a collage, or a drawing, you will see something "Air" related tomorrow. Look forward to it.

The people who read this blog. Which is nobody. But, whatever. 

Day 3/365: Adore

Hello hello hello, and welcome to day 3 of my art project. If you don't know what's going on, I'm using this list to go off of.

I'm trying not to rush this entry, because my show, Off the Map, is on in just seven minutes. I could hurry up and submit this before hand, but I don't really want to rush it. My problem with some of the entries on my food blog (my wordpress one) is that I put off writing the entry, then it'll be 11, then I'll want to hurry up and get it done so I don't have to worry about it. Then I just end up rushing it, and not really caring how it sounds.

But I mean... I don't know how exciting a food journaling blog is going to be anyway. My life isn't that exciting. Which is one of the reasons I didn't write in my blog every day, before I started the food journaling.
Anyway. I watched Ponyo again today, and I have to say, I fall in love with that movie every time I watch it. It's just so damn adorable. I wish it were three hours long. I want there to be more of it. Lol. I'm sure I could find fanfiction for it online somewhere, but I don't trust a lot of fanfiction writers. Lest they create a boring, predictable, badly written mary sue, or they make two VERY straight characters suddenly turn gay. I hate that.
Now, I love gay people, I'm a big supporter of gay rights, but I get annoyed with stupid yaoi fangirls making all their favorite guy characters gay, just so they can live out their homo-erotic fantasies.

I know fanfiction, and fanart, are just way to live out your fantasies, and continue an obsession, but sometimes I think some fantasies should stay intangible fantasies, that you call on when you can't sleep, or when you're bored and daydreaming.
I have lots of good, entertaining daydreams that would make really shitty fanfics, so I don't write them down. But that's just me. You may be different.

Anyway, I can see I've gotten sorely off topic, so let's get back to it. Today's theme was "Adore". Before I went off on a tangent, I was discussing Ponyo, which is what I was watching while I came up with today's drawing.

The scanner absolutely murdered this. Also, I used a black fineline sharpie marker. Not pen. So it bleeds all over and produces these disgusting thick lines that I absolutely cannot work with. I need to find that fucking sharpie pen.

I have to say. I like this more than I like my previous pieces, but again, it's nowhere near my best work. I hope all my daily drawings aren't going to turn out like this. I want to make something awesome that I'm super proud of.

Tomorrow's theme is "aged", and instead of waiting until midday tomorrow to work on it, I'm going to start working on that shit as soon as I'm awake enough to do so. I'm actually going to start brainstorming and sketching tonight. The problem with doing daily art is, most of the pictures I do take hours upon hours to do, and I do them a bit at a time, over the course of a few days. I don't want to upload a drawing every day and keep saying "It's nowhere near my best, I don't like it that much". Also, I don't want people to see these drawings and think that I'm a shitty artist and that all my art looks like this. I want to take this opportunity to show you a different Ponyo related drawing I did. Ponyo's mom.

Now, again, that isn't necessarily my best work either, but that is the sort of thing I can do when I spend lots and lots of time working on a piece, as opposed to just an hour or two.

This. This is one of my best pieces. This is what I can do with hours and hours.

Obviously, my day to day drawings are not going to turn out like that, but I hope to at least churn out a few things like that. Also, as long as we're posting pictures using lyrics from songs by The Zombies, I may as well post this gem.

This is another one of my best pieces.

Just so you don't think all my art is shit. Maybe I'm being too critical of myself. It's only day three of this project. I'm sure I'll get better as I go along.

Anyway, this entry is already way way longer than I wanted it to be, so I'm going to cut you off.

PS: You need to watch Off the Map. It is the best fucking show I've seen in years. Anyway. Stay tuned for tomorrow's drawing, the theme of which will be "aged".

Day 2/365: Adolescence.

Hello, and welcome to day 2 of my art project. If you're just tuning in, I decided to do a drawing every day for a year. Which may be a challenge, because I'm not always feeling artsy fartsy. Having a list will help, at least a little bit. I'm using this list, this list right here.

Today's theme was Adolescence. I'm not going to lie, I debated for hours over what I was going to draw. In the end, I decided on something reminiscent of drawings I used to do in 8th grade, through my sophomore year of high school.

I stole the lyric from a Cat Stevens song, which I've been playing repeatedly over the last week.

Now, I'm not really sure I like this, persay. It's nowhere near my best work, and it seems childish, and infantile. I know the theme was adolescence, but... I like it, and I don't. For one, I feel like this concept could be done a lot better. It would help if I could find my sharpie pen. I had to use an actual sharpie permanent marker, and my only problem with the black sharpie markers is they bleed and as a result cannot manage the thinner lines that the sharpie pens can. Also, I tried using a black gel pen for some of the girl's outline, and the stupid pen does not write in an even, dark line as I'd hoped.

No matter. I feel like this piece represents adolescence. I kind of interpreted adolescence more as immaturity, but for me... it works. There's a reason that people still mistake me for a teenager even though I'm 24. Yes. I'm 24. Let that sink in for a minute.

Anyway. Today was not one of my very artsy fartsy days, which you are going to get from time to time. I'm going to be doing one drawing every day. They're not all going to be intricate and amazing.

Well, I'm off to write today's wordpress.com blog entry, and contemplate tomorrow's theme, which is "Adore". Au revoir.

Day 1/365. Theme: Abandoned.

Hello, and welcome to day one of my illustrious post a day project.
LOL! Illustrious! More like, I'm unemployed and have art block. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Ahem. Anyway. I have the first day's drawing done already, plus a bonus piece.
And it's not even ten am. I'M SO ON TOP OF THINGS.
Actually, I did this shit lastnight to give me a head start. I figured today could be used to brainstorm ideas for other themes on the list. The list I'm using can be seen here: 365 Drawing Themes by flutterbuddie on deviantart
Because... I am not a bottomless pit of artistic ideas. If I do extra work on my artsy fartsy days, I can cover for those days where I'm maybe not feeling so creative. So I can keep up with this post a day thing. I mean. My other post a day thing has been going for 42 days now, so I have high hopes for this.

Not that anybody's going to read it. Which I'm used to by now. Lol.
ANYWAY. The art. The first is an introductory drawing I actually did the day before yesterday, while I was still planning all this stuff out.

I know. It's kind of sloppy and elementary; work with me here.

I doodled the basic design for the numbers in a small notebook I have.. while in the car on the way home from a chinese restaurant. Despite all the tiny crap inside the numbers, it took me the longest to outline the numbers. My sharpie pen is dying, and I don't have any money for another one, also, my hands are not very steady at all. So outlines that involve lots of huge, smooth lines are a pain in the ass.

Also, in the future, I should use my fineline sharpies to color in tiny spaces, instead of my huge thick crayola markers. Some of which I have literally had since I was in high school. I am 24 years old. This is troubling. Lol

Anyway. Now we move onto day 1. The first theme in the list was "Abandoned", and seeing as I plan to go in order (i.e. not skip around and pick whatever theme I want first), I figured I should start with that.

It's a random doodle that popped into my head. Ever since my obsession with Keith Moon a couple years ago, crescent moons have regularly popped up in my artwork. Also, lately, I've been drawing lots of mermaids for some reason. At first, my idea was to have some weird mermaid chick in raggy clothes looking like she was abandoned, but then I found that neat quote, and decided it fit. If you can't read my loopy handwriting, the quote says "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels". -Goya

I would have double outlined the moon, but like I said, my hands are impossibly unsteady, and my sharpie pen is dying. So I left it as is.

So, there you have it. Day 1. Today. I know I cheated a bit and drew that last night, but as I have said before, it's my party, and I'll cry if I want to. I don't know if I'll cheat and start working on Day 2's theme today, but I will certainly be brainstorming.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have exercising to do while the house is still empty, as well as dishes to finish doing, and a bathroom to clean.

A drawing a day- a new project.

Well, it's as simple as this. I've decided to take on another of those post a day projects. The first, I've been keeping up for 41 days, and that's more of a food journal, because I'm tired of being an ugly fatass. And it's on wordpress, on the blog that I've had since 2006. If you really want to bore yourself to death, you can go look at it: http://bluesilver.wordpress.com/

The idea for this blog was born out of unemployed boredom and artist's block. I enjoy drawing, but artist's block is a cruel master.  That sounded pretentious. Let's try that again.
I enjoy drawing, but when artist's block hits, it's like running into a brick wall after catapulting off a huge trampoline. It's very frustrating when you want to draw something, but can't come up with any ideas.
So, I looked up a list of 365 drawing projects (I found it on deviantart, if you'd like to check it out: http://flutterbuddie.deviantart.com/art/365-Drawing-Themes-160434070 ) and decided to take a stab at it.

I feel like having a list like that to go off of will not only give me ideas, but it will give me suggestions which I may have never come up with on my own.

Now.... I draw trippy, abstract things at times, and some of them are quite complicated (to me, I'm kind of a dunce) and take hours to finish. I never really know how long my pictures take because I work on them bit by bit, usually over the course of a few days. I don't want you to read that and think I have a huge ego or something (believe me; sometimes I have trouble believing I'm good at anything), but my art can take a ridiculously long time to finish.

Some of the drawings I make for this are going to be intricate and take ages, but some of them will be smaller, simpler things. And maybe just a sketch. I'm not sure yet. I might even cheat and take pictures instead, if a prompt lends itself to photography better.

Now, I know it's mid February, so this project won't line up with those of you who were on top of things and started on January 1st, but I don't give a shit. It's my project, I'll decide when I start it. Tomorrow will be the official start, and I'm already working on what I'm going to post, which may be considered cheating, but again, I don't give a fuck. I might cheat on that too. On days where I'm feeling particularly creative, I may make several drawings, to cover my ass on those days where none of my drawings are any good.
You'll never know.
Unless I tell you. Which I probably will. So it's not an issue lol.
Anyway, as you will learn, I can get a bit rambly and start not making sense, so it is usually then that I decide to cut myself off.
Anyway, look forward to the first real entry tomorrow.