Don't Mind the Arrow

What To Draw?

I found myself wondering that, just feeling like I wanted to practice but I had no clue what to use as a subject. And then I thought, "hey, isn't that the whole point of Everyday Matters?" So I went and pulled a prompt out of the much-disused container and sat down to draw.

Here's what I ended up with. I was originally going to pull the one out of the fridge, but I was glad to see we had an empty one in the recycling bin. With my luck, I would have bumped it and ended up with eggs all over the floor. 

In other news, I've finally figured out what I'm going to do for the Sketchbook Project. Still a lot of planning to go into it, but I've got the concept finalized at least. Four months to make it happen. I can do it!

The Perfect Pen

Last time, I promised I would write about the amazing pen I discovered.  I know everyone struggles to a certain extent to find the pen that really works with their style (aside from the lucky few who can pick up anything from a fountain pen to a ballpoint to a Sharpie and work magic), and I'm no different. One of my issues was that although I love the Micron pens, I tend to flatten the point and then they don't flow nicely (holding them at an angle once that's happened leads to uneven ink flow). Ditton with the ultra-fine Sharpies (plus, those bleed through worse than most other pens). It even happened with my Pitt pens, which I liked a lot otherwise. I've resigned myself to only really using the brush tips with Pitt.

And then, on a whim, I picked up a rollerball gel pen. I've never tried to use them for drawing, really, although there are a few I've liked for writing. I came home, tried it out, and ... it was perfect. Flowy, with deep black ink. No skipping or unevenness in the ink. Heaven.

I've done a few different drawings with it that I'll be sharing, but here is one for now. I was trying out a new, looser style and I think the pen really helped me accomplish what I set out to do. What do you think?

 

It's Been a While...

In fact, it's been long enough that I hadn't even signed in to Typepad on my new computer that I bought a week and a half ago. Yikes.

It's not like I haven't thought about the blog, or been doing anything art-related, because I've done both. But somehow I was always busy actually doing things instead of blogging about them. I've participated a few times in group drawing challenges on Google+, and I've found it surprisingly fun to get out of my comfort zone and try more cartoonish/illustrator-like styles of drawing.

That one was for a challenge called "Ways Penguins Fly." The next one was to make a drawing of your element and Chinese zodiac animal. I was born in the year of the Metal Pig.

I have so much more to post about, but I'm going to leave it at that for now because I don't want to have this one just run on and on. Next time, though, I'm going to talk about a new pen I bought that I absolutely fell in love with.