Inktober 2017

Here are all my drawings from this year's Inktober, gathered into one post. I have to say this year has been the most scattered, thematically. (Probably had something to do with following the official prompt list in the beginning and then bailing on it after a week.) But I still feel like I came out with some good pieces and definitely leveled up in my skills, so the experience was definitely worth the effort.

Onward and upward,

Bethany

Inktober: Behind the scenes

Inktober is well underway and while I'm posting my daily ink drawings on Instagram and Twitter, I thought it would be cool to show some of drawings that lead up to the final. This year, I've done a lot more pre-drawing than in the past; brainstorming, practicing reference, trying to work out all the bugs. There's a lot of work that goes into a "finished" piece of art, whether that's in pages of scrappy practice drawings or in years of study, failure, and learning. So while it's good to honor the pretty, final artwork, I think the process of getting there is worth celebrating too!

onwards and upwards,

Bethany

"Just for fun" painting

Recently, I had the opportunity to invite my friend Nicole over to do a little painting. Nicole's also an artist, but neither of us get to paint as much as we'd like to, so it seemed like a fun way to hang out. And since it can be hard to figure out what you should paint, she brought over a bouquet of flowers and we used that for reference. Here are the two paintings I did.

I was a little unsure about trying to paint flowers, but they turned out to be pretty cool to work with (especially since I wasn't trying to be hyper realistic). But the best part was being able to paint something without the pressure to have it "turn out right". I wasn't being graded, I wasn't doing this for some big project; the whole process was super laid back and relaxing. 

Since making art is part of my career, it can easily become stressful and lose a lot of that "just for fun" quality. Painting just for the enjoyment of the painting and not for an end result really helped me reconnect with that element of fun again.

onward and upward,

Bethany

A Library Fairy and some changes

Sorry for the late post. I was really stumped on what to blog about, so I did a quick drawing of an idea I was thinking about at the time: the Library Fairy.

I think the concept is fun, but I can't say I'm super thrilled with how the drawing/painting part turned out. The pen work isn't my best and the colors feel too muddy. But at least the idea is out on paper. If I have time, I may do another version.

Also wanted to share a few up coming changes. After much thought, I've decided to update this blog less frequently. Blogging every week has been good for me in the past, but at the moment, I'm working on some larger projects that require a lot of time and aren't ready to share yet. I'm also thinking of getting an actual, fancy pants website, but that might take awhile to get off the ground. We'll see.

As of now, I'm thinking my update schedule will be either once every two weeks, or once a month. I'll have to see with schedule works better. I'm a bit sad blogging less, but I think the change will be good. And I'm excited about working on bigger ideas! ^_^

onward and upward,

Bethany

Little Moon Rabbit

Short post for today. I really liked the Moon Rabbit design I came up with for the teacup I painted a few weeks ago, so I decided to try a watercolor version of it in my sketchbook. Here's what I've got so far.

 

Not quite sure if this is the "final version" or if I want to try again with less yellow. We'll see.

onward and upward,

Bethnay

Kitten sketches! ^_^

As I'm adjusting to my new role as "kitty mom", I've been spending a ton of time with the little fur balls. They're still pretty little (8 weeks last Friday) and I'm keeping them under close supervision most of the time. And, since I'm spending so much time with them anyway, I figured I might as well sketch them! 

As you may have guessed, sketching moving kittens is tough! Animals have a hard time staying still in general and kittens, extra much so! But after a bit of practice (and waiting for them to actually slow down a bit!), I managed to come up with a few good drawings.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Reflections on painting pottery....and kittens!! :-D

This is going to be a different sort of blog post. For on thing, it's a day late (sorry about that). For another, it's not about the art I usually do. 

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to go to a "paint your own pottery" place with a few friends. Since coming up with an idea on the spot is hard, I worked out a design ahead of time, a little rabbit sitting on a crescent moon. Which brings me to Reflection 1: don't try to paint a complicated design (like a rabbit sitting on a crescent moon) on to a piece of pottery. You will save yourself so much stress!

Anyway, I met up with my friends at the pottery place and picked out something to paint; a cute teacup and saucer. After spending way too much time picking out my colors, I sat down to paint. That's when I realized that my design folly. I spent the next two and a half hours stressing out over whether it would turn out, till we had to leave because the shop closed. Which brings me to Reflection 2: if you're going to try to paint something complicated, don't start it two hours before the store closes. It's not enough time. 

Here's how the teacup and saucer looked when I left the shop.

I have to say, I was extremely discouraged. I felt like I'd wasted time and money and hadn't even had fun doing it! Jon was a trooper and put up with me as I lamented the whole way home. He also assured me that my pieces weren't as bad as I thought they were and that they would look much better after they were fired. I knew he was probably right, but had a hard time believing it.

I spent the next few weeks purposefully not thinking about the teacup, until I finally got it back. Here's how it looks post firing.

Which brings me to Reflection 3: the firing process really does wonders. Even if you do everything wrong, like I did, you can still end up with something nice! It's a magical, ugly duckling-like transformation!

And thus concludes my pottery painting story. Lesson learned; don't make things unnecessarily  complicated and don't stress out so much! Hopefully I remember that if I ever paint pottery again!

One last thing, Jon and I got KITTENS this past Monday!!! :-D Yuna is the grey tiger and Koji is the black; they're both adorable little trouble makers and we love them so much already!! ^_^

onward and upward,

Bethany