graphite sketch – Chrissy Turley Artist

Art week in review 19/10/2018

What a week it’s been! I’m exhausted, I have however sorted all of my accounts out and I’m up to date with those. YAY! This is a new thing for me…… organisation is a foreign and strange word.

I’ve been preparing for Christmas these last couple of weeks. I’ve made tree decorations, gift Tags and cards. I love how they turned out. I’ll have to do some different designs next year. Check out my Etsy store to see all of my available art.

Above: Work in progress shot, the first of many layers.

I have almost completed my Robin winter coasters. I have to apply resin to them to make them super shiny. It’ll be my first time using resin so it could get interesting……

I have also been researching authors, artists and poets over the last day or so. Let me just say it’s been interesting reading about authors in the 1800’s. I’ve never had to worry about being motivated to draw or paint, but doing the other things that need to be done for my business have been the hardest to get done. Reading about artists and the traumas and triumphs has been a real motivator to get all aspects of my business up to scratch.

One last picture of what I’ve been working on this week. A beautiful little sketch of lavender and bees. I feel very strongly about bees and protecting them. I’ve planted 5 or 6 bee loving plants in my small garden but I am always trying to finding more plants and other ways to help and protect our wildlife? I love drawing bees.

If you would like to stay up to date with my projects follow my Instagram and Facebook accounts.

One year Anniversary – where on earth has the time gone?u

I have now been an Artist for just over a year. I am shocked at how far I’ve come in one short year. I’ve made so much progress and I’ve been able to address some of my confidence issues.

Above is one of my very first sketches……. 🙈🙈

As an artist you are forever being judged. So many people think you don’t actually “work” and that it must be easy to throw some paint on a canvas. There will always be someone sniggering behind your back, sometimes even to your face. But you know what the best thing I’ve learnt this year is? Is not to care or listen to the armchair critics. The quicker you learn to ignore the ‘know-it-alls’ the better off you are going to be.

Above is a short video a start of a puffin sketch. It turned out really nice. It just shows a little bit of effort every day over time is totally worth it.

I have enjoyed so much about the last year. I’ve loved that many people love my art and that lots of my pieces (prints and originals) are making lots of people happy. I’ve loved learning new skills and learning how to perfect certain techniques. I’ve even enjoyed finding myself lost and not sure how to move a piece forward. I have also enjoyed being able to put those pieces down, move to something new and then coming back to the old piece and knowing exactly where to go.

Learning that I don’t have to force myself to be creative and enjoying the fact that some of my better pieces were created when I threw the rule book out the window.

I learnt to TRUST myself. Trust that I am actually good at this. It’s wonderful that after many years, several different jobs and career choices that I have finally found something I love. And yet I still have SO much farther to go. The road may seem never ending, but holy moly I am going to enjoy strolling off down the winding dirt path with the fairies.

Keep up with my progress and all my new pieces for this next year by following me on Instagram and Facebook. If you would like to see what original pieces and prints I have on sale at the moment check out my Etsy Store or my Redbubble Site.

Norbert the Dragon.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love Harry Potter. I especially love drawing the magical creatures in the movies. My most recent piece that I’ve drawn is Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. It took me a long time to get all the details right. I hope you all like him!

First Stages – sketching out his shape and making sure all the proportions are accurate. I chose to draw him on A3 size 110gsm sketching paper.

The first few layers of the wings were tricky. Using my graphite pencils and my pencil eraser to try to get the texture right.

My next major challenge was the texture in the wood of the table he was on. Inserting the shadows underneath Norbert gives the 3D affect to my graphite sketch.

The final stages are a little tedious sometimes. You can see the end, it’s so close but it’s not quite perfect yet! This stage probably took the longest time to complete.

After approximately 5 hours of work, here Norbert is! I really love him. Now I get to choose another beast to draw! If anyone has any suggestions drop you choice in the comments.

Now, as Norbert isn’t my original creation he won’t be for sale. I do have many other animals, flowers and landscapes available to purchase in my etsy store. Here’s a link to one if my small dragon sketches! Dragon Art Print

If you would like to keep up to date with all my art sketches and paintings please check out my Facebook or Instagram accounts.

See you all soon,

Chrissy xx

Rosehip Sketch

Here’s a couple of pictures of my rosehip sketch I completed in about an hour. It’s very simple but I really love it. I have started an acrylic painting, but it’s still a work in progress. The reference photo is curtesy of The Mad Potter.

The first layer of graphite…….

The second and third layers of graphite are so much easier to apply. Once you have the basic shading it’s really just about light and shade. It’s important you don’t put too much dark on all at once. You need to build it up slowly, it’s very difficult to take it off once it’s on there.

To keep up to date and get some great tips to improve your art please pop over to my social media accounts. Www.facebook.com/chrissyturleyartist and www.instagram.com/chrissyturley30

Charity Art Auction

I’m holding a charity art auction in aid of the RSPCA and the RSPB. Please pop along and visit my Facebook page for all the details! These Charities are very dear to my heart. I love animals and I think it’s important to protect our wildlife, as well as protecting the domestic animals.

I will have many pieces of my Art available to bid one. There will be graphite sketches and acrylic paintings. Most will be of animals but there will be one or two pieces that will be Portraits or landscapes.

Bidding will start on the 16th of July and go until the 30th of July. Please come and support a good cause!

www.facebook.com/chrissyturleyartist

Cheers,

Chrissy

The Fantasy Art Collection

Here you will find all of my Fantasy Art and links to where you can buy prints, originals and merchandise! I will be constantly adding each of my collection so please keep visiting to check out my latest pieces!!!

You can find Original pieces in my Etsy store https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ChrissyTurleyArtist for prints and all other merchandise go to my redbubble site https://www.redbubble.com/people/chrissyturley

The first fairies I painted! Wattle and rose!

Another fairy. This one looks particularly awesome on a phone case! You can find it here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/chrissyturley

My dragon is next. This little guy looks amazing on a shirt!

And lastly my house by the river.

So that is my fantasy collection of art work. Thank you for reading and supporting my art works!

My Redbubble store is here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/chrissyturley

My Etsy Store is here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ChrissyTurleyArtist

Cheers

Chrissy

My favourite Art tools

This week the topic is my favourite tools! Learn about what paint brushes, pencils, markers, water colour pencils and ball point pens I love and why!

Paint Brushes

It’s really hard to find an ethical paint brush when you’re vegetarian. I don’t use any that are made from animal hair. This is something that is really important to me! I only use synthetic brushes. It’s hard to get a ‘rough’ look to your paint with synthetic brushes. So what I do is mess a couple up by scrubbing them hard into the canvas board or tissue paper. It messes the bristles up and you can get a much more natural effect for things like trees.

Spectrum Noir Markers

Alcohol Markers are becoming far more popular. They give a great deal of colour saturation with very little effort. They are especially good for fantasy art and animae drawings. Blending can be really difficult when you’re starting out with them. Paper plays an important role with alcohol Markers.

Graphite

This is the sketching set I’m using at the moment. They are fairly good, but next time I’ll be purchasing something that’s a little better quality. I find there isn’t a lot of difference between the hard leads and the softer pencils. This sometimes can make shading very difficult.

Watercolour Pencils

The below picture is of a print drawn in watercolour pencils. You can lay a lot of colour down to make things very rich and vibrant, or use a very light pressure and just add a wash of colour. The background in my dragon picture has a light blue wash.

Ball Point Pens or Line Markers

I like to outline water colour pencil and graphite pencil sketches with these on occasion. I also like to sketch little designs with them. They come in handy to create really dark lines and the different sizes of the line markers are perfect for shading I pen.

Follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrissyturley30 or like my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/chrissyturleyartist to stay up to date with all my current works or art!

Cheers

Chrissy xxx

Work created this week 25/6 – 01/07

This week I started with the blog post about how I created the graphite drawing of The Lion. This first lion sketch allowed me to roll on to my next lion watercolour piece. Which I named Marcus’ Lion. It was made for my son who is so quiet but ever so sweet. To check out The Lion click here and to have a look at Marcus’ Lion follow this link https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/524322682/marcus-lion.

I also started and finished an Acrylic painting of some Calla Lillies. I love calla lillies and I had this idea in my mind for a long time. It felt fantastic to start it. Keep an eye out for how I created that Lilly painting from concept to reality in the next couple of weeks.

I finished off a family Portrait and posted it off to its new home. This portrait took me a really long time and it’s my very first family Portrait for someone else. A step by step guide to how I created this piece will be available shortly, so keep an eye out for it. I’ve been super busy this week with finishing off all of my current projects.

I decided to make teachers gifts, as opposed to buying them. My 2 kids have 8 between them! So I started by making the gift tags that will go on a framed print of mine. I hope they enjoy their gifts!!!

And lastly this week I created a graphite sketch of a red squirrel. I love squirrels, they are one of my favourite animals.

To check out my squirrel, and all my other pieces in full view, get to my etsy and redbubble stores for Originals, prints and other merchandise.

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ChrissyTurleyArtist

Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/chrissyturley

Join me on my Facebook and Instagram pages to keep up to date with all my art work.

Cheers

Chrissy xxx

The Lion

For the next 5 days I will be showing you how I created my latest piece ‘The Lion’. I enjoy seeing how artists come up with there ideas. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed creating him.

I’m drawing in my art journal for this piece.

I start out with a very light sketch. I will erase and re-draw anything until I’m totally happy with the overall shape. I look at proportions and ask myself – does he look real? Once I am happy with the basic outline, I start the next step.

Creating the look of hair. I start with the sketching in the darkest areas lightly. Gradually darkening each section by going up in the softness of the pencil.

I keep adding layers upon layers of shading, using light short strokes to mimic his hair. I continue to look at my reference photo. It’s important that you try not to outline the darker areas, but rather to increase the softness of your graphite pencil so it lays slightly darker hair down with each stroke.

Tip: if you press too hard with your pencil, you will destroy your paper. There will always be a dent in your paper, no amount of erasing will be able to fix. The same goes to erasing, if you are too rough, you will take the tooth away from the paper and possibly go right through to the other side.

It took me about 3 hours to complete my lion. I’ve made him with green eyes to give an eerie fantasy art feel. He’s been very popular so far and the prints are just stunning.

There are prints available in my Etsy store and on Redbubble as phone cases, bags, and much more. If you would like to keep up-to-date with my art works visit my Instagram and Facebook pages.

Thanks for reading,

Chrissy xx

This weeks drawings

Here is a quick look at what I’ve been up to this week! The topic suggested by a fan on Facebook was horses! So I did 2 horses. I’m very happy with the second one I did (pictured below). I didn’t have a reference photo to use and I kinda just used my memory of my horse Rex.

The below picture I’ve used water colour paint for the very first time. It didn’t turn out as well as I was hoping for. I did however enjoy using the water colour paint. I will definitely have to try it again. But I think first I will watch some you tube videos.

This picture of an elf I drew completely from my mind. I totally love it. She will be available in my Etsy store and on red bubble very shortly! I am totally in love with this graphite sketch.

All of my links will be down below, remember I now have a redbubble account so many of my designs are now on phone cases, bags and mugs. They are the perfect gift for your special someone.

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ChrissyTurleyArtist

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrissyturleyartist

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrissyturley30

Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/chrissyturley

Thanks for reading,

Chrissy xx