Christmas Collection

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 and not one I use often to describe myself!

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.

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 week 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.

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. 

Graphik Line Markers – My all time favourite Markers. They come in various tip widths and are so easy to use. You do need to be carful when using them with water colours – make sure they are the last layer you put down. They tend to run!

I like to outline water colour pencil and graphite pencil sketches with these on occasion. I also like to sketch little designs with them. 

Cheers,
Chrissy xxx