anika mari

My brother James and his wife Rachel are expecting their first baby. They are in the process of picking out stuff to decorate the room, and they’ve asked me if I’d make a four drawings to be a main feature in the room. Since the theme is nature inspired, this is right up my alley. It so happens that Rachel really likes a few recent drawings from my new sketchbook.

Some of the original drawings are more “finished” than others, but I’m going to use them all as jumping off points, so I’ll alter them a bit to work cohesively has a group, more or less.

The two favorites are “Hearts” and “Citrus”.

The third will either be “Peach Flowers” or “Pebble Flowers”.

I’m leaning toward “Pebble Flowers” but we’ll see how it evolves.

The last one will probably be based on the “Clouds” sketch.

I’m thinking about incorporating some rain from a previous “Little Rain Cloud” drawing that I did a while back.

This should be a really fun project, and I’m looking forward to pulling it all together. Although I’ve been making an effort to complete “finished” work lately, these will probably be the first of my drawings to actually get framed, which is pretty exciting.

When I was at the art store recently buying myself some new markers for Christmas, I got to browsing around the store. I found a display with “watercolor panels”. The surface is prepared with clay, and has a nice texture to it. The description said that it can be framed without glass. That sounded interesting to me, so I decided to buy a set of 4 6×6 panels.

I prepared the background of the panel with a warm yellow color, then I used watercolor to create the composition, adding the line work in when everything was dry.

The panel definitely felt different than paper under my brush. The flat hardness of the board was the first sensation, and then I became aware of the subtleties of the textured surface. It’s not as absorbent as paper, but there is absorbency. The color layers pretty well, but I decided against doing a 4th layer on some areas since the paint seemed to be building up on the surface.

Oddly enough, the surface was still absorbent enough to suck the ink right up. I’m not sure if it’s because parts of the painting might not have been 100% bone dry, but the lines spread and bled a lot more than it usually does on paper. This was the most disappointing part of the process because I thought the thick black lines were ruining the whole painting. I was definitely going for a more delicate line, but if I overlook that initial intention, I think the piece holds up pretty well. In the future, I’ll either have to use a thinner tip than I normally would, or make sure the painting is as dry as it can be.

I’m looking forward to painting up the remaining 3 panels. I could well imagine that the next ones will get better and better, technically speaking, as I get more used to working with the clay surface.

I’ve been keeping up some momentum with drawing. This makes me very happy.

My art has a way of communicating with me. When something is complete, I definitely know it. When it’s missing something, that becomes equally obvious to me. Sometimes I think I’m done with a piece, but then over the following days it still tugs at me. Eventually I’ll realize what a piece needs to be finally finished.

I did this first drawing, and after coloring in a light gray brown and blue, I really thought it was complete.

It wasn’t.

I kept looking at it over the next days. I really liked it, but it gave me an empty feeling whenever I looked at it. It needed something more. Another blue.

The addition of the lighter blue did it for me. In my eyes it went from “good” to “yes!”. I love it when art says “yes!”.

Here’s another that I initially thought was done:

It isn’t.

I’ve been sitting with it for a few days, and I’m definitely being drawn to add something more. In this case, I’m pretty sure I’m going to add some line work for texture.

I’ll post the results when it’s done.

I got a few new markers for Christmas that I was eager to try out. I got all my sketch stuff out, ready to start, but I ended up having to wash out all my rapidograph pens, since it’s been so long since I’ve really drawn; some of them were out of ink and some of them were all gunked up. It took a while, but now they are all squeaky clean and ready for scribbling.

All the following scribbles are on grid paper because that’s what I had handy.

First scribble:

The new colors in this one are “pale jade” and “lime peel”. It’s a simple drawing of flowers, but I like the color combination.

Second scribble:

I used my new chartpak ad marker in “pink” for the background. It’s the first chartpak marker that I’ve tried. The fumes are intense, but the coverage is really nice, and they seem to have a nice variety of colors available. I also got a really nice dark purple that I hope to try out soon. I used my new “magenta” prisma color marker as well as a couple of old green ones (”dark green” and “parrot green”). In the end I wish I’d left off the green. I might have to do another version with just the pinks.

Third scribble:

I didn’t end up using any of my new colors in this one. The background is “goldenrod” and the other color is “spanish orange”. As I was drawing this one, I paused every so often to look at it skeptically. It’s a little odd, but I like how it turned out.

I’ve been working on some larger drawings that I hope to post about soon. It’s fun to have new colors to play with!

My new job as been soaking up all my time and creative energy, so I haven’t been very productive lately, aside from a few sketches in a small sketchbook.

This felt like a particularly long week, so I left early on Friday and decided to head up to my mom’s house for the weekend. We are currently in the middle of some major snow fall. Already we have about a foot of snow, and it’s supposed to keep snowing all day!

On the drive up I decided that I wanted to do some art this weekend, but wasn’t sure what. When I saw my mom’s new orchid sitting on the dining room table, I was inspired to pick up where I had left off with the technique of drawing from shadows. try out a couple of new techniques. I’ve done shadow drawings before, and had a few next steps in mind when I left off that I never got a chance to try out.

These shadow drawings are made possible by my mom’s dining room light which casts multi-faceted shadows. There might be science behind the shadows it casts, but I like to think it’s magic.

The drawings shown below are smaller (11×14) than the last ones (18×24) since I just wanted to experiment a bit. Maybe I’ll do a big one tomorrow. I had to scan them because I don’t have my card reader for my camera, so the images below are only part of the entire piece.

First I traced the shadows with pen, then did watercolor, then added the line texture with my pen:

For the next piece I traced the shadows with watercolor first, then outlined the watercolor and enhanced the shapes with lines, but no line texture in this one:

I like the first one from a distance because although the line texture blends together, it still looks quite flat and sharp, contrasting the soft and subtle texture of the watercolor. The second one is best appreciated up-close since the lines and shapes and the watercolor texture are so neat, but you don’t see it as much from a few feet away.

The small sketches I’ve been doing lately weren’t all that great, and they left me wondering if I’d lost my knack. Now I think I’ve got it back.

Oh dear, that rhymed.