anika mari

In my last post I shared some drawings I’d done, but only the outlines. I went ahead and colored in a few of the images with Prismacolor markers.

First I colored the Fishies Under the Sea Drawing with blues and greens.

I’m particularly happy with how the waves turned out.

Next I used only green markers on the more simple waves-only drawing.

I love these two greens together. I was also really happy with how the light green “sky” turned out. Because the marker is starting to run dry, it’s “juicier” when I first start drawing, which lets me slowly build up color when it doesn’t have as much ink flowing, so I was able to achieve a nice gradient.

As I added color to the “lightning bug” pattern, I intended to fill in the whole thing, but I really liked how it looked after just coloring in a few of the shapes, so I left it that way.

I also drew a few new patterns, and I colored the next one in before scanning in the outline, which wasn’t that exciting.

I am really liking multi-color palettes lately, including this one. I managed to avoid using yellow. I think it’s a little more interesting when you leave at least one color out when using many colors.

Usually I dive right in and add color to my drawings, but I wanted to get digital scans of the line drawings so I can try out different color combinations. I’m working on a little project for my brother James and his wife Rachel (a few drawings for their daughter’s nursery), and I’m not exactly sure what kind of colors they want to use in the room. I might try my hand at digitally coloring them, but if I have the black and white digital files, I can always print them out and color them with markers, not unlike a coloring book.

I’m still not sure of the direction where I’m taking the drawings. James and Rachel picked out a few drawings of mine that they liked, but it wasn’t clear to me how to make a cohesive group of four images, so I’ve been fleshing out some drawings, and coming up with new ideas.

I worked a little more on the “Heart Flowers” drawing.

I think the little bees are so cute!

I think the stems of the flowers need to be a little longer in proportion to the grass, but I like where it’s heading. The clouds are similar to some of the cloud drawings I’ve been working on (see below), which might work or might not depending on what happens with the other drawings.

From the original clouds drawing, I made the composition more like a landscape, which matches the heart flowers drawing a little better. I used the rain texture from another raincloud drawing.

It seems a little overworked to me, so I next tried a more simplified approach.

I think the rain could be “lightened up” a bit, but I really love the clouds.

With the landscape idea in mind, I tried to figure out another image to draw. The ocean came to mind, and I drew some waves that were inspired by the cloud texture.

The waves on the bottom didn’t leave much room for anything, except for maybe some clouds, which didn’t seem too exciting to me. I thought it would be cute to work in some little fish, so I drew another set of waves, this time toward the top of the paper.

I got in the swing of things after drawing so much, and I came up with a new pattern.

I think it’s really cute, and reminds me of lightning bugs, which would fit in with the nature-theme of the nursery, so maybe there’s a way to work them in? Who knows! Things are still a little scattered, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, and I’m having fun doing it!

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.