anika mari

After working hard to finish up a series of four drawings for my sister-in-law before her new baby arrived (incidentally I have four posts waiting to be published about each of the four drawings, but I forgot to get images of the final drawings before I gave them to my sister-in-law! oops!), I decided to start loosely sketching again. I drew a big flower in the middle of the page of my new sketchbook, and thought, “big surprise. you never draw flowers.” Instead of abandoning the page to draw something else, I decided that I’d make a pattern out of it.

I usually just draw to and off the edge of the page, but the shapes and lines always tend to get a little wonky near the edges. I need to practice imagining what the shape looks like, where it is positioned (even if that would be mostly off the page) and how the parts that carry over to the page would be drawn.

Instead of doing that, however, I decided to create a seamlessly tiled pattern. I took the page out of my sketch book, cut the paper into quarters and rearranged it so the edges became the inside. Then I finished the drawing.

You can see how the cuts come together in the center of the image, which were originally the outer edges of the intact piece of paper. I scanned this image in, tiled it in photoshop and then added some gray color to the background. The gray flooded some of the petals, but I like how that looks. A little off, a little unpredictable–adds some interest.

I’m not sure it’s all that obvious in the image above, but the pattern is not perfectly tiled. The edges didn’t quite meet up, but they were close enough, and really I just consider this a sketch anyway.

When working on the next two patterns, I followed the exact same process, and in the end, the tiling was even more off. So much so that it was really obvious that the edges didn’t meet up at all. I put my thinking cap on, and a clear solution hit me. I removed the tape from the paper and rearranged it so that it fit together as the original piece of paper would.

As precise as I tried to be when cutting the lines, I figured they must have been a little off, and if they aren’t perfectly square, it would make sense that it would be harder to tile the pattern. With the pieces back in their original configuration, at least I had the original straight edges to work with. Oddly, it still wasn’t perfect, but it was much better

I worked in similar styles for the two patterns. One pattern has a horizontal composition, and the other is more of a mesh pattern, but both include similar shapes and line quality. After I had the black and white line drawings cropped as accurately as I could, I added some color to each. For the horizontal pattern, I added two tones of a dark red, and for the mesh drawing, I added muted turquoise blues. Then I tiled them to see the result.

I’ve been drawing a lot lately with a focus on precision, so it was fun to work in a looser style. These patterns really evolved as I was working on them, and I didn’t know what i was going to end up with until they were done.

The biggest challenge was getting the tiling to line up well, but I’m not sure computer precision will ever be realistic when working with hand made drawings. However, if I spend a little more time in photoshop, I know I can tweak the lines here and there to get everything to line up perfectly. I’ll try that out when I make my next patterns.

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!

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!