Drawing tigers

From time to time I like to watch tutorials “how to paint or draw” something. It gives me a base and more confidence to try new options. I also get a lot of inspiration from watching others doing great things.

A few years ago I joined DA community, where a huge number of people from all over the world exhibit their art and share their artistic experiences. Since life on social media is not a daily need for me, I am more or less a passive member there, happy with all the inspiration around.

I recently participated in a crazy crowd drawing of a tiger based on a tutorial posted by one of the DA artists. It was a great experience to see that when a thousand people do the same thing, it definitely doesn’t come out the same. And I believe there were more than a thousand. Digital or traditional, drawing or painting, in vibrant colors or black and white. Tigers of any kind.

It was a time when I was full of color palettes, so I wanted to apply one of them and place my orange tiger on a blue and turquoise background. I am quite satisfied with the result, except that I underestimated quality of the paper.

Since I still have trouble drawing figures, I challenged myself to draw another tiger in full body. I also wanted to give him an expression, an emotion. Most people see the tiger as a symbol of courage. My tarot reading experience says, that its presence often means fear. So I chose fear as the emotion for my tiger sketch. What do you say?

I have enjoyed participating in the tiger drawing craze, but I cannot wait to do my own projects. Where to start? I have so many ideas, lack of skills and time to improve them. But I keep trying.

With love and hugs,

Ivana

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Playing with palettes

How do you select colors for your drawing or painting? Do you make a palette first? I would expect YES.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I started from the opposite site. When I grabbed colored pencils as an adult, I did so with my eyes closed, wondering what it would bring to my drawing. It was surprisingly good and harmonious, which encouraged trust in my own intuition, neglected for many years.

Later I choose colors more consciously, but the old habits continued to work. In each set of colored pencils I first used the yellow – orange – green tones, probably the colors of my soul. Colors that my intuition gravitates to, whatever I’m drawing. All the blues and purples were piling up almost unused.

Exceptional play with blue, pink and violet colored pencils.

Something changed when I bought watercolor paints two and half years ago. I discovered the adventure of mixing colors and fell in love. Conclusion? I need to work with colors consciously, I need vibrant colors on my pictures.

Colorful flowers – watercolor and Inktense pencils, intuitive color selection.

Recently, I took my old colored pencils and tried to create a range of beautiful combinations just for fun. I spent hours creating them and cannot wait to use them all. I’m not sure yet, but it looks I’m currently leaning towards a combination of watercolor in the base, ink or colored pencils in the final layer to get closer to one of the color palletes.

That’s called evolution, right?

Mushroom in earthy tones. Watercolor background, colored pencils above.

I hope that your life brings you pleasure and the joy of change.

With love and hugs,

Ivana

Message bottle

I was in the mood of a castaway and had a painting on the same subject in process. After the situation in Ukraine became terrible, I had to change perspective and gain a little hope.

I felt anxious because of all the people who were in the middle of the shooting, which was destroying their peaceful life and future. At a distance of less than a thousand miles from my home. How is it possible?

I prayed for peace, and if possible together with a democracy option. Then I put my prayer into the bottle, asking the whole Universe for help.

Love and peace for all of you!

Ivana

One hand, different styles

When it comes to painting, I am still looking for myself. One and half years of experience ranks me as a pure beginner, so I need to work on basic techniques and test various supplies.

According to the comments on my personal art challenge I agree to see a tendency towards illustrations. I have a lot of ideas, most of which are stopped by lack of skills.

A great example from the past few days is a painting of lantern. Immediately, I imagined a scene from an old fairy tale, which I listened to as a child. The story tells about daily life of beetles that fly with lanterns to bring the light to people at night. Because of audio version I had no pictorial prejudices.

Full of joy, I sketched the basic idea on a scrap paper easily. Then I produced a problem in my head – mainly because of figural drawings. Although I reduced the number of beetles from five to three, the result lacks the poetics and simple lightness of the original sketch. Painted in watercolor with black liner and with the final touch by colored pencils.

Conclusion – I need more practice with figural drawings and courage to do it. My wise inner voice adds – maybe start with simple silhouettes like in the sketch, don’t push yourself into a real figural drawing. They won’t look real anyway.

In the shadow of Campanula

I made this drawing with silhouettes a few years ago by colored pencils only, maybe it looks better than actual beetles with lantern, what do you think?

There are also two of non-figural painting, covering topics of my personal challenge – document and butterfly. In these dark days I couldn’t paint a summer butterfly, so I decided for a night moth, specifically army green moth. I took a reference photo from wikipedia, hopefully it is free to use.

I would appreciate your comments, especially on the figural drawing. Some advice how to combine my lack of skills and experience with my desire to paint all the ideas and imaginations I have?

Thanks for reading and stopping by!

With love and hugs,

Ivana

Food and plant

Just a brief report about progress in my personal art challenge. To my surprise, I paint faster than I can write about it, which is probably another form of progress.

Drawing a plant, I wanted to created sunflower with a human face, kind of dreamy one. Instead, I got a portrait much more realistic than if I had tried it. The intention and the result did not correspond at all.

Sunflower. Watercolor, black liner, Inktense pencils, common colored pencils. Size A4.

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Painting food, I wanted to be realistic and hopefully it turned out that way.

Burger, Fried egg with spinach. Black liner, watercolor, Inktense pencils.

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I am happy to see that I was able to paint realistic food, but I also find it a bit boring. Not the painting itself, there I still have a lot to learn, but the result – no dynamism or fun inside. I want to believe that such opinion is also part of progress.

Happy days before Holidays!

Ivana

Obsessed with autumn leaves

I have a few posts in my head and since the first snow has fallen today, it’s the last time to write about autumn leaves.

I love the autumn colors every year, but this year I was completely obsessed. When I was not looking at the overall composition, I carefully inspected the shapes and colors of the individual leaves along the path.

I tried to paint the leaves by memory several times, but finally I kept bringing colorful trophies from my walks, according to which I drew and painted mostly with watercolor or ink pencils.

Hope you will like some of them!

With love and warm autumn greetings,

Ivana

Done!

A year ago, I challenged myself to regularly draw or paint a picture every week according to predetermined list of topics. Any technique allowed. Being inspired by the inktober event, I wished to improve my skills on regular basis.

So I put down 52 topics to be processed in any order, which really helped. Sometimes I easily painted even more pictures on a selected topic, sometimes I had to force myself, which was pretty obvious from the result. Step by step, week by week, 52 artworks are done.

Big thanks to the friends, who supported me along the way! At the moment, I am grateful for all the support as well as I am proud to have completed my challenge. It doesn’t mean that I am proud of each of the artworks. That’s why I started to get another 52 topics. Almost at the end of the list!

I decided to share the results of my challenge, even there are so many. When I see them together, I see that I have no style of my own. So far, I am still trying different things and looking for what suits me best. One thing seems to be obvious. Using black contour line makes me more confident, whether I then use colored pencils, watercolor or ink pencils.

Perhaps next challenge will help to discover other facts or feelings that will lead to my own style. Your comments or recommendations on this matter are welcome!

With love and hugs,

Ivana

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  drink

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  fish

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  star

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  glow

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  fruit

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  wreath

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  wood

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  captain

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  tree

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  prayer

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  bird

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  smile

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  rainbow

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  gate

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  man

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  snow

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  power

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  wheel

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  bridge

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  pair

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  cacti

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  sky

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  landscape

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  hand

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  leaf

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  order

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  ribbon

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  galaxy

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  bubble

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  path

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  feather

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  animal

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  sea

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  flower

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  boot

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  winner

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  woman

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  puppet

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  crown

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  net

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  hat

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  mill

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  portrait

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  bang

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  hair

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  child

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  instrument

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  fashion

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  still life

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  group

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  celebration

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  eye

Repeated pattern, part two

Thanks for the encouragement to make repeated pattern from my artwork, printable on fabric!

Since the hand-drawing tiles were demanding on patience, accuracy and time, I tried to dive into editing tools a bit deeper. Even free software contains a long list of them, under whose names I usually can’t imagine anything at all.

I’m a beginner, but I’m not a coward! Moreover, I was gifted by the nature of a discoverer. So I tested applying one tool after another until I met the right one. Hurrah!

So far I haven’t tried any modifications to the basic settings, instead I immediately applied this tool to a million of my existing artworks.

The results are not such repeated patterns I originally imagined, but some of them are damn interesting, what do you think?

Where available, they are linked to the posts with original images.

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Myrtle – colored pencils + liner, Aquarius – colored pencils, Alchemilla – colored pencils + liner

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Quo vadis – colored pencils + liner, Yellow bedstraw – colored pencils + liner, Hidden secret – colored pencils

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Iris – watercolor, Peony – watercolor, Rose – watercolor

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How to reach perfection – colored pencils, Water – colored pencils + liner, Fire – watercolor

Let me know if you found a favorite. It’ll help me keep improving. Thanks a lot!

Hugs and love,

Ivana

P.S. The featured image contains a part of the leaves with droplets, see In the middle of lockdown.

Hand-drawing tiles

Somewhere in the depths of my heart, a dream had been hidden for a long time. The dream of wearing clothes with my art on it. I mean to sew clothes from the fabric on which my art is printed.

From many reasons I considered this dream unrealistic. But something has changed. Maybe I gained more self-confidence, maybe I just met the right website at the right time. Even a local company offers printing on fabric with a customer design at reasonable price from a small quantity! Is it really possible?

Having no other excuses at this end, I had to deal with how to create a digital pattern from my artwork. Which is a totally new world with zillion questions every minute.

I had no idea how to arrange the pattern if I didn’t want to leave a white background. To be honest, I don’t know until now. Any good advice is welcome!

What I did was a manual method using scissors, duct tape and a lot of patience. It meant cutting paper into quarters and moving them during drawing, thus simulating the continuity of the edges.

Then just check the continuity on computer and retouch remaining edges after scanning, and look at the finished pattern!

If it seems simple, then know that the whole process took me more than 20 hours. Plus many more hours of searching on internet and learning of graphic editing. But I am ready to create a real pattern and improve my skills.

Next, I would like to create a pattern from existing artwork that was not originally designed as a pattern. A long way ahead.

In case you have a good advice for a beginner like me, I will be very grateful!

Love and hugs,

Ivana

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In the middle of lockdown

Since the covid pandemic invaded our lives, we have all experienced a number of restrictions and strange situations, as well as suffering or even death of our loved ones. We learned how to wear masks and read facial expressions only from eye wrinkles, when we are lucky enough to meet in person.

Staying at home, we are overwhelmed by the endless flow of catastrophic news and / or senseless political quarrels about things they cannot understand. Sometimes I feel that this is worse than the pandemic itself. Mentally and emotionally, I am tired of it.

Then, it is completely out of my comprehension how health professionals can handle such situation for more than a year. On a daily basis, they keep dressing up in protective spacesuits and fighting for lives. Unlike the rest of us, they don’t have time to complain.

Whenever I remember their work, I am ashamed of my petty complaints about how I cannot breathe through the mask, and I do my best to be obedient to all the restrictions. Although the current lockdown is very strict and many people are trying to get around it.

The pandemic also brought me something good or I should say great. It’s been exactly a year since I decided to buy a brush and paints and start watercolor painting. All the pandemic limitations gave me freedom to learn and try. And I believe that once the horror of covid-19 is over, I will remember the times of the pandemic in connection with my watercolor beginnings.

I would like to think that we keep the better memories if we can choose.

Recently, I learned how to draw and paint droplets. The first example doesn’t need a comment, the second one should be a tribute to the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day. I hope the shamrock is clear but who would recognize that beer foam is covering the top? I still have some work to do. And I will be happy to do it, especially in the middle of lockdown.

Love and hugs,

Ivana