A routine of sorts

I’ve fallen into a routine of sorts when creating art for the past couple weeks. First of all, using my art journal has become my daily practice, which isn’t anything new to me, but it’s a welcome change of pace. I’ve been focused on making art to sell for months on end. Mentally, I need a break every so often to recharge my battery, and the way I do that is by making art just for me. 

As for my new creative routine, instead of reaching for oil pastels like I have been for months now, I’ve been starting out by drawing with a black stabilo pencil. Then I add a little color with watercolor pencils. 

Once I get the drawing sketched out, I take my water brush and let the stabilo lines bleed together with the watercolor pencils. I don’t have a photo of that, so you’ll just have to imagine what it looked like.

From there I decide if I like the drawing as is or if I want to spice it up using oil pastels. Some drawings I prefer to leave alone. Others look or feel unfinished, so I keep going.  

I continued on with oil pastels on this one, and I’m glad I did. It added a bold richness that I couldn’t get with the watercolor pencils. 

I used a reference photo from the Museum app, formally known as Sktchy, for this drawing. It’s my favorite go-to app when I want to draw or paint from a photo. 

I use these photos loosely as my jumping off point. I will study a photo before I start drawing. I take note of the size & shape of the face, eyes, nose, lips, and hair thickness & color. After that, I put my phone away, forget about the photo, and I draw mostly from my short term memory. Sometimes I glance at my phone to see where the shadows and light are in the photo, but I’m mostly just doing my own thing…making stuff up as I go along. 

When I looked at the photo again after I finished this drawing I noticed the girl is actually much younger than my drawing portrays her to be. That’s okay because it gives me reason to use the reference photo again sometime soon. 

***

See my artwork in a new movie – The Whale starring Brendan Fraser, which will be released December 9th, 2022. 

If you haven’t checked out my eBay store in a while, you should. Some artwork I have marked down to only $10 or $15. I add new stuff every single day. Same goes for Etsy.  

***

Sign up now to get my blog posts delivered to your inbox for free.