Colourful spheres
Colourful shapes. Neocolor II watersoluble wax crayons on Acrylic paper. Ulla Hennig October 2013
I am still deeply in love with those Neocolor II watersoluble wax crayons made by Caran d’Ache. I’ve still been using acrylic paper as support. I applied the wax crayons in two different ways:
- I used them dry and went over them with a wet brush
- I wetted a piece of the paper and applied the crayons.
I don’t know whether the acrylic paper is an appropriate support for the neocolors. I plan to try watercolour paper next. I’ll keep you posted about the results…
By the way: In the beginning of my “art career” I had a very strange feeling when I switched from one medium to another, be it from traditional art to digital art, or from oil pastel to coloured pencils. I was afraid to lose the direction, afraid to never come back.
My experience is telling me something totally different. Now I know that I can switch between mediums and switch between traditional and digital art. I will always come back to the one or the other. Digital painting, vector art, drawing with coloured pencils, using wax crayons and oil pastels – everything is possible and a step to a new level!
Colour splash
Colour splash. Neocolor watersoluble crayons on paper. Ulla Hennig 2013
As you might know I visited my brothers and their families over the weekend in the south of Germany. They know that creating art has become one of my passions, and so they gave me a coupon for a rather big art shop which not only exists in Stuttgart but also in Berlin. When I came back yesterday I already knew what to buy – neocolor II – the watersoluble wax crayons made by Caran d’Ache.
I went into the art shop today after work, bought a tin with 30 crayons, chose a rather tiny piece of paper and began to draw and paint. In the beginning I just focused on how to draw with the crayons, on how much water to use to wet the paint and so on. Then I began to see something in my mind – a flower, a splash of colour. In the end I used my staedtler pigment liner in order to let the form be more visible.
Inkscape Tutorial – Blur and Clip Technique
As you might have seen in some of my blog posts I am doing quite a bit of vector artwork in Inkscape. There are a lot of very helpful video tutorials on YouTube, and one of these is presented here. It is easy to follow and gives an introduction to many of Inkscape’s tools.
By the way, the next blogpost will be on Wednesday, 30 October. I am leaving Berlin for a few days in order to meet with my family in the South of Germany.
Pumpkins everywhere!
It is definitely the season for pumpkins.
On Zazzle you can find: Pumpkin stickers, pumpkin ornaments and pumpkin cards, only to name a few. This is just a selection. Clicking on the links will lead you to many, many more. Enjoy!
Happy Halloween! Pumpkins on the doorstep! Christmas Ornament by KeyholeDesign
Design your own ornaments at Zazzle.
Pumpkinflower – final Version
Pumpkinflower – final version
I tried to add more contrast by working with gradients. Then I exported the image into photoshop and added a background with a big sized airbrush in various shades of green. The soft, blurred background acts as a very nice contrast with the sharp lines of the vector pumpkinflower image.
Five gifted Zazzle Artists
There are so many gifted shopowners on Zazzle who need a bit of promotion. Just let me show you some extraordinary items I found on Zazzle:
1. A beautiful napkin
remember the 60s and 70s, fluid colors napkin by MehrFarbeImLeben
Look at other Remember Napkins at zazzle.com
2. A watch with an amazing fantasy design:
3. A cute cheetah baby t-shirt
4. An autumn owls cover for iPhone 5C
autumn owls cover for iPhone 5C by Ancellos_Trendshop
Check out more iPhone 5/5C covers at zazzle.com
5. A Horse iPad Mini Cover
Vector pumpkinflower – work in progress
pumpkinflower – vector image
I am still working on this one. Yesterday I managed to waste 1 1/2 hours of precious after-work time because I didn’t save the image properly. My first reaction was to give up the project completely, but then I sat down and wrote down the single steps I had taken – step for step.
Today I tried again, and I must say that I feel quite comfortable with the result. It is far from being finished, but I know exactly the spots on which I have to work. And I really have the impression that I learnt a lot doing most of the steps for the second time.
Bat creature – vector drawing
Bat creature, vectorized.
Do you know that there are people who are goal-oriented and people who are process-oriented? Well, in general I would call myself a goal oriented person – for example when I go shopping. I have my list, and I go straight to the items on my list and put them into the shopping cart.
However, I more and more have the feeling that I am not goal oriented anymore regarding my art activities. I so love to play around, try out new things, explore new ways of doing things. You can see one of the results of this more process-oriented behaviour above. It is a vector graphic – not a digital painting (which you can see here). It is not very refined – you may even call it a work in process, and I might go back and work on it some more. I might – or might not.
Happy Snowman
Happy snowman. Inkscape and Photoshop, October 2013
Yes, it is quite early to think of snowmen. I’ve seen some of them on the web, and I was fascinated. They consist of very simple forms, however they can have a distinct personality. This guy was created in Inkscape and imported into photoshop. It was a playful process creating him – and I couldn’t resist playing with the layer styles in photoshop.
I know that he’s hovering over the ground – and snowmen do not usually hover. They are in firm contact with the place they are built upon – until they melt away. However, I gave myself the permission not to be realistic.
Pumpkinflower – mixed Media
pumpkinflower. Markers, coloured pencils and photoshop. October 2013
This is a proper mixed media piece. The lines were drawn in Inkscape and printed out on a piece of copy paper,
Then I coloured the piece with markers and went over the marker layer with coloured pencils. The next step was to scan the painting into photoshop, clean it up (there were some traces of marker paint outside the lines) and add a background.
The background was done with photoshop brushes, then. There is still a lot of room for further experiments with brushes – their forms, opacity and colours.
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