Major project :Cinderella - Disney

I am SUPER excited to post this here... it feels like the very first well thought out and completed piece straight out of my brain even though I have made a few other pieces in the recent. This one is definitely the biggest size I've worked on so far.

I enrolled in an illustration class recently to keep myself sane and busy during the chaos of my life. We have to pick a theme of sorts and make 3 illustrations of it - after pulling my hair out and driving my instructor insane I settled on the theme of Cinderella. One, because to me, the story demonstrates the all-so-easily-forgotten lesson of "good things happen to good people." I feel that this is particularly easy to forget in today's society where we see all around us someone who cuts corners and yet gets to the top while you try to stand by your morals.

We were given free reign except that there should be a reason for any colour used...

Because I am a greedy and tend to bite off more than I chew I envisioned this grandose series which  incorporated Art Nouveau, stained glass colours and still telling you the story of Cinderella in to a tiny 15 x 20" board...which was not quite possible from where I stood. Either way I managed to poop this out:

Unfortunately you can't REALLY see the glitter or the metallic paint but it's there... :(

This is about 15x20" with pencil crayons and watercolours. Thank goodness the watercolour paint came from the dollar store because it has about 7 layers of paint on this thing. I didn't plan out the media as carefully as I had planned the line art and with each layer I made an error which could only be saved by painting the whole thing again.

I wanted the shape to look like a grandfather's clock from afar, with the  each circle depicting a scene from the movie and the characters. There is a light border around the piece done in pencil crayon which gives it a nice frame without being intrusive.

The whole thing - I'm not going to go through each element - leads to that if you keep your chin up, keep your eye on the goal and work towards it honestly, miracles can happen.

I may do a little vid to shoe the glitter. XD OR maybe, the video will have all 3 pieces...?

Due to the many layers of paint the poor illustration board became severely warped, so I decided to paint the back with leftover acrylic paint to compensate or cancle out the warping -which failed. I learned later that if you put a huge "X" and a "+" on the back with gesso, it helps with the warping (actually I hate to mention it but my teacher had mentioned this helpful tip, and like a good student I wrote it down, but like the genius I am forgot all about reviewing my notes filled with tips from my instructor when I was working on this pieces)


Hope you like! there are two more to come so stay tuned!

XO

What's on my mind -?

I am a pretty organized person and I always have imagined that there was a little birdie  in my head who neatly keeps all my lists, loves and things I should forget in a tiny filing cabinet. She keeps me organized and cleans my mind. I don't count sheeps when I can't sleep...I watch her sweep and tiny my brain and pass out.

I think at one time or another, everyone has a go at doodling out what they are thinking onto paper at least once - I seem to do this fairly often  with at least TWO drawings under my belt. 

It's really relaxing to do - all you have to do is draw what you think is you. Then you start attaching things to your head as they come to mind. You don't have to know a skill or technique - just grab the nearest thing that writes and GO! And because your mind is always thinking and always listing (in my case) things, there isn't a chance that you will run out of things. You can do it by theme ( favourite things, foods movies etc) or just randomly drawing.

This one I did of my favourite things...at the moment, which I did for my Moleskine book O'Doodles... and it's not all of my favourite things EITHER...it's just some that I popped into my mind at the time- basically whatever my little birdie read from a long list of what I love. I am sure if I were to draw another one RIGHT NOW, it would probably come out completely different.

What would be a really interesting theme to doodle out would be, things I hate. However, there are so many that I would probably need a whole wall or even a building XD

 This one below I am uber proud of.

Originally it was a commission piece - but she didn't like the random doodle idea and wanted specific Disney related images in the ..."cubbies" of the circles which I didn't mind. I drew one out for myself after the commssion was done but I never really knew what to fill it with so it remained blank in my sketchbook for a long long time (the sketch on the left was done like, in 2010 I think). I stopped doing art for a little bit after because I felt maybe I was wasting time doing art and there were other pressing matters.

Then I just decided WELL, I'm going to pursue art a little harder. I enjoy working on pieces for others and myself and its not like pursuing it will harm me. In fact it would probably give more purpose to my life.

So I started to complete all the pieces I started in my sketchbook but never got to develop.

I think I spent 3 days trying to figure out WHAT TO DO with this space. I wanted to represent me in some way and make me happy to look at it before anything else.  On my 3rd day I was moooooved to doodle -and not just doodle but in COLOUR! In my weird little mind, doodling should always be black and white so this urge was odd for me. But I let it flow and this is what came out.

It was completely impromtu  - I had no plans of what to put on this page except for the girl.Every inch was sort of a happy accident and decided as I went along. The patterns just FLEW(is this the past tense of flowed?) out of my mind through the Sharpies and onto paper- the way creative juices should. It makes me happy to look at it because it's oh-so-colourful.

If you enjoy doodling....this is definitely something to try out.

3D hands...

LOL yes I know our hands are 3 dimensional...but now you can draw them:)

I watched a little tut on Youtube - and this was super simple, cool and fun to do! Particularly good when you're trying to get the creative juice flowing first thing in the morning before coffee/tea/latte/expresso?
Excellent way to get started:)

Here is my little hand...


try it out!


XO

All alone

2013 is the year where I start completing some of my projects....

Here is one I started a while back - in water colours. I really liked the way it came out and I wanted to try it out in various medium like acrylic, markers and pencil crayons to see how each differ.
However I wasn't able to re-create it in paint which was discouraging and the project sat on the back shelf of my mind.
I mean this piece...depicts for me the moment where you're so into what it is that you are doing that everything else just fades away into the void and it's just you, your idea and the paper, floating in space with light which is just bright enough to help you with your cause but nothing else. It's the moment when you realize a good chunk of time has passed since you started working on your piece, even though it feels like only minutes has passed......

Time Flies when you're having fun....you know?


Anyway I finally got around to redoing this piece in markers....
which turned out to be rather nice :)
I MAY attempt to do it in paint again but my ego has taken a beating from the last time I tried (particularly because in high school I considered myself a painter than anything else...)

This is done on some random marker pad  I had lying around that I bought eons ago- it's not quite student grade, I think it's more like kids' grade marker paper(it was $3) and Crayola markers...

Not a fan of the planet being so DARK but oooh well.

Hope you enjoy!

What muffin will YOU have?

In 2010 I had been working at a call centre where I spent hours on end doodling away(or ranting) in my sketchbook and Sudoku puzzles. This was probably the first time I completely filled a sketchbook with incomplete ideas and pieces which I liked and was bent on recreating. One of the pieces was this little number, which I have called muffins.

 This was based on a simple idea that even though there are statistically less heterosexual woman in the world then there are heterosexual men, at the very end of the day the woman essentially picks the dude she will date, regardless of the charm and good looks he may possess. Nevermind what character he may have, there is usually a girl or two vying for each boy. And when we start that long rocky and rosy road of dating, what do we often -or what is the most popular/common we refer our beloved by? Muffin (in my mind anyway). In retrospect I realize that it can go the same way for men, depending on perspective - that the good lookin' bad boy always gets his pick, but that is not as interesting :P

Anyway, only recently did i finally open that magical sketchbook O' ideas that I dread looking in direction of. It holds frustration for me because there are so many ideas I want to work on but I lack the technical skills to make my vision come to life. I have decided that 2013 is the year where I start facing my issues and fears and start making some headway however I need to. I want to digitize everything eventually but first I wanted a hard copy of completed original piece - and here it is:

I may be biased but I dare say it turned out much cuter than expected! The only regret I have is I had originally worked in a "hippie" muffin which slipped my mind entirely. These muffins - their characters are based on people I knew at the time...which makes it doubly fun for me to look at.

About 9x12" in Copic and Sharpie markers, Prismacolour pencil crayons

water colours!

This may be a bit strange but I have never tried my hand in watercolours, even as an eccentric high school art student; I was happy with my coloured pencils, acryilic paint,pastels,chalk and clay and used it in 'interesting' ways but watercolours did not cross my mind until recently....when I started taking an interest in working with markers,  and realized that the layering system is similar, where you work from light to dark.
I have always felt bad that the lovely gifts of watercolour sets always sat untouched in my art supplies box(even more so when I realized Winsor Newton is not a cheap brand) and now I found a reason to try them out! So of course, I drew another mermaid....:D (my mermaids seem to be developing cone head hair though, I have to draw more of it XD)
Here it is!

I'm sorry about the crinkly paper - I didn't realize that you had to "stretch" the paper, although I will have to look into HOW that's done.

I hope you enjoy~

XO
Shyni

My first completed book!

Okay - it's been a while since my last entry - life has been a BIT crazy demanding me to make decisions which I managed to avoid making for a while, but had to eventually face. Now that I have made these decision(I decided to go back to school), life is so much brighter I wonder what the heck took me so long. Other areas of my life also started to improve - things suddenly started to fall into place almost as if life had everything ready for me but wasn't going to let me have'em until I made this very important decision.

Anyway I didn't completely turn off my creative faucet and worked on a little project here and there and*drum roll* at last, I have finished my little project called "Pictures & Words."

The completion of this little books is significant to me for many reasons. Most importantly, this is the FIRST personal project I have COMPLETELY finished from front to back -and there is not a iota of incompleteness (although at the time of recording there was ONE little paisley that wasn't drawn in the book yet, but it is now) or something I wasn't happy with. This was also the first altered book I ever made - originally this book was a 3.5 x5.5" Moleskine weekly planner(I left some informational pages in the planner to show that) which was converted into my little doodle book. I also have pieces made by friends, pictures that inspire me and many pieces which I directly copied from an artist I admire - all things I don't ever include in anything with my name stuck on it; but they were very helpful in keeping me motivated so I may start to include them in future projects...who knows?

ONE MORE THING: this is also my first video and I apologize for the poor lighting and bad cameragirlship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X11ywyIqSU&feature=colike
I hope you enjoy~