Copics and Rocks

You might be asking why Copic markers and rocks, well let me explain.  In case you have not heard rock painting is a thing.  There are groups of people all over the place that paint and hide rocks for other people to find.  They are meant to be inspirational and brighten someones day.  I'm part of a local group.

Here are some rocks from my last batch that I painted. These were done with acrylic paints and black markers.

I've even water colored some. But what I have never tried was Copic markers on a rock.  I saw in a group some where on Facebook that someone had used the Chameleon markers so I figured why not try Copics.

I started with my rock and a inked line drawing on my rock.  A simple fairy door.  The thicker lines were done using Staedtler Lumocolor and the thin lines in the door and window using a fountain pen.

I figured I would start with the wood texture on the door and try coloring that in.  I chose to use E31, E33, E35, E57 and E59.  I stated with the lightest color E31 but soon realized that the Lumocolor was not Copic friendly, it smudged.  I did my best to avoid touching any of the Lumocolor lines with the Copics.  The fountain pen was safe to color over.  I flicked in some of the E33, E35, E57 and shaded around the door.  I darkened the Lumocolor lines with the E59 to ad some depth.  I then went back over everything with my E31 to blend and then flicked and shaded some more.  The only thing I noticed was, at one time there seemed to be a build up of ink on the rock because after so many layers it didn't seem to be absorbing in.  So I figured I was done then. 

I went on to color in the window using Y15 and YR12, again avoiding the Lumocolor lines.

Next I colored in the stone around the door and at the bottom of the door using W2, W3 and W5.

For around the door I wanted a grown in flowery look so I opted to switch to acrylic paints and a sponge.  Sponged on a dark green for the base, then a light green for some highlights.  I then went in to a few spots with a dark purple and light purple to give the illusion of flowers.

I dry brushed some dark green and light green acrylic to the bottom of the rock for grass and called it a day.  All that is left is to seal it with a sealer.

Do Copics work on rock? Yes they absolutely do.  However I will use a liner pen that is Copic friendly next time.  I just did not think to test out the Lumocolor first so that was my fault for using it. 

Copic Certifications

I figured it's about time that I post about my experience going though with the Copic standard and intermediate certification classes.  I took the standard and the intermediate back to back, so the standard class was on Saturday followed by the intermediate on Sunday.  These are not short classes  and made for a long weekend when I had to drive about an hour to get to them. The standard class is 7 hours and the intermediate class was a 9 hour day, with breaks of course, but when you add on 2 hours for driving it was just long days.

Let me say that it was fun as heck though. Both of my classes were nice and small, no more than 20 people there. This was great. We had time to share some stories, talk, get to know one another better than if there was a larger group. As a small group it also meant that we got tons of instruction and question time. Our instructor Cindy Lawarence was wonderful. She answered all our questions and gave us plenty of individual time pointing out when we should try something different or encouraging us to be brave and try colors we didn't think would work together.  I learned so much and had so much fun.

I won't deny that part of the joy of taking the classes is receiving goodie bags for each one. I love goodies. The standard class gave us this wonderful little Copic zip pouch, a sketch colorless blender 0, a refill for the colorless blender, and 4 standard non-refillable multi liners ( black 0.3 & 0.5, sepia 0.5, and grey 0.3)

Would you know it...I made the mistake of having the 0.3 multi liner sitting on my desk when the kid asked to borrow a pen and I handed it to her. She broke it....before I even had a chance to use it. She presses to hard on her writing instruments so I should have known better.  :(  So now I make sure they don't get put in with all my other pens on my desk and the kids don't use them.

The second day with the intermediate class we got a roll of x-press it double sided tape. I didn't realize Copic made such a wide range of products.  I must say that I love this tape and it's been a life saver for some of the kids school projects, much easier and less messy than glue. We also got a 72 marker travel case. <3

Then on both of the days we also go a cute little portfolio to put some of our works in.

Inks and Cookbooks

I've been busy lately. I wanted to give inking a shot so hubby said I needed to start off with brush inking, ha. He gave me a few books to read on inking and some videos to watch. I watched the videos and read over the books. Last time I was at the art store I bought a $18 white sable #2 brush. (It was cheaper than the Windsor Newton Series 7 because I can't see spending $40 on a brush just to goof off with.) I have to say that it holds it's shape well as long as it's loaded with ink and I don't try to use it when it's to dry.

I never do things the easy way so I started out with a picture off of Deviant Art"Fallen" by Rantz I fully inked this with a brush. After working on another picture and going back I see some things that I would do different, or at least I think I could make it look a little better. Anyway here it is - Left is original pencil and right is my inks:

I came across this site seanellery.com and he has a bunch of pencils on there for people to ink so I grabbed "Arwyn" - by Marcio Abreu This one came out better. I inked all with the brush except for the hair and some of the leaves which were inked with a Micron pen. Same - Original pencil on the left and my inks on the right:

Anyway I'll do more inking and practice when I get time. In the meantime I have a cookbook I'm working on basically publishing for someone. I helped design the cover and back. I'm printing it and physically hand making / binding each book. :D I'm excited to be doing this. It's going to be a spiral bound book instead of a hard sewn bound book. This way someone can fold it over, lay it flat or have it sit nicely on a book holder without having to worry about it closing on them or creasing the spine.

Right now I have everything needed for the books ordered. I cut the book board for the covers and the sheets of paper for the interior of the covers. Here's the stack of board for 25 books:

I still have work to do on page layouts and getting all the recipes to fit right onto the pages and making sure all the formatting is the same. I think that is what is actually going to take the longest. I'll post more pictures of the progress of the books as I can. :)

What I've been up to!

I failed at my crafty/creative thing a day resolution...well at least the posting part of it. My deadline got the best of me and I had to work, work, work...color, color, color to get it done. See some of them:

So now that I'm done with that it's back to my regular grind for a little bit. I'm cooking up some really creative ideas for my artist proofs of the line art cards, hopefully some really unique stuff the collectors and other will like to see.

Besides that I've been busy with other things as well. I've come up with a new wonton wrapper recipe. An absolutely delicious dessert one I might add.

Any ideas what that is in the picture to the left? Hmm...looks yummy no? Well on that wonton wrapper is a spread of nutella and some chopped up strawberries. O.O I know nutella and strawberries...to die for. Well wait till you bake it in a wonton wrapper. Just spread some nutella in the middle, add a couple of chopped up strawberries, lightly wet the edges of the wonton, fold it over, and press it closed. Place them on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray and bake at 350°F for about 5-10 min. You'll know when they are done, trust me I heard sizzling because one of mine popped open. Let them cool! Molten nutella and strawberries will burn your mouth.

The strawberries in mine melted (I never realized strawberries could melt but they did.) They were so good I made them the next night for the kids for dessert only one kid doesn't like strawberries so I used some chopped up banana and that was amazing too. Reminded me of a warm monkey tail. Yummmm. (Talking about this will probably lead to me making more tonight, they are that addicting.)

What else have I been up to...getting goodies in boxes from Mr. UPS and Mr. FedEx man. :D

New things to work on some new book ideas and other really cool ideas, some gold shepard's hook bookmarks and some really pretty silver floral and butterfly shepard's hooks. Oh and don't forget the new set of colored pencils. I think I'm in love with my new set of colored pencils.

These are Cretacolor colored pencils. They are amazing. I loved my Design Spectracolor pencils. (Well okay maybe they are actually hubby's and not mine but I use them more.) I love the feel of the Design when you use them. They're not really hard leaded, they are more on the softer side and they blend well, not really waxy, just great colored pencils. Sad thing is that Design doesn't exist anymore and Specracolor pencils go for a small fortune on e-bay so I've been searching for colored pencils I like just as much. I gave Prismacolor colored pencils a try but they just don't feel the same. Heck you can get 2 Prismacolor pencils in the same color sharpen them and use them side by side and they won't actually be the same color. They also seem to have a much harder lead, at least to me anyway. Hubby came across a deal on Dick Blick for the Cretacolor pencils and we go them dirt cheap. I tried them and I love them. I think I might actually like them more than the Design ones. They are smooth and soft, not really waxy, blend really well, and you can go over them lots of time with no blooming or big waxy build up. They are my new favorite pencil and will eventually replace my Design ones.

Day 53 & 54 - Photo and work

This running around is gonna kill me. So darn busy, it's insane. It needs to slow down soon.

So I came across this tree on day 53 in a parking lot I was in while I was out and I saw something in it. I snapped the picture took it home and drew what I saw on the tree in Photoshop. Now it's not the greatest drawing, I could have done better if I broke out the Wacom and took my time, but you'll get the point. It's kind of silly but it stood out the second I saw it.

So outside of running around, I've been busy working on a deadline. This brings us to day 54 and work. I've been color my butt off.. Coloring what? you ask. Well this:

Vampirella line art trading cards for Breygent Marketing is what I've been busy coloring. While it is work, it's still creative to come up with how to color the cards and different ways to color cards that have the same art on them to make them look different. I'll post a picture of some done ones when I can.

Day 17 - Think spring

Today we woke up to the five a.m. phone calls from the schools saying that there was a two hour delay. At least they had school. Though a two hour delay throws off the whole darn day. Nothing like getting the last kid off and have the oldest show up only hours later. It leaves little time for anything during the day. All that for like two to three inches of snow. My gosh you'd think we had a blizzard. Was it not just last year we were buried in the white stuff. The snow piles in the drive where taller than me.

Anyway I think the snow finally killed the leeks. I didn't make it out to the garden today to look but I also didn't see any standing up. The celery is covered so for all I know it is still alive. I'm going to try my hardest to get it to the next growing season. My flowers in my flower bed look sad now with the snow on them. They were still nice and green. Heck I had a flower out there about two weeks ago. Now they look cold and sad. All this had me thinking spring and how I can't wait for it to come. I'm excited about getting the garden ready and staring it. I went out to check the compost barrel the other day and would you believe a family of mice built a nest in it. They dug a tunnel from the outside all the way up to the top of the compost. I just added some things to their house, I hope they like it. Mostly paper but I'll have a some house scraps soon for them too. I plan on ordering my seeds soon and getting my veggie CSA for the new season soon too. I'm going to try starting my own seeds this year. This will be a feat for me to do as most plants in the house usually die fast. I blame the hot air heat on that but it could be the cats eating them/digging at them, or just my sheer lack of remembering to water them, either way it's not going to be easy to do but I'm going to try my hardest.

Thinking about spring today I came up with a drawing of a flower for today's creative bit. Drew it in pencil, inked it with archival ink, and colored it with Prismacolor colored pencils. I hope you like it.

Day 8 - Eye

Today I decided to do something I haven't done in forever....draw. Armed with pencil and paper I decided to try out a tutorial that was a Daily Deviation on Deviant Art the other day. It's a great tutorial on how to draw eyes by ~ChiyoNemuri. You can find the tutorial here: -Eye Tutorial-

I don't know that I am happy with what I drew...I am my own worst critic. At any rate here's my drawing form that tutorial: