Crackle You Suck Birthday!!

This is what we did on You Suck Monday (which I did still manage to be a part of, despite my birthday AND my friend leaving - I just did it from her house!)

The name of the game is: crackle. I'm horrible at crackle. Usually. I don't know what happened - something about YSM changes me and I'm able to be successful in ways I've never been able to before. So, this first one is Inkssentials Crackle Accents by Ranger - no one else has ever heard of it, so it's possible that I've had this stuff for a thousand years. It's CLEAR. It's a top coat, so it's not one of those "paint one color, let dry, paint crackle, let dry, paint another color" blah, blah, blah. You just paint, let dry, then put the crackle on and it cracks when it's dry.

This is Elmer's Glue-All. That's the white glue you can get right now for twenty cents at Wal-Mart because of the back-to-school sales. For this one I did a bottom color, let it dry completely. Then put the glue on. While the glue is STILL wet, paint on the second color. When it dries, it cracks.

This is the folk art crackle medium. For this one, you have to paint the bottom color and let it dry, then the crackle medium and let it dry, then the second color and let it dry.

These are my birthday cupcakes.

NO HEAT GUN. Use yours if you want. I didn't and I've heard you're not supposed to. Be patient. I'm not a patient person, so if I'm telling you to be patient, you can do it! Also, I didn't use the cheap craft paints on any of these projects. They're all either Liquitex or Golden.

Bat/Demon wings

I've been slacking with my cartooning lately (for the past four months, actually), so I'm going to PRACTICE more. I just have to make myself, even when my arms feel too heavy to pick up the pencil. This is with Mark Crilley's latest tutorial, I LOVE his manga drawing vids.

Rough sketch:

Ink:

Mark's character:

It's the details I'm not good at - I can draw all the basic shapes, but the shading, the folds that make clothes look real - I suck at that stuff. Don't worry, I'll practice!!

Sad friend...

One of my good friends is leaving tomorrow for OTS for the Air Force. She's going to be gone for three months and I'm sad. We've been friends since middle school, and we play lots of video games and drink lots of margaritas together. She's already an amazing woman, an amazing conductor, and is going to be an amazing officer. But I'm gonna miss her :(

I doodled this at her house tonight while we were hanging out (she was packing and I was eating cupcakes). 

The Funk

Been stuck there for WEEKS but I'm forcing myself to get over it. Art is the key, I know that, and sometimes I still don't do it. Silly Goog. So, here are some ATCs I was playing with yesterday with my copics. I'm still determined to learn how to use those silly markers!!

Happy Ugly Truck Day

Journaling the "spirit" of art

Ajae says it's all about the spirit of art and that I have that 'down". I want that to be true! I make MOST of my art in my journals. It's just how I work. But I rarely journal about my day or my life. I usually just draw or paint whatever comes to mind. But THIS day was "petit/portrait" day on The Schedule AND it was our first journaling MeetUp AND Kelly was having a flare-up (a small one, thank goodness). So I journaled about it.

And I printed some stuff about FMS and stuck it on there, along with the pic from the MeetUp.

Then, because I can't seem to stop stamping this image, I stamped my tree onto this page that I found on my table and added it to the facing page because it's fun!

Then, paint!

And here is a shrinky dink in action!

I'm having trouble shading faces in this journal, that's why Kelly is still so pale! You know I love Fabriano Artistico paper, but it's horrible with Prismacolors. Maybe I should copic marker her?!? It's a pretty big area, but today is copic marker/cartoon day on The Schedule...

You Suck Monday!

I've never used Shrinky Dinks before and, much like stamps carving, I wasn't really looking forward to it. And yet, I had an ENORMOUS amount of fun! First of all, there were no blank Shrinky Dinks at my Michael's, so I got the imitation ones.

I really wanted to print on it and make key chains, but the printing didn't really work.

Then I tried using one of my cartoon drawings, but the markers smeared a LOT. I cooked this one anyway, just to see what happened - the shrank from 4x8 to 3x1.75 inches - WAY more than I thought it was going to shrink!

Next up: Suzi Stamps. This was the best yet.

Look what happened! How cute is THAT?!?

I'm gonna get some of the ink jet kind to try because I really want to make a YSM keychain!

New Copic-proof pen

I have been a cartooning SLACKER. Yep, I have. But now that Kelly is making me follow a schedule, we're cartooning at least once a week and most of my Sharpie pens (I use them for outlining) are pretty dried up. Since it's school supply sale time at Wal-Mart, I picked up a couple of packages of 2 pens for $2.49, which is a pretty good price, but then I saw this one that was 2 for $1 and I figured it couldn't hurt to see if they were copic proof, right? If they weren't, all I wasted was a dollar.

 

I used each tip to write, let it dry overnight (sometimes if you start scribbling right away, they smear just because they need a little time to dry), and check it out:

Awesome, right? I can't wait to go get some more and start cartooning more often. I forgot how much fun it is! Oh, and Harry Potter 7-2 is AMAZING.

Journaling Meet Up!

Here we are, Goog and Tammy! Just hanging at Archiver's. I was late, late, late. Like 25 minutes late. She waited. How awesome is that?!? It really wasn't my fault, there was HORRIBLE traffic and then there was an accident right in front of me. I left my house an HOUR before our meeting time and I was twenty-five minutes late. But she waited and we had fun!

ATV ATCs

I'm totally amused by that. AND the fact that I sent over 2800 texts ast month. Unlimited texting, it's not only necessary for teenagers, it's also for people like me. But, on to my ATV ATC. I was at Kelly's and we were talking about getting off our butts (we were sitting on the porch and it was really nice out) to go inside and make ATCs. Her hubby (Paul) said he was going to do laundry. I said "You don't wanna make ATCs?" and he said "ATVs, maybe." So we made ATV ATCs.

Cartoon Tuesday

You Suck Monday - Art Dolls

Mine is a pretty loose interpretation of the word "doll", I'll admit. But I don't like dolls. At all. They're creepy. Now, if creepy is what you're going for, more power to ya. But that's NOT what we were going for, so here's what I did.

I got some foam board at Michael's. You can get HUGE sheets of it, but until I find a better way to cut it (and maybe get a car because it would have been awkward to try and get it home) I'm going to stick with the small ones. This was a bi-fold one that I cut in half so I had two 9x12 pieces.

Then I printed some pictures that I thought might be fun cutouts. I made them large enough to cover a letter sized piece of paper, left one color, made one black and white, and blended one. After it was printed I glued the paper onto the foam board with Golden Regular Gel and shoved it under my husband's (super heavy) laptop.

Then I cut around Mini Me with an Exacto knife and used sandpaper to smooth the rough edges. I would have preferred a nail file, but when I suggested that my husband snorted and said "Have you ever met you?" So, if you have a nail file (or a car to go to the store), that might be better - but I have no idea, since I've never tried it.

Then I glued a little extra piece of the foam board onto the back so Mini would stand upright. Hubby has decided he wants an office job (he's a chef), so he has a place to put it.

Is it a doll? Maybe not. I hope I don't get fired from You Suck Monday! 

You Should Have Seen It In Color

There's a country song (I love country music) and it's called In Color and it's about a little boy asking his grandpa about his black and white pictures. The grandpa is telling him about them and he says "A picture's worth a thousand words, but you can't see what those shades of gray keep covered. You should've seen it in color." This is my Grandpa (John) and his brother (Will) in their army uniforms.

At my grandparents' wedding, my Great-Uncle Will met my grandma's cousin (both ladies were named Margaret), and they fell in love. My Grandparents and my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle bought a two-family house in the Bronx sixty-three years ago. There was an upstairs apartment and a downstairs one, each with only one bedroom. Between them, they raised seven kids who grew up more like siblings than like cousins. There are eleven of us in the next generation, and we have ten kids between us and more will come. There was more love in that tiny house in the Bronx that I've seen anywhere else. I adore this picture and this kit was perfect for it.

It's called "I Love this Land" and it's by Piccolina Designs. It's free to download and I really just love the softness of it. So many red, white, and blue kits are very harsh colors and I understand that war is a very harsh thing. But my memories of grandpa are soft and I love the softness of the kit.

Swirly Tree

I tried to make it a stencil, but I ended up with a mask, and then I liked it too much and glued it into my journal. So, here's the perfect solution: I made it into a stamp!

Drew right on the rubber with a number 2 pencil:

It's not Speedball rubber, it's from Blick's and it doesn't have a brand. It wasn't even packaged, just sold exactly like this.

Then I carved with my #1 tip:

And finished up with the #4:

Then I stamped it in my journal with StazOn so it won't smear when I paint over it:

I don't know why, but I find stamp carving freakishly fun. 

Friends Don't Keep Score

I drew this today while I was hanging out at the pool. I'm trying to get over the need for EVERYTHING to be awesome and perfect. 

I'm not saying I didn't come home and spend an hour coloring them, but I was just getting color on them. Finished is better than perfect. Maybe.

Oh, and it's in my In The Sun journal because I was sitting in the sun while I did it!! :)

Smooch!

Remedy

I keep trying to convince Kelly we need to do the Illustration Friday prompts, but we mostly just talk about them and pretend like we're going to do something. She's cracking down on me, though. Last Friday's word was "remedy" and I have to admit - the first thing that came to mind was booze and pills, but when I started sketching them, I realized they're not a remedy for anything. My friends are. They always make me laugh and that's the remedy for almost anything. It's supposed to be Suzi and Kelly, but after I took the picture I realized I made Suzi's eyes blue. I'm recoloring them now!!

Oh, it's an ATC on paper that's WAY more textured than I like so the colored pencils don't blend very well. But I made it, it's finished, and finished is better than perfect.

Austin Powers

You know that part where he's laying on the bed and he's all "Help, I'm in a nutshell!" That's what my head felt like today. Like my brain was trying to bust out of its shell. But this is funnier. It's the hemispheres of my brain, fighting with each other.

You Suck Monday - Stencils/Masks

I dunno why but we were kind of unprepared for today. This Monday snuck up on us! But we still played and had fun and here are some of my results!

Swirly tree:

The bird and birdcage were contact paper stencils cut out with Kelly's fancy die cut machines! The silhouette is just one of my own pictures - I cut it out and used the negative part for the silhouette. I don't use fancy brushes or anything, it's a Crayola cheapie brush and plain old black paint.

 This one is the opposite - I taped the part I cut out down and painted around it with my fingers. The flower and leaves are contact paper stencils, too, cut with Kelly's magic machines.

 Here is where I smashed the tree in my journal, the took it out and smashed the pages together.

Here are the journal pages open:

The tree is  just laying there, but I wanna put it in there just like that, I love it! So much for a mask, I think I'm just going to stick it in. I love that it's imperfectly cut and that the black marker scratched off in places!

This is one I've had in my head for a long time. It's a picture of Mini Me, of course, and I didn't do it right. I have to figure out the positive/negative space and how to cut it out paint and layer it all correctly...

That's the picture I used, after I altered it so I could use it. I really wanna make this work, but it's hard for my brain to figure out how to do the layers!