YouTube’s music came out quite loud on this one… might want to turn your speakers down.

This page had a face on that I really didn’t like so I had already used black gesso over it, but hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. The Creatives challenge on Facebook was to sketch a picture of Jack Nicholson as The Joker, so I sketched the outline in white oil pastel.

Then I added white gesso, sketched back in areas with a black oil pastel, and finally added white and black acrylic to fill in the tones. I finished off with a little more oil pastel in black and white just to enhance and soften a few areas.

This is the finished page from my free UStream classes this week and last week, on ‘Shadows & Fabrics’.

We concentrated mostly on the fabrics, doing step-by-step shading in Neocolor IIs and Prismacolour pencils, and learned a lot about light and shadow in the process.

If you missed them, here’s yesterday’s class:-

and last week’s can be found here and here. (I don’t know why it’s in two parts – UStream just did that without asking me…)

With Marian I concentrated on making a white cotton cloth for her headdress, using blue and grey to give that ‘just washed with blue-whitening washing powder’ look. For her dress I chose to give it a ‘heavy cloth’ look, sort of like a heavy skirt fabric, using a cross hatching effect in 3 Prismacolours.

Robin is wearing a pale yellow-green linen shirt, using the same principles as Marian’s head dress for a light fabric, but this time in colour. His green tunic has a velvety quality created by a sort of stippling paint effect, crossed with the Prismacolour pencils to create lots of dappled light and texture.

 Next week’s show will be at 5pm again and I’ve had a request for drawing animals, so grab a reference picture of your pet and we’ll have a go at some puppies and kitties (since that’s what I have) but if you feel adventurous by all means go with a picture of your pet parrot or gerbil!

This page started as a doodle of a dragon. Then I remembered it’s almost Chinese New Year and it’s the year of the water dragon, so I continued the theme with an attempt at an Asian-Chinese looking face.

Fairly pleased with the colour and eyes, but the mouth could use some work.

Dragons are much easier to draw because no one can say it doesn’t look like a ‘real’ dragon.

Don’t forget today’s UStream show at 5pm GMT. See previous post for details.

• Where: Rhomany’s Realm on UStream (or click on ‘watch live’ in the page above)
• When: Show starts at 5pm GMT, technology permitting. I sometimes have trouble with set up, so please be patient. You can convert that to your time zone here.
• What: We’ll be looking at shadows, particularly in relation to heavy fabrics.
• Who: Anyone! Log in with Facebook or a UStream/yahoo account if you want to chat, or just watch as a guest if you prefer.

If you can’t make the show live it will be recorded, so don’t worry, you can watch later if you wish.

Anyone wanting to play along will need the following:

• Your journal or some paper. I’ll be using my altered book journal, but you may want to use watercolour paper initially.
• Watercolour media. Anything will do.
• White gouache, acrylic paint/ink or gel pen
• Waterproof black pen
• Coloured pencils (Prismacolour if you have them) in various colours PLUS black, white and grey (doesn’t matter which grey)

Tools – You won’t need much, just your usual watercolour brush, pencil & eraser if you feel you’ll need them.

Part 1 from last week was recorded if you missed it! Click here.
PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE BACK TO 5PM GMT

Here’s the partially complete piece from this week’s UStream, inspired by the story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. I quickly put in the facial tones and a base hair colour, just to decide where the light was coming from and differentiate the hair from the fabric. Then I rendered the head dress as white cotton, keeping a light, airy feel to it.

I used Neocolour IIs in Sky Blue and Light Grey, alongside white and a pale cream acrylic, with a waterbrush to give a ‘white with shadows’ feel to the cotton. I’ll finish off her face off, then next week I’ll work on her dress and the garments of her Robin Hood. He’ll be dressed in much darker, heavier cloth and there will be velvet because Christy asked nicely!

For some reason this week’s show recorded in two pieces, so bear in mind that the last 10-15 minutes is in a second recording. No idea why…

You can watch the first one here and here.

PLEASE NOTE THE EARLIER TIME OF NEXT WEEK’S SHOW! A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD TO LEAVE AT 8PM GMT, SO I’M MOVING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TIME OF 5PM-8PM GMT FROM FEBRUARY 1ST.

• Where: Rhomany’s Realm on UStream (or click on ‘watch live’ in the page above)
• When: Show starts at 6pm GMT, technology permitting. I sometimes have trouble with set up, so please be patient. You can convert that to your time zone here.
• What: We’ll be looking at shadows, particularly in relation to fabrics.
• Who: Anyone! Log in with Facebook or a UStream/yahoo account if you want to chat, or just watch as a guest if you prefer.

If you can’t make the show live it will be recorded, so don’t worry, you can watch later if you wish.

Anyone wanting to play along will need the following:

• Your journal or some paper. I’ll be using my altered book journal, but you may want to use watercolour paper initially.
• Watercolour media. Anything will do.
• White gouache, acrylic paint/ink or gel pen
• Waterproof black pen
• Coloured pencils (Prismacolour if you have them) in various colours PLUS black, white and grey (doesn’t matter which one)
• A magazine or catalogue, preferably with a fashion slant.

Tools – You won’t need much, just your usual watercolour brush, pencil & eraser if you feel you’ll need them.

I couldn’t decide what to do with this one for a while because of the large rectangular area on the left. Then it hit me that I could turn it into a frame and put a picture in there and ‘voila’ (‘scuse the pun).

Sometimes pages come together all at once, other times I get to a point where I’m undecided about how to finish it. Most people would call this ‘blocked’ or ‘stuck’ but I don’t see it that way. I don’t see any problem with turning the page and moving on to the next one.

Sooner or later I’ll always come back to it and know how to finish it off. But I never push myself to finish a page if it doesn’t feel right. There is no rule that says you must finish a page in one sitting, or before you start another, or even finish it at all.

It’s one of the hardest things for beginner journal artists to take onboard, along with forgoing perfectionism; unfinished, whether temporary or permanent, is OK.

Here’s the exciting part…

Christy and I have been chatting and I’ve created this week’s prompt for the group. I can’t tell you too much about it obviously, if you want to know more come on over to Art Geeks and sign up for the newsletter, which gets you a weekly journal prompt via email, with accompanying video which you can watch online or download for later. The next prompt will be delivered to your inbox, and the archived videos will be available to you once you’re given access to the group.

Here’s a sneak peak of the pages I created for this week’s prompt…

I’m so excited about this. It’s really hard to find people to collaborate with whose style and method of work is close enough to yours that you complement each other, while remaining diverse enough to different things. I’ve been a fan of Christy’s for a while now, ever since I discovered our almost identical methods of using altered books as journals. and although our work is often similar, she’s very much more a painterly mixed media artist, often working with acrylics and oil paints, while I lean more towards pencil, illustration and watercolour in my work.

I can’t wait to see where this goes and I hope I can do more Art Geeks prompts for you all very soon.

I used some punchinella, several different sized circle stencils and some lace, along with pink and green spray ink to create a basic background. Then I cropped my pen sketch from my Moleskine reporter, erased the erasable pen grid and placed her on the page using gel medium. I used Neocolour IIs to add a green background and added some white acrylic to make it more permanent and slightly lighter. I made sure to go over the edges of the picture to ensure that it ‘disappeared’ into the background, rather than looking like something I’d just stuck on.

I used some smooth mulberry papers in lime green, forrest green and rose, and some wrapping paper that had a pink, brown, and green flower pattern on it, to collage onto the background. I also edged both sides of the layout with some bright pink scrap paper with pale pink circle on, to continue the circles theme. Over that I used my green Neocolour II and white acrylic mix to blend the pieces into the background. I wiped some areas off with a paper towel to leave just a thin coat, toning down the bright pink scrapbook paper. Then I used a dark brown Neocolour II and white acrylic to lay in the basic skin tones. Then I used a dark pink Neocolour to lay in the base colour of the flower, black for the hair, dark brown for the eyes and light brown/lavender mix for the lips.

To finish the portrait, I used Prismacolour pencils. Various dark browns to add depth to the skin tone, dark brown and black for the hair, and various dark reds and pinks for the flower. A little white acrylic for the eyeballs and reflections, followed by Prismacolour pencil shading in the eyeball, then a little Sakura gelly roll glaze pen for the earrings and a few highlights and shadows in black and white Uniball POSCA paint marker, and the portrait is finished.

I wrote on the left side in dark pink Sakura gelly roll glaze, adding definition to a few key words in an olive green by sketching a box around them. I used the same olive green pen to write a title and challenge info on the portrait side, so as not to detract from the girl.

Finally I pulled out a dark rose red oil pastel and ran it round the edges, smudging it with my fingers, bringing the whole thing together.

This is a pen sketch I did yesterday for a challenge on Creatives group on Facebook. The actual challenge was to sketch in pencil from a photograph, but if you can already sketch in pencil, where’s the challenge?

Here’s the original picture for reference. (I don’t know where this originated. If you know please tell me so I can link back)

So, ever the rebel I sketched her in ballpoint pen instead. I used an old, dry erasable ballpoint to grid her and get the proportions, then a working ballpoint to outline her properly.

I really like her so I think I’ll pull her out of my Moleskine reporter and collage her onto a background in my altered book journal, then paint her.