So, yeah, more winter sketches.

I’ll probably clean up and finish the reindeer one; I love illustrations with lots of movement and I need to learn how to incorporate that element into my own work more effectively. I’m still on my art-doll kick but I’ll make some time for drawing, too, and ink/color at least one of these before April.

If you’re participating in any of these challenges, please let me know- I’d love to see how other artists interpret these themes!

~Dalliann

So I am taking up a textile project- a bead-jointed doll for Art Doll Quarterly‘s “Shelf-Sitter” challenge. I’ve made dozens of dolls before but have never tried bead-jointing so this has been quite a learning experience. After finding a really great tutorial at Craft Tales, I was able to modify the basic joint idea by imbedding round, wooden beads inside the limbs and designed an original pattern based on my thick-limbed fairy illustrations (’cause frog-like legs flop so nice). And during that process I noticed that when I sketch people, I almost always start with the head and build the body to suit– but with this doll, none of my patterns turned out well until I reversed the process and worked from the feet up. Weird…

The prototype muslin doll is on the right and on the left is the 'finished' quilters' cotton doll (with acrylic painted face). My next artistic endeavor will be learning how to take decent photos... Argghhh- the light's so bad!

Anyway, I hand-stitched a prototype doll made of white muslin and stuffed it with poly-fiber but when I went to sew the final doll in a peach quilting cotton, the whole project turned into a mess. The fabric burned and shrank under a medium-heat iron (which I’ve never seen cotton do) and twisted, stretched, and pulled while I sewed. Upon stuffing it, the seems puckered and now look terribly uneven. Also, I tried partially filling the torso with plastic craft beads but that was a disaster- it gave her those cottage-cheese textured thighs we ladies just love…

Though not quite so well articulated as sculpted ball-jointed dolls, bead-jointed cloth dolls are still pretty spectacular for the amount of posing flexibility they offer. I'd like to revise this pattern's elbow joints a little and make their movement more natural but that will be a future project...

I’m not sure if I’ll have time to sew another body before the challenge deadline but I’ve decided that the next doll I make will be sewn from that lovely (and cheap!) muslin and simply tea-dyed to give it the right hue; no more of that frustrating (and expensive!) quilters’ cotton! Besides hair and ears, she still needs clothes and wings (she’s currently slated to be a fairy– but watch me change my mind hours before the deadline!) so I’ll be rushing to have this completed and submitted by March 15th. Still, despite the little irritations, I’m loving it! I will definitely be crafting more dolls this year…

~Dalliann

Seems a little more ‘air-brush’ than ‘watercolor’ but I’m happy enough with it for a first attempt. And the completion time was so much shorter than my typical cel-shaded pieces, so that’s a bonus!

I think I’ll go dig around for a good SAI tutorial and experiment with a few more digital watercolors…

~Dalliann

If I had known that he’d someday grow into a gorilla, I SO wouldn’t have picked on him when we were little. As much. Probably.

I have a few ideas for kinder illustrations (we do occassionally get along) but I think I’m going to save those for later in the month; I’m currently doing concept art for a trio of siblings in my comic “Sink” and it’s way more fun to draw them being antagonistic than cooperative… ~_^

~Dalliann

Anyway, I’m pleased with how it turned out and even happier to be finished with it. On to new projects!

~Dalliann

I love finding sketches and wips that I’ve forgotten about or misplaced; it makes them new and exciting again!

I loaded this one into PaintTool SAI, vectored over my original lineart, resized it, and colored it in Photoshop. Since I already had so much of the original piece finished, I was able to use it as a color reference and it made the whole process fly by! Now I’m feeling motivated to go digging through more of my old stuff and see if there are any other half-complete projects I can salvage…

~Dalliann

So this one zoomed to the finish, instead:

When I began, I had an entirely different palette in mind– lots of pinks– but I ran across some Russian fairytales I hadn’t read in years and “The Firebird” sort of took over the idea. Usually, my final illustrations differ greatly from the original sketches but this one remained pretty consistent. Aside from adding the Firebird in the background and getting rid of her veil, there’s not much difference between the sketch and the finished lineart.

Now to finish up that other one… *sigh*

~Dalliann

I spent the whole of December trying to better myself, preparing for all the things I want to accomplish this year, and reviewing other artists’ accounts of how they finally broke into a full-time art career. Heeding their advice, I’ve been working out a gameplan of all the things I need to do this year to make my goals a reality. So what are my goals? I’ve tried to keep it simpler than past lists and am focusing on these five:

1. Create and submit a new portfolio to at least fifty publishing companies.
2. Add at least thirty new illustrations to my gallery.
3. Get my work featured in at least three magazines.
4. Get at least five good publishing and/or licensing contracts.
5. Go full-time as an illustrator and crafter.

There is, of course, much work to do in order to achieve these things but I’m excited and feeling more motivated than I have in… well, ever!

As mentioned in a previous post, I love EMG Magazine‘s monthly themes and I’ve decided to create my own monthly word-prompts for an extra bit of inspiration; I figured it might give me some ideas for content and illustrations when I’m staring blankly at my screen, wondering what to write or draw next…

So, the theme for January (as picked by The Random Word Generator) is “Crown”- and here are a couple of sketches it’s already inspired. I still haven’t chosen which one to clean up and ink but I’ll post the finished illustration later this month.

Oh, and if anyone decides to follow along with these monthly themes/prompts, please let me know! I’d love to see how you interpret them!

~Dalliann

This is actually the third version of this same picture. The first was done in traditional inks and ruined by a shaky hand and the second was finished digitally but lost in a computer crash– but the third has survived long enough to finally be posted (and saved to an external drive for peace of mind *fingers crossed*)! ^_^

I’m not sure if I’ll have anything else ready to show this month but there will definitely be some new pieces in January…

~Dalliann

I love working from word and theme prompts; frogs are not something I usually draw (or would think of drawing) so it’s fun to take on a project that pushes me to try something new. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to convey enough ‘emotion’ without making him look too cartoony but I think his irritation comes across fairly well.

I’m also very proud of the background. I don’t have much practice with drawing environments but I need to improve quickly for the sake of my comic (among other things) so I spent a lot of time on this one and studied tutorials and experimented with different brushes and opacities and a bunch of other things I’ve never done before. I still have a long way to go but, yay!, progress!

So, if you’re in a creative rut, check out EMG’s monthly themes (they’re posted several months in advance). Might just be the spark you need!

~Dalliann