Sunday | 08.27.23

A couple more paintings!

This one was the first one I tried en plein air, and it's of a neighbor's house from my backyard. It took ~45 minutes to do the sketching and painting, then I came back inside to do the linework, which took ~15 mins. Maybe it'd be more viable to just do the sketch on the scene with a bit of hatching to show shadows, then paint back at the hotel or cafe or whatever? Idk.

(Also, it was surprisingly difficult to see the colors you're working with when you're outside -- the excess light kinda messes with your eyes...)

And these were done inside, looking at a photo book / travel ad-thing from Italy.

The first one I used some colored pencils over the watercolor with minimal sketching beforehand (just some layout lines). The second one was straight watercolor (with some little dots to help with layout). I think they turned out pretty cute, but I still definitely need more practice, especially with trees....

This paper also seems to behave strangely? It doesn't seem to like it when you use a lot of water or try to layer. So I think it'd be best to keep doing light washes and lineart on top in the future. (On that note, I finally bought a new brush pen! Haven't actually used it yet, though.)

Also, I've been reading a lot of old Sailor Moon fanfics lately and looking at old fansites, etc. The vibe of old fandom is so much different from how it is now (sometimes in good ways, sometimes bad...). The most recent one was Pain: The Lovers by Jon Carp (zip can be downloaded here). It's a little... weird (tw: major character death, grief, etc), but pretty good. I was tearing up in a hospital waiting room reading it, lol.

Might end up making a Sailor Moon shrine at some point?

And I've been thinking... While I defintely do need to change how these journals are laid out, I still like making them. And who cares if they end up with just a couple entries each?

But, yeah, they aren't in order properly (my "Journals" folder, due to lack of foresight, is in alphabetical order by name of month, rather than... actual month order), and I also didn't account for different years or anything. It'd be a lot of work to retroactively change anything (because I used direct links, lol), so I'm just gonna change things starting in September.

Wednesday | 08.16.23

I've made more paintings in the last couple of days than I have in the last couple of years! I'm trying to practice drawing quickly and loosely so I'll be ready in New Orleans -- I've always thought, even if it's unlikely, if I ever go somewhere, I'd want to keep a travel sketchbook. It seems so much more personal and more fun than just taking pictures, y'know? And seeing other artist's works is very inspirational!

I've been just drawing random pictures from the r/SketchDaily generator, particularly focusing on buildings and structures, using ink (a mixture of Bic pen and a set of Sakura Pigma Microns) and watercolor. And without further ado, here they are!

In the first image, top right, I was following a tutorial by TobySketchLoose on Youtube. When I started doing these, I was so lost and overwhelmed (and it didn't help that the generator was just giving me the most unbelievably complicated Frenchy buildings ever!), but his tutorial really did help slow down my thinking (even if my version of that drawing is.. not that great). He talks about just focusing on the individual basic shapes and how they relate together, then going in with a continuous line to fill in the small details like chimneys and windows. While I'm not really doing that style, I'm keeping that basic process in mind.

Then, I read a couple of urban sketching books recommended on Reddit. They had a lot of lovely art and examples, but not much in the way of advice really stood out to me, honestly... except: draw what's closest to you first and with the most detail, and using dots to plan out proportion. Again, I'm really bad about easily getting overwhelmed, so being given a "starting point" really does help.

I went in the order of:

• Bic pen outline,
• watercolor
• ratty Pigma brush / etc to change the lineweight and further separate the fore-, middle-, and background

I think adding in the different pen sizes at the end really brings a lot of visual interest to it and makes the pieces more readable, so I think I'd want to try that out more in the future! (I'm definitely gonna have to get another brush pen, though, rip. This one can't make a point to save its life...)

I also saw a piece by equivocations on Tumblr, where she outlined all the main figures and objects with a white gel pen, and I think that made for a really cool effect! Honestly, I love all of her pieces -- very loose, charming and colorful!

(This is genuinely the most ~ o(≧▽≦)o / (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ ~ I've ever felt!)

Thursday | 08.03.23

Lol, I ran out of my stock of already made journal layouts, so now I'm using this design that was originally going to be the Pokemon shrine, before I changed it into the kinda choose your own adventure-y thing it is now. This one is, unsurprisingly, based off the opening sequence of Pokemon Gold & Silver, with the graphics lovingly borrowed from Spriter's Resource. Still, that website truly is the one thing keeping me going! I was also looking at a cute Peanuts / Snoopy game on the SNES with cute graphics...

I was also looking at how, for example, Cloverbell uses iframes for her diary. That would certainly be a lot more compact and uniform than what I'm doing... And it feels silly to just have two or three entries per page like I've been doing, as well. Lots of to think about...

I have quite a bit to update, actually!

We had a garage sale, which kinda sucked and was not worth it at all -- we put in a ton of work and made almost no money. It was fun to talk to neighbors and just sit outside for a while, though. Me and my mom played City Guesser which is a free version of GeoGuessr where, instead of using Google Street View, you watch Youtube videos of people walking through town. I kinda like this version more, actually! You get more of a feel for what life is like where you're dropped; like, one round started at a street concert.

I did make that bird blog I mentioned in the last entry, jokesonsmew. (It was the first vaguely bird related pun I could think of, lol.) Talking about books, cute stationery, little indie games, pretty art, funny pet videos, etc. ^^

We're planning on going to New Orleans in September! I've never actually gone on vacation or anything before, so this is really exciting! It doesn't feel real, honestly... We have no real plans besides just seeing the sights, trying new food, etc.

Did a thorough cleaning / reorganizing of my room! It really needed it! There was genuinely like a square foot of boxes and crafty supplies on the floor and you could hardly get around or find anything... Very happy with the new layout / cleanness, though! (There's no room for anymore books or craft supplies, though! Currently at maximum capacity!)

Bound my first book since February, a cute little oneshot about a robot and a gardener by whalebone on AO3. I'm gonna put more indepth information on this project on my Dreamwidth and I'll link to it here when I'm done, but, for now, here's the cover:

I have to get going now, though, so I'll have to cut this short, sorry!

Edit (08.05.23): Here's the Dreamwidth post about the book!