Posted in Sketching

Found a way to carry color pencils

Posted on by Mo

So I since my bag was made for a certain size sketchbook, and it had a little more room next to the sketchbook before the bag wouldn’t close. I was looking for a way to bring more color with me. I rarely work in pencils and I have the Beastiary which will be mostly shades of brown or skin tones. I wanted to be able to add pops of color like for creatures eyes and maybe magical artifacts and such. My paper is tan because of dyeing it with coffee so I went through my Crayola color pencils that just happen to be super tiny and found the right shades I wanted to bring with me that also worked on the tan paper. Then I was like, how do I bring these with me, without breaking them or them rolling around in my bag. Check out my results.

I can’t wait to get to work with them and really start working on my Beastiary. They are in a mint tin. Summer is coming and I’m graduating so I’m super pumped. Getting my bachelors degree in art has been so fun. But I can’t wait to see what’s next and actually get out and start working a job I actually want to be doing.

Posted in Sewing

My sewing projects are few and far between

Posted on by Mo

My sewing projects are not anywhere near finished currently. I do have a quilt in the making and I occasionally will make something fun, like a hip bag. The hip bag featured in these photos I made entirely on my own. I made the pattern, sewed what I could with a sewing machine and then spent three days hand sewing the rest together. The patches are super glued on and the pins tend to get caught on things and fall off. I made this bag because I wanted something to transport a mid range sketchbook out into the field. I typically use a 9″x 6″ homemade sketchbook. sometimes being half a inch shorter on both sides like I could buy a store bought one. The one I made it for is rather thick at almost 2.5″ in thickness, yes the Beastiary, and so are most of my other homemade sketchbooks. Although that really depends on what paper I use. I enjoy carrying this and have even used it as a carry on item for one of my recent trips back to Texas. I made sure to add side pockets for quick access to drawing devices, and it has two straps, one for the waist, and the other for my leg. Both are adjustable so I can wear bulkier close or tight fitting pants and still have it snug but not too tight. It doesn’t tend to move towards the front of my leg when it is weighed down with my heavy sketchbook and such, but it will moved when pushed. This bag has three pockets, a medium sized from pocket, the big middle pocket for my sketchbook and pencil roll, and even fits my cell phone along with it, and a back pocket that is thin but as long and wide as the whole bag itself, so it can fit a lot of thin things. Like watercolor palettes I have made out of old cigarette cases.

Posted in Acrylic

Some acrylic paintings

Posted on by Mo

I don’t paint in acrylic often but chose to take a class in my last quarter of school. The copy of Van Gogh’s Stary Night is one of my favorites to replicate. That one I made for the cover of one of my older sketchbooks. The under-painting for center photo was so that I wasn’t painting all in blues and greys this whole time. I really love the way it looks up close in person, and it was one of my photos I took during my photography faze of medias. I still love to take photos but not very often to I capture something in a photo that I then want to paint. This one just happened to be a photo of a storm rolling it at my childhood home and I was looking up out my window just watching the clouds roll in. I really miss the storms of Texas and so I really enjoyed painting one of my favorite photos that reminds me of home.

Posted in Book binding

The Beastiary

Posted on by Mo

This is my Beastiary. It is a sketchbook i chose to make, because I have trouble knowing what to sketch, and I rarely make up my own work out of my imagination. It is a collection of information on supernatural, mystical, and magical creatures, beings, and items. I hope to make all the entries like a journal much like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and yes I got this idea from MTV’s Teen Wolf, although it is not a direct copy of their’s as I am getting information from as many sources as I can find (i.e. Teen wolf, Buffy, Supernatural, Angel, books, mythology, folk tells). I hand bound the paper after dyeing it with coffee and made both stones out of polymer clay to represent onyx and moon stone. The moon stone glows in the dark. I carved symbols for protection and I think knowledge into the moon stone in viking runes. I got the setting for the onyx and the button, as well as the faux leather and real leather for the closure from Jo-Anns fabric and crafts. I hope to make a full scanned digital copy of the pages of this sketchbook once it is complete, but might post a image of its work every now and again.

Posted in Sketching, Watercolor

Sketches in watercolor with a few pieces thrown in

Posted on by Mo

So some of these are finished pieces while others are just sketches. I mostly work in a sketchbook so I don’t often times make whole finished professional looking watercolor pieces. Sorry for the bad quality of some of the photos, Sketchbooks are hard to photograph and not get background in them. I might start scanning photos in the future.

Posted in Sketching

Works in Graphite

Posted on by Mo

So I am putting this in sketches since I rarely use pencil for my work. It makes since to put graphite works in sketches since I don’t work with it often enough to deem it worthy of a category all its own. Now a lot of my sketches will fall under watercolor as well but I will make separate posts to be posted in double categories if that’s the case.