acrylic painting

Hello, my friends! 😀

I know some of your were looking forward to seeing my fair entries and what prizes I won, so here you go! This is for you. 🙂

Here’s a picture of all my entries except the photos. It’s… kind of hard to tell what’s what, so let me show you a little more clearly…

A strange little octopus. 🙂

I like this one! Two little gnomes in a flower house. 🙂

Look how tiny he is!

A doughnut turtle! She’s so cute. 😀 (Also note you can find this and the previous three clay things at my Etsy shop.)

This is a lil’ hippo I made for my little sister’s birthday to hold trinkets and such. She said, “No, Allison, do you have to enter it? I need it to hold my things!” XD 😀

I also won a sweepstakes ribbon for ceramics, so that was really exciting!

I made this tissue paper flower from a DIY book.

These didn’t win a prize because I accidentally grabbed a falling-apart one from my collection. XD Oops.

I made this cute little elephant in a sewing class. It was rather hard to make, but I love how it turned out!

Just a bonus picture of a butterfly that was passing through. 😀

Here’s the picture of my friend Aria from the last post. Sadly, it didn’t win a prize. Oh well! I like it anyway. 🙂

Strangely enough, this won third prize, even though I think the portrait was a lot better. Perhaps they were judging by creativity?

Okay, now for the photos I entered. I entered this in “Abstract,” but it didn’t win a prize.

This was for “Action.” It also didn’t win a prize.

I entered this in “Close-Up,” and it won first prize!

“Architecture,” and no prize.

“Artistic,” and it won third prize! 😀

“People,” and no prize.

“Pets” – isn’t Clemmy so cute? Sadly, no prize.

“Landscape” – no prize.

“Rural _____,” with third prize!

“Wildlife,” and no prize.

“Humor,” and first prize! Heh heh, isn’t it funny? XD

And that’s all for this year! Altogether I believe I got 12 prize ribbons out of 21 things entered, plus one sweepstakes ribbon. Not too bad!

Well, I hope you enjoyed looking over a summary of the stuff I made and photos I took in a year’s time. 🙂 Do you like to enter things in your fair? Did you win any prizes?

Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a lovely day. ♥

***Allison***

P. S. Guys, please pray for the people in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the ones possibly in the path of Hurricane Irma. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be. We’ll keep you in our thoughts and prayers, friends! ♥

YAY, I am so excited to share some of my recent art with you guys! I’ve been drawing a lot lately, and I think I’ve really been improving, so that’s good. 😉

Also, before we start I wanted to mention this super good video (which I’ll show you in a moment) by Hullo Alice that talks about why it’s okay if not every piece of art turns out perfect. I thought it was such a good message!

Sometimes when people try to make art and it doesn’t end up looking like the idea in their head or they search the web and find soooo many better artists out there, they just give up, and think, “I’ll never be good at art, so what’s the use of trying?” The use of trying is that you WILL get good at art if you give yourself a chance. You might not ever get as good as the professional art you love looking at on Pinterest, but you’ll certainly be a terrible artist if you never try.

Listen, before you make some good art, you’re going to make (a lot of) bad art. That’s just how it works with anything – art, music, math, anything you try to learn. And that’s okay. Making bad art is part of the process of getting to be a good artist. If the piece you’re working on is terrible, just let it go, turn the page, and start again. You’ll get better if you keep trying over and over again, I can promise you that.

Okay, now that that little rant was over and you (hopefully) watched the video, I can show you my art. 🙂 I decided to include some of my “bad art” (although not my worst XD) in this post too.

Let’s get started!

I shall start with some of my favorite art I’ve created – a zentangle elephant. 🙂 It took me FOREVER to draw this, as you can probably guess. XD I had just purchased a new fine-tip pen at Hobby Lobby, and it was great for detailed work like this!

I also made a mandala in a similar style. I think it turned out so pretty! It’s probably the best mandala I’ve done, because usually they get pretty skewed. XD

Another mandala.. YIKES sorry for the terrible picture. O.o

Next up we have a little design I made for Livy’s magazine here (which you should totally check out!)

I’m also submitting this for the next issue of her magazine. 🙂 I had a lot of fun with this one!

I’m not really sure what I think of the next piece… I guess it’s neat, but it didn’t really turn out like I was hoping. Oh well! Waterfalls are really hard to draw, aren’t they?

OOH! I love this drawing I did of the lovely Aria from purrfectlyinspired.com. It’s the best portrait I’ve done, I think!

Okay, here’s something I drew from you guys’ suggestions: a fairy. In the spirit of the post, I shall show you the two horrible renditions it took before I got it to turn out right. XD (I used them for testing pens and stuff, in case you were wondering. 😉 )

Actually the first sketch isn’t that bad… just, well, a sketch.

AHH SO CREEPY. Her face got smudged and made it look even more awful. XD

But finally that bad art enabled me to draw a good piece. Muuuuch better, yes? I hope you like the fairy, Sylvia!

So for this one I was trying to draw something interesting without using any reference photos. Well I sure paid for that with how her legs turned out. XD YUCK. I could NOT get the foreshortening and angle and all that stuff right, so I just called it good enough and finished the picture. 😛 I like the rest of it, though!

Some little water drop doodles from this amazing tutorial. You might think these are good until you see what I was looking off of. XD

Here’s a (pretty rough) concept sketch I did for a possible WordCrafters cover. What do you think? Do you like the idea of all the characters lined up like that? Also I need a better tagline. XD Tell me your ideas! I’ll also do a more in-depth post when I’m ready to start editing WordCrafters.

Heh heh, do you like my play on words? Unfortunately the ink ran all over the place, but it’s okay because it wasn’t my best picture or anything. (It looks like the horse is shooting ink out of her nostrils. XD)

Ooh, this one is funny! I made this birthday card for my sister Megan who loves donkeys.

Ha ha! Yeah, I had fun with that. Although it took quite a while to draw the donkeys inside the card. O.o

Next we have a page of doodles. I picked a couple of random colors from my watercolor brush pen set and drew this. WHY DO THINGS LIKE THIS ALWAYS TAKE SO LONG?!

Here’s some bad-ish art. It got kind of all blurred together.

BWAHAHA this did NOT turn out right. Poor, failed pineapple. XD

Lookee it’s a cute wittle hedgehog from Clara’s suggestions! 🙂

Random watercolor doodle…

Blech, some more bad art. I very much dislike the color scheme – or lack of one.

I’m really happy with this one, though! I thought it turned out pretty cute. 🙂 My watercolor brush pens are so fun for drawings like this.

A doodle/test page.

I haven’t finished this one and don’t know if I will or not, but this was drawn from a photograph of dew drops on a flower.

I really like how this turned out! My best horse picture so far, definitely. It’s a picture of my friend K. A.‘s horse, Gadget.

few more pages from my Bible journal… (would you like to see another whole post about it?)

Here are the ATCs I made for Hayley’s ATC trade (now closed).

And lastly, we have another rendition of the moonrise galaxy painting I did here.

And that’s about it! As for the bad art, some of you are probably rolling your eyes and saying, “Allison, seriously? You call that bad art?” Well I’ve done worse art – believe me. I just didn’t show it. XD Anyway, I know the feeling. I see “bad art” from other artists and I’m like “WHOA I wish I could draw that well!” And so you see, it depends on your perspective. Your bad art might be more beautiful than you think. ♥

I hope you enjoyed this post! Which pieces were you favorite? Do you have any suggestions for what I should draw next?

***Allison***

P. S. My county fair post is coming up next! 🙂