The Art Lab, Episode 49: Popsicles Forever

July 2, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

Welcome back to another episode of The Art Lab! It’s a bit late because I kind of got the posting schedule confused but ANYWAY, here we go! Today I’m going to show you how to draw cute, summery popsicles inspired by some popsicle stamps Megan bought at the post office the other day. (They’re forever stamps – thus the strange post title. 😛 ) Here’s our art inspiration for this post:

{via}

And here’s what you’ll need to re-create it:

Some sort of paper to draw on (I used an ATC)
watercolor crayons (you can also use watercolor colored pencils or just plain watercolors)
a pencil
brown colored pencil (optional)
a normal or white gel pen (optional)

Ahem. We are now ready to start the tutorial.

Sketch out three popsicle shapes + corresponding popsicle sticks on your paper. The shape is up to you, but I like making ones with a flat base that taper slightly up to a rounded oval or square top. If you want, draw a bite taken out of one of them.
Sketch in some details on your popsicles. There are SO many options for this, so have fun and be creative! I mainly did varying degrees and sizes of squiggles to separate the different colors (I mean flavors) later.
I penciled in the popsicles darker than they should have been so you guys could see them. If your sketch is like mine, erase it for the most part until it’s barely visible. You don’t want to see pencil lines under the paint later on. Next, choose a limited color scheme of colors that go well together and won’t make brown if they get mixed. I chose a summery palette of warm colors + white.
Loosely color in your sketches with your crayons (or whatever you’re using). Cover the space, but don’t worry about getting it perfect. For the middle popsicle, I got an ombre effect by blending gradually less and less coral with more and more white.
Now the fun part: add water and watch the magic! If you want to blend colors, I suggest starting with the lighter colors and blending into the darker. If you do the opposite, the lighter color might disappear under the more dominant darker one.
Draw two parallel lines in the center of the popsicle, about the same distance apart as the popsicle stick is wide. (This is the bump where the popsicle stick is inside the ice.) Use a darker color (I used red), and blend it out with water to soften the shadows.
Next we’ll add shadows to the popsicle sticks. When you’re drawing from a reference, it helps to think in terms of simple shapes. If you look at the stamps, the shadows on the sticks are basically brown triangles. So make brown triangles! You can also faintly outline the whole stick in brown. You can certainly use your watercolors for this part, but I used a brown colored pencil for more precision.
Finally, add some details with a white gel pen. I added squiggles to the first, shiny highlights to the second, and cute sprinkles to the third, but you can add whatever you want.

Ta-daa! Step back and try to admire your work of art without eating it. It doesn’t taste as good as it looks, trust me.

If you make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Send us a picture at theartlabblog@gmail.com and we’ll add it to our gallery on The Art Lab website.

What do you think of this art idea? Did you get the new popsicle stamps? And what is your favorite popsicle flavor?

***Allison***

P. S. Made some art and now you’re bored? Well I have some good news: The Summer Bored Games have started! Check out Clara’s post here to start completing challenges! And thank you SO much to everyone who signed up – we now have over 40 participants!

Various Artsy Things

April 25, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

Since I haven’t made a recent art post in a long time, I have quite a bit to show you today, including the remaining pages of an old sketchbook and the beginnings of a new one, decorated envelopes, and hand lettered quotes. Enjoy browsing through the drawings! 🙂

First we have the few remaining pages of my old sketchbook. I made these doodly mushrooms with the Micron pens I got for Christmas (see my mini review here), which are so fun to draw with!

This was a concept for Art Lab which I decided not to use after all. I watercolored the background, folded it down and smoothed it to make a mirror image, and then added the details.

This is NOT my usual style, but maybe I don’t have a style – I love all kinds. 🙂

I draw mandalas a lot because they’re just so pretty and I love circles. 😀 This was ALSO a plan/sketch/concept for the next piece of art..

Hee hee, I’ve never done this before. The wall was rather rough and ugly behind the toilet paper holder, and since we didn’t have the wall paint color with which to cover the fresh plaster, Mom asked me to paint a design onto it. It took a while, but I’m pretty pleased with the result, even if it is a little weird. XD (Also it’s painted on a corner, which is why the picture looks cut in half.)

Goodness, most of these pieces are actually plans for something else! XD I might actually like this sketch better than the finished piece, unfortunately.

And now we’re ready for my new sketchbook which I also got for Christmas! I got to draw the logo for Dad’s business card/website, which was pretty neat. These were just practices (AGAIN); I ended up mostly tracing an edited picture to get the desired effect. Oh well, I kind of like the practices

YAY, REAL ART. I was inspired by the first mushroom picture as well as the illustrations in a beautiful set of books (which I also got for Christmas). I think it turned out pretty cute, although I’m not normally a fan of earthy color schemes.

On the left we have the picture I drew for this Art Lab episode, and on the right we have a few lonely-looking watercolor bubbles.

Guys, I am not good at drawing hair. I can draw eyes and most of the rest of the face okay, but the hair is always pretty boring and lackluster. Therefore I attempted to improve my skills with this great video, and I think I did… but they still need improvement. XD That’s okay, I’ll get there eventually. If I keep working on it, that is.

And here is the finished piece of the pencil-sketched girl I showed you a while ago. The idea was to make a girl who looks like a fawn without actually using any non-human features like deer-ears or antlers. It didn’t really work. XD The face got kind of skewed and I rushed the background which didn’t turn out well, but everything else is… tolerable. If you cover up her mouth she looks better. 😛

(By the way, that’s a great drawing tip: if you’re drawing something (particularly a face), covering up parts of the picture helps you see which feature is throwing everything off. I think it’s the mouth and chin here.)

Megan requested this camera for a blog project (picture by Megan). I rather like it because it’s PURPLE and it’s A CAMERA. 😀

I drew this from a gorgeous aerial view of Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for The Hundred Acre Woods. The photo was prettier. XD

We have now come to the end of the sketchbooks so far, and will turn to various other artworks. First, envelopes. I absolutely LOVE decorating envelopes for my pen pals, and I think I prefer the recent envelope art I made to the stuff in the sketchbook.

Ooh, this is one of my favorites! Adding touches with the white gel pen really helped bring the scene together.

I was trying to decide how to decorate this envelope when I saw the pretty pattern on my Chemistry notebook and decided to use it as inspiration. What do you know, something nice can come of even Chemistry. XD

I made this envelope after reading The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, which has some great art tips and tutorials in it! (For instance: did you know that the three primary colors are not red, blue, and yellow, but magenta, cyan, and yellow?! I was astonished! But he showed and explained how it makes perfect sense.) I think it’s neat how a few pen lines can transform some abstract watercolor blobs into a landscape.

I outlined the daffodils with some lovely oil pastels my dear friend sent me, and then used the watercolor resist technique to fill them in. The colors are so bright and cheery, aren’t they? That’s why I love daffodils. 🙂

Ooh yes, another one of my favorites! ❤ I like the bright, summery colors and almost vintage-poster-like quality the sun rays give it.

My mom liked the envelope so much that she wanted me to make a real picture to frame, so I did!

Okay, this is kind of strange, but Megan wanted me to draw on a church bulletin for one of her friends (don’t ask XD). I believe Megan took these three pictures. I like how the music notes show through the watercolor in this one. 🙂

This, um, didn’t work TOO well because I didn’t have enough time to finish the faces (particularly Megan’s on the right :[] )… but it was a good challenge to try, anyway.

I like this one better. 😉 Our friend loves snakes, so I drew this one, also loosely from the Nature Journaling book.

I made the following art for the most recent edition of Christ’s Light Magazine. 🙂

Here are a few more quotes I copied, for my pen pals. (The next few pictures are black and white because I took them in a rush and the lighting was HORRIBLE. XD)

And last but not least…

And that’s all for now! Which piece of art was your favorite? Which do you prefer making: sketchbook art, envelope art, or hand lettering?

Thanks for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Also in case you’re wondering, I’m planning the post about the old letter next! I would have done it this time, but it’s taking a loooong time to translate. XD Stay tuned!

Hand Lettering + Font Inspiration

February 17, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

Unfortunately I couldn’t make my Art Lab post on Friday, but I have time (and data XD) to do it today! In this post I’ll show you a few tips and tricks on lettering, plus show you plenty of font inspiration to copy or use to think up your own fonts. (Because I usually run out of ideas after, like, three fonts. XD) So. Ready? GO!

Technique: Hand Lettering

Hand lettering is super fun, and also very useful for when you want to spiff up an envelope or gift tag or any number of things.

Fonts

Let’s start with one of my the most common and prettiest fonts in handlettering: fake calligraphy. Lovely name, isn’t it? 😛 That’s because it allows you to get a calligraphy-like effect without using any special calligraphy tools. It’s also super simple to write. See?

Step One: Write out your desired words in the neatest cursive you can.

Step Two: Find the downstrokes. Downstrokes are the places in a letter where you move your pen down the paper, like the little pink arrows show in the picture.

Step Three: Widen and color in the downstrokes to get the look of a calligraphy pen. Ta-daa! Pretty, isn’t it?

This is a great base font, especially when paired with a simple sans or serif.

So basically sans doesn’t have the little “tags” on the ends of the letters and serif does. I like writing all caps sans and all lowercase serif. 🙂

And now, here are a bunch more simple fonts I wrote out to look through and use as inspiration or copy yourself. Which is your favorite?

Accents

Now that you got some fonts under your… um, pen XD, it’s fun to add little accents and flourishes to fill in the space beside the lettering. Here are a few ideas to get you started, and you can find a bunch more on Pinterest and the “Doodly Accents” section of PicMonkey. 🙂

Inspiration

Still need some more ideas to get your creativity flowing? Here are a few of my recent (and not-so-recent) lettering pieces.

You can hand letter with any medium you wish! Here I used my watercolor brush pens which are super fun for lettering.

envelope 8 — Quote from Jane Austen’s *Emma*

For this one I used a blue notebook marker + a blue ballpoint pen. I love adding vines to letters, but it does take a bit of time and patience. 😉 Another fun thing to do for fonts with thick, solid bars of color like below is to add zigzags or circles or other patterns inside the bars for more interest.

Quote from Nancy Pearcey’s *Total Truth*

This is the first page in my second bullet journal. I like how the mix of colored pencil and ballpoint pen looks together. 🙂

Not quite the right season for this, but hey, it’s lettering! XD I think it looks really neat to overlap some letters, like I did with the ‘y’ and the ‘o’. Also a little extra line of a different color beside the downstrokes adds a shadow effect and makes it look more special.

And lastly, a lovely Bible verse that I copied completely in blue ballpoint pen. (By the way, these Pilot G2 pens are practically THE BEST PENS EVERRR. They write super smoothly and you can get them in a range of point sizes.)

That’s all I have for today, so hopefully you’re inspired by now. 😀 If you did make some hand lettering inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out how to help us fill our art gallery here.

***Allison**

The Art Lab, Episode 38: Spaghetti Mountains

January 13, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hey, guys! How’s life? Mine’s good, and currently smells like pizza baking in the oven. (It’s movie night with homemade pizza. 😉 ) Wait, that was the timer… HOLD ON.

Okay, we’re good. Ha, that was an interesting coincidence. ANYWAY, less food and more art now, eh?

Oh wait, I forgot about the title. XD Maybe we’re not done with food yet… Today I want to show you how to draw “spaghetti mountains,” what I decided to call this certain doodling technique. 😛 I think it looks so neat in the end, and it’s quite fun and relaxing to draw.

Art Inspiration:

{via}

Isn’t this gorgeous? I love it! I made a similar piece using this as inspiration, and also made you guys a little tutorial if you’d like to try it yourself. 🙂

Materials Needed:

Paper, an ATC, canvas, etc.
Black pens or markers (I used varying sizes of Micron pens + a black brush pen)
A white gel pen (optional)
Some time

1. Draw some jagged lines for mountain ridges with your thickest pen (I made the lines thicker later). Make some ridges in the background and foreground.

2. Take your second thickest pen and start filling the first mountain with “spaghetti.” XD Draw some curvy lines that all start and end at the same point, and follow each other closely. Like so.

3. Add more spaghetti in a different direction, and connecting to the noodles you already drew.

4. Keep adding more spaghetti in all different directions until you fill the whole mountain ridge.

5. Now for the ridge behind it. Use a slightly thinner pen to show perspective, because things (like spaghetti) look smaller when farther away.

6. Keep it up! After you finish that ridge, move onto the one behind, using a thinner pen each time and making the lines close together. Doesn’t it look so neat thus far?

7. Add a sun behind the last ridge. I left a white space, but you wouldn’t have to. 😉

8. Next we’re going to make the “rays” of the sun. Using your thickest pen, fill in the space above the sun with rows of dots or ovals.

9. Make the dots in each new row bigger than the last…

10. Ta-daa! You’ve filled the whole page!

11. You can definitely leave it like that, but I added a bit more embellishment with a white gel pen. First I colored in the sun black, (weird, I’ve never seen a black sun before, have you? XD), and then rimmed it with dainty white dots.

12. And lastly, I added some white circles to the black dots, just to break things up a bit.

13. Ta-daa! You’re finished!

What do you think? I think… strange but neat. 🙂 I hope you get a chance to try this, because it’s quite fun and I love the end result.

Thanks for reading, dears! Now go make some art. 😉 Oh, and if you DO make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out this page to see how you can help us fill our gallery.

Have a great day, guys! I hope I haven’t made you too hungry… XD

***Allison***

Sketchbook Tour + More

December 1, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

Heyyyy, guys! Goodness it’s been far too long since I’ve done a recent art post. I have been sprinkling in a few pictures for CPC and Art Lab and such, I guess, but today I want to do a round-up of (most of) the pictures I’ve drawn in my sketchbook since the last art post, along with miscellaneous other art. I hope you enjoy browsing through the pictures! 😀

My current sketchbook is almost filled with drawings and crinkly painted pages, so I put a new sketchbook on my Christmas list. 😉 Filled up sketchbooks are so satisfying!

Alright, I’m going to go in chronological order because it’s the easiest. XD Just note that I did make a few more drawings than this, but I didn’t want to you every single one or the post would get even more ridiculously long than it is. 😛 Anyway, this first drawing is just a fun, stylized, pen-and-colored-pencil doodle. I rather like the quote.

One night I was bored so I decided to try the three marker challenge (drawing a picture with only three colors) with Sharpies. I like some parts of it, but… well, it’s certainly not my best work, heh heh. Oh dear.

Um, this is a super strange drawing of a mini world on someone’s finger??

Now this drawing I actually like. I drew it from a picture in one of Loren‘s posts which is sadly eluding me. HELP. If anyone knows which one it was, could you tell me please? Thank you muchly. UPDATE: Katie found the post for me! Thank you SO much, Katie. 🙂 Here it is.

I told you I liked the quote… XD I was trying out sketching with a colored pencil instead of a normal pencil and I like how it turned out!

WARNING. VERY CREEPY DRAWING AHEAD. Okay so apparently I have a REALLY hard time drawing deer (at least without a reference). SORRY GUYS. I did draw some better deer, but that will come later on.

*Sigh* Two bad drawings in a row? DON’T WORRY GUYS, IT GETS BETTER THAN THIS, I PROMISE. Anyway, this was a drawing that I tried to do for a CPC story (which you can read here), but it, um, didn’t turn out. But hey, it goes to show that although bad art is inevitable, that doesn’t mean you should give up. ART IS TOO AMAZING TO GIVE UP.

Ahem. Oh yes, I drew this little flurry for an online magazine I contribute to! Some are good and some are bad, but hey, you can tell they’re snowflakes. Does anyone else have a hard time making snowflakes symmetrical?

I like how this looks so far (it’s a vast improvement on some of my other hair drawings), but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. Oh well. 🙂

I really like this little guy, hee hee! Megan and I ordered a shirt for my brother that said “I FROGET” since that’s the punchline to one of his favorite terrible jokes which I cannot remember at the moment. XD There are plenty of online sites where you can design your own t-shirts, so I made the art and Megan did the rest of the designing.

Now we’re getting into some Christmas drawings. (By the way, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S DECEMBER?! I CAN FINALLY DO CHRISTMAS STUFF.) These next two I also made for the aforementioned magazine. I used my watercolor brush pens for this one…

And acrylic paints + a white gel pen for this one. I love how the painting turned out!

Here we have a lovely bad quality picture of a NeedtoBreathe quote, also for the magazine…

This is just a random Thanksgiving doodle with my watercolor brush pens again…

A strange-looking hawk I drew using one of my brother’s other shirts as a reference. 😛

And now we’re caught up with my sketchbook! Next we have the “Beyond the Sketchbook” part, a.k.a miscellaneous drawings.

I drew this wrapping paper for our cousins’ birthday because they put these pets on their list (though they obviously knew they wouldn’t get them 😉 ).

Ooh, I really like the next one! I saw a photograph like this on Pinterest (right here) and thought it would be a fun challenge to draw. It was! It turned out a bit streaky, but I’m pretty proud of the lips, which are usually hard for me. XD

I’m pleased with this one too! I drew this for the custom art in my recent giveaway, from photos Gracie gave me. Isn’t Gracie’s cat so pretty? ♥ I love her blue eyes.

This card was for my grandma who was recently in the hospital. I’m happy to say that she’s home now, though, and recovering well! ♥

Megan wanted me to draw this card for one of our friends. We always like to debate about… well, a lot of things, so we gave her a handy reminder of the right way to say and use things. 😛 (Note: the border is scrapbook paper – I didn’t draw that part, heh heh.)

OH, YAY! Next is my favorite of all of these pictures! Probably one of my favorites I’ve ever done, just because it took SO LONG to draw. XD My friend Aria commissioned me to draw a vintage-looking NYC poster from some photos she took while she was there, plus various other details she wanted, like song lyrics from one of her favorite songs for the border.

I believe this is the biggest art project I have ever done, both in size and effort. :O

Aha, here we have the better deer picture. XD I painted this for my Etsy shop, The Color Box Studio, where you can buy the original.

And lastly we have two coloring pages, also in my Etsy shop. I want to start making more of these because they’re fun to use and inexpensive to buy, not to mention you can print them out as many times as you want!

I made this as a custom page, but after she orders it I plan to make it available to everyone (for a lower price). 🙂 You can see the listing here.

And this is the newest addition, and Christmas countdown coloring page! You’re supposed to color an ornament each day. I rather like how it turned out. 🙂

Phew, you did it! Thank you so much for reading this super long post – I hope you enjoyed! Which piece of art was your favorite? ARE YOU EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS?

***Allison***

P. S. LOOK, IT’S SNOWING! ON MY BLOG! I love that effect. 🙂 If you’re reading this through email or your Reader, you’ll have to actually visit my blog to see it. 😉

The Art Lab, Episode 34: Watercolor Art

November 17, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

Heyyyyy, guys, and welcome back to Art Lab! Today I’m going to show you three super simple and fun techniques for creating art with watercolors. These ideas are great for art-starters, warm-ups, or even as finished pieces. I used ATCs for my canvas, but you can use whatever paper you like (though watercolor paper works the best, if you have it). Also note that you can use watered-down acrylic paint instead of watercolors if you need too.

Alright, let’s do the easiest (and perhaps most fun) first. 🙂

Technique #1: Magic Islands

I discovered this one by accident and I just LOVE doing it!

1. Lay down some plastic wrap and drop some water in one corner. Dip your wet paintbrush in watercolor and mix it into the water.

2. Load up your brush with the diluted paint and splatter it onto the plastic wrap.

3. Lay a paper of some sort on top and smooth it out, then pick it up (obviously 😛 ).

4. Wait for the paint to dry, then trace around the splotches with pen.

5. And you’re done!

I think this technique looks like islands, don’t you? This would be a fun way to make a map:

Technique #2: Bubble Maze

This technique produces a fun and striking result. The translucence of the watercolor lets you see the colors overlap which makes a really neat effect.

1. Start by painting some dots. Overlap them and attach them to other circles so that the colors bleed into each other.

2. Continue adding dots of different colors until the page is mostly filled.

3. Fill in the white areas with black Sharpie or pen. And you’re done!

Technique #3: Splatter Trees

This is a great way to give the impression of leaves without drawing ever single leaf.

1. Splatter different complementary colors (I used fall colors, but you can use whatever you wish) onto your paper. Try to keep it roughly in a tree shape, but don’t worry if the splatters get a little out of control.

2. After the foliage is dry, use a slightly damp brush and brown paint to add in some branches and a trunk. Don’t draw all the branches the tree has, just a few poking out for effect. 😉

3. Add some grass and a few dots of fall color if you’re doing an autumn tree. And you’re done!

And there you go! Three fun and simple ways to make some watercolor art.

Which technique was your favorite? If you make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Click here to learn how to help us fill our art gallery!

***Allison***

P. S. Hannah and Buttercup have joined the Art Lab team! Thank you so much, girls. ♥ Check out their first posts on the Art Lab blog and drop them a comment! 😀

The Art Lab, Episode 31: Erase Artist’s Block

October 21, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

WOOHOO Art Lab is back! I’m so excited to show you guys the post for today: 20 simple art prompts to help you erase artist’s block. 😀

Alright. So I’m going to give you the art prompts, explain each one a bit, and show you some of the art I’ve made using the prompts. Quite a few of these work especially well for ATCs, but you can use your sketchbook, a canvas, whatever! Ready?

Go.

Draw a colorful black and white animal. Because art is great for showing things you never see. Paint a colorful panda, zebra, penguin… skunk. Have fun. I made this ATC ages ago…
Draw your favorite music. Put on your playlist and draw what you hear. What color is the song? Blue, yellow, black, pink? Is it a soft, wavy line or an angry spiky one? Draw three or five of your favorite songs stacked on top of each other and frame it.
Paint a pretty background and write a word/quote on top. Super simple, super pretty. I like to use watercolor and black or white gel pen. Look up pretty fonts on Pinterest if you like.
Use a white gel pen to doodle on black paper. This is SO satisfying and fun! I did another (rather short) Art Lab post about it here.
Draw a huge picture of a tiny thing, and vice versa. A crumb, a bug, a part of your fingerprint… fill the whole page and draw in lots of detail. On the other hand, how small can you draw an elephant that still looks like an elephant? I know cats aren’t exactly huge, but I did draw them tiny.
Pick three markers without looking and only use those for a drawing. If you watch art videos on YouTube, you may know this as the Three Marker Challenge. 🙂 Somehow only having limited colors seems to kickstarts your creativity.
Draw a close-up of a tiny detail of something. The stitching on your jeans, your dog’s nose, the center of a flower… I’ll bet a collage of several close-ups would look really neat! Like those mystery pictures in the backs of magazines. It’s also fun to draw several close-up views of one object: your cat’s eye, paw, nose, ear, whiskers, and put them together.
Paint something by not painting. Negative space is fun to play with. I think watercolor is especially neat for this technique. It works well to paint the whole page with water except the silhouette of what you’re drawing, then swirl on some paint. What do you know, another cat.
Draw your dream house and decorate it. Or your dream bedroom, or craft studio, or kitchen. Who knows, this drawing might come in handy when you get a chance to build it!
Close your eyes and scribble. Turn it into a drawing. This is a super fun and simple prompt, which I also made a post about here.
Draw a silhouette with a galaxy behind it. Actually draw the galaxy first, but you know. And guess what? I ALSO made posts about how to draw galaxies! What do you know. There’s one here and one here. Once you’ve made the galaxy, draw a silhouette of a wolf, a person, a tree – the possibilities are endless (maybe)! Or you could draw a galaxy silhouette.
Draw on something unusual. A leaf, a crumpled brown paper bag, yesterday’s newspaper, an old book page, etc.
Use words instead of lines to draw. Draw yourself a story. Instead of drawing lines, write tiny words. Instead of coloring something in, color it in with different colors of words.
Draw a picture of what nothing would look like if it was something. I… don’t even know if this is possible. If you do it, I WANT TO SEE IT!
Draw what smiling and crying feels like. Don’t actually draw someone smiling or crying. Use colors and lines (and objects besides people or facial features) to convey the feeling.
Fill up a page with different versions of the same thing. Draw a hedgehog twenty different ways. Draw ten different cats. Fifteen different trees. It’s fun.
Draw with a non-art supply. Try using coffee, makeup, dirt, nail polish, smashed berries, food coloring, or whatever else you can find.
Cover a page in lines, circles, or patterns, and watercolor on top. Another super simple but super pretty prompt! Just keep in mind that if you draw with a pen, you’ll need to let the ink dry before watercoloring over it.
Paint yourself without using lines – only colors that describe you. Go for sort of an impressionistic style here I guess. Use blotches of color instead of smooth lines, just for interesting.
Fill a page with watercolor swatches and doodle on top. SO FUN! I got this idea from Pinterest here. And this is mine:

That was fun! I hope these ideas inspired you, dears. Which one was your favorite? Would you like to see more art prompt posts like this?

If you drew something inspired by these prompts, I’d love to see it! Click here to see how to send in a picture of your art and help us fill our gallery over at the Art Lab blog.

Also, here’s an image especially made for pinning if you want to save this to Pinterest for future reference. 😉

Thanks for reading, and have fun! 😀

***Allison***

Drawings and Such + Why It’s Okay to Make Bad Art

September 3, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

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! 🙂

The Art Lab, Episode 30: Simple Face Drawing Tutorial

August 5, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

Halloo, guys! I’m excited to present a simple tutorial for drawing faces! 😀 I’ve heard a lot of you say “I CANNOT draw people” or “faces are SO hard,” and you know what? I kinda agree. People can be really hard to draw. But you can do it! Today I’m going to show you an easy way to draw a face with just a pencil and paper, and then I’ll show you some different combinations you can use to get all sorts of interesting characters. 🙂

So. To begin, here’s how to draw an average, boring face without looking off a photo of a person. XD (I – and probably you too – can draw a better face when looking off of a picture, but sometimes you just want to make up something, right?)

Ahem.

Technique: Drawing Faces

Step One:

Sketch out an upside-down egg shape for the face and two short curved lines below for a neck. A grid like this is nice if you need help with the placement of the features (like I do). Just draw a vertical line down the middle of the face and a horizontal one between a half and a third down the face. You can see that my sketch is far from perfect, but that’s okay. We’ll touch it up as we go.

Step Two:

Using the grid, draw two oval or almond-shaped eyes. (You can add more grid lines if you like, but you don’t need to.) Eyes are usually smaller than you think, at least in my case. I drew these a bit too big. Getting them symmetrical is hard, but you know what? In reality, no one’s eyes are perfectly symmetrical – look in the mirror!

Step Three:

One common mistake made when drawing eyes is to draw the iris as a whole circle. Unless you are surprised or unusually pop-eyed, you won’t be able to see the whole iris. So make your circle go off the eyeball, like this:

Step Four:

Draw a tiny circle towards one side for the highlight, and a bigger, filled-in circle (or dot) for the pupil. Also draw a curved line above and below each eye for the eyelids.

Step Five:

Draw the eyelashes. This can be pretty tricky, and I think I drew too many eyelashes here. From far away, you can only see a few individual spikes of eyelashes, not a whole fringe. (Again, look in the mirror if you need help.)

Step Six:

Heh heh, this would usually be where you color in the irises, but I kind of forgot about it until step ten. XD You can skip to there now if you’d like or just do it later.

Anyway, now we need the nose. Draw two curved lines (kind of like you did with the neck) for the bridge of the nose, and two parentheses-like curved lines below it. How far apart you make them determines how big the nose is, as well as how far down on the face you put them.

Step Seven:

Curve your parentheses around a bit more to look like “C’s” facing each other. Then connect the bottoms with a wide curve or “U.”

Step Eight:

For the top of the lips, make a flattened “M” shape, which I think looks kind of like a flying bird. 🙂

Step Nine:

Connect the two ends of the “M” with a long curve. You can make it almost flat or very arched depending on how full you want the lips to be. Draw a line in the middle that echoes the curves of the top lip line.

Step Ten:

Now I remembered to color in the eyes. XD A simple way to do this is to color a dark line around the outside of the iris and fill it in with lighter pencil. Make sure to darken especially the top of the iris to make it look more realistic.

Step Eleven:

Now for the hair, which I am pretty terrible at. XD Oh well, you can tell it’s hair at least.

Using the face shape sketch you did at the very beginning, curve the hair around the head like so. (I decided to make the head a little shorter than I had originally sketched.) For this hairstyle, I kind of drew two elongated teardrop or comma shapes that meet at the middle line of the face grid.

Also now is the time to define the face shape at the jaw and chin. You kind of just have to play around with this part and experiment. A more round, curved jawline will look like a younger face, and a sharper, more angular jawline will look older or more masculine.

Step Twelve:

Start shading the hair. WAIT, DON’T PANIC BECAUSE I SAID SHADING. This is very simple. Draw darker, closer together lines beside the neck and at the top of the head, and lighter, farther apart lines for the rest of the hair. Don’t draw many lines at all at the top sides of the head, which will make the hair look more shiny and highlighted. Leave a little gap where the two sides of the hair meet for a part. Or just look at the picture and figure it out for yourself. XD

Step Thirteen:

Finish shading the hair. Also *facepalm* I almost forgot the eyebrows. XD Oh well, you can add those sooner or later, it doesn’t really matter. But you should add them or the face will look kind of weird and blank. Eyebrows are simple: just draw a bunch or really short, slightly curved lines. Or you can draw just a single curved line for an even simpler, less realistic version.

Lastly, erase any grid lines and smudges, add shading around the face and under the neck if you want to (you don’t have to), and you’re done! Ta-da!

To tell the truth, this isn’t my best portrait. The face is too round, the eyes are too big… but that’s alright. This is what you have to do – if it doesn’t turn out good the first time, do it a second… and a third, and a fourth. 🙂

Now since you know how to put everything together, here are some ways to change up the facial features. It’s so fun to try different combinations!

Here’s another Art Lab post I did on how to draw eyes: Episode 23.

Have fun mixing and matching! Also before you go, I wanted to show you a colored pencil face drawing I did off of different pictures. You can tell I do a lot better when I look off of something. XD

Which little cutie is your favorite?

girls drawing (1024x377).jpg

Well, I hope you found this tutorial helpful! Would you like me to do another face tutorial, like maybe how to do colored pencil portraits or profile portraits or an easier or harder version? What do you want to learn how to draw? Maybe I can do the next Art Lab from one of your suggestions!

Thanks for reading, dears, and have fun drawing!

***Allison***