Art Lab, Episode 11: Colorful Cacti

August 19, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

(I pretty much just copied and pasted this from the Art Lab blog. 😉 )

Hello, dear readers! I’m back with Episode 11 of Art Lab. Today I’m going to show you how to concoct some colorful cacti. (That was fun to write.)

This is the gorgeous inspiration I found:

{via}

I’m going to use a canvas and acrylic paint for the first piece of art.

Begin by painting the background of your picture. I scooped up both white and blue paint on my brush to make a more textured background.

Now you need to populate your desert. Here are some ideas for cactus shapes: (And yes, I am aware that these cacti look rather sickly. Maybe their desert was extra dry this year or something. XD

Paint your cacti the same way as the background – blending together different colors of wet paint onto the canvas.

And finally, embellish your plants! Add dots, dashes, and beautiful blooms. Ta-daa!

I also made these ATCs:

I had fun painting the flowers with the one on the left. So pretty! The one on the right was inspired by an actual cactus we have that looks kind of like that.

I hope you enjoyed today’s prompt. If you were inspired to make art from this post, we’d love to see it! Get the details on how to send in art on our Art Gallery page.

***Allison***

BIBPC + Updates

August 11, 2016August 26, 2016 | Allison

Hey, guys! This post shall have various and random things in it. 😛

BIBPC

I’m participating in Megan’s photo contest, BIBPC, so here are my entries for the first and second category. (Since I’m her sister I got away with showing her the first one without posting it – so it’s late but it doesn’t matter. 😉 )

#1: Fuzzy

Story behind the photo: We went to look at a friend’s Saint Bernard puppies (there were 11!) and I took a gazillion photos of cuteness itself. This picture is a sneak peek of a future post. After playing with the puppies for a while, they were thoroughly exhausted and flopped down to sleep. HE IS ADORABLE, OKAY!

#2. Dew drops

Story behind the photo: I got this picture when we were on vacation. It was just after a rain, the lighting was perfect, and the picture turned out really well! The daisy looks happy, don’t you think?

Art Lab

Art Lab is back, new and improved! We added some new artists to our team, which is now composed of Hayley, me, Megan, Clara, and Anika! We will take turns posting on our personal blogs, and then copy our post to the Art Lab blog (which we’re redesigning). We’re also going to have a gallery page where you can send in pictures of your art inspired by Art Lab!

Swap Shop

Speaking of art, Hayley is doing a really neat art contest – with prizes! Check out her post for details. And if you like my entries, I’d love if you’d vote for them! 😀

Blog Photos

I know that some of the photos on my blog haven’t been showing up. You know why? I uploaded them from Google Drive, per Clara’s amazing free space tutorial, but unfortunately Google changed Google Drive recently which means that the photos won’t work! BAD GOOGLE! Thankfully I can still have free space by creating another random blog and copying and pasting my pictures from there. Phew!

See ya’ later!

***Allison***

Art Lab, Episode 8: Scribble Art-Starters

June 11, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, hello! 😀 Today I have a fun idea-generator drawing technique to show you. If you don’t know what to draw, this might help!

Technique: Scribble Art-Starters

Begin by closing your eyes and drawing a random squiggly pattern on your paper or ATC. Open your eyes and connect both ends of the line if they’re not already connected. You should have a very strange looking blob on your paper. Here’s my scribble:

Next you have to use your imagination to turn your random squiggle into a picture. (Hint: the simpler the squiggle, the easier the drawing. But you may want to do a complicated squiggle for a challenge, right?) Turn it upside down or look at it from a different angle if you’re stuck. Does it look like a bird? A flower? A person? What do you think my scribble looks like?

I thought mine looked like a fish, so I turned my squiggle into an underwater scene:

Do you see how it works? Here are a few more scribble doodles for inspiration:

Heh heh, it’s kind of addicting. 😀

So there you go – a really easy and fun way to bust “artist’s block” if that is even a thing. XD

Have you ever done this? Do you think you’ll try it?

***Allison***

P. S. I first posted about squiggle drawings in this post. (Wow, that was almost 2 years ago!)

Art Lab, Episode #6: White on Black

May 27, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

Welcome back, my friends! I’ve been having lots of fun with white gel pens and black paper. Do you want to see? Okey-dokey. 😀 But first, here’s the official prompt:

Technique: White gel pen on black paper

Here are four ATCs I made using this technique. (Sorry about the smudges. 😦 That’s one thing you have to be careful of when using gel pens.)

art lab (1) (800x600) — “Glow-in-the-Dark Fish” (It doesn’t really glow in the dark. 😛 )

Isn’t that technique neat? It works especially well with sharp, straight lines. Which is your favorite ATC? Mine is probably the “Moonlit Night” one.

Ta-ta!

***Allison***

Art Lab, Episode #6: Dandelion Days

May 13, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

Wow, it’s already the sixth episode of Art Lab! Hayley and I have been writing a weekly series called The Art Lab to shower you with fun and pretty art ideas and to inspire you to create your own amazing art! Today I made a sunny, breezy, dandelion envelope.

I used these two pieces of art as inspiration. Aren’t they so pretty? Unfortunately, the links to the original websites didn’t work (or in the case of the last one, it was an Etsy piece that had already been sold.) 😦 Argh! It’s so annoying when that happens. Anyway…

For my envelope I first drew the dandelion in pencil, then watercolored around it. I blended a few different shades and colors of paint, then splattered some blue and purple paint on for fun. (I covered up the dandelion with a piece of paper so it didn’t get splattered.) Then I traced over the penciled in dandelion and flyaway seeds with Sharpie. I also added a few splatters and “wish” on the envelope flap in front. Ta-daa! 😀

006 (1024x769) — It got a little bit wrinkled. Oops! I almost wrote “I got a little bit wrinkled.” XD

This is a great spring or summer envelope you can make to pretty up your next handwritten letter – or you can make this same art on a canvas, ATC, etc.

Have fun and do art! 😀

***Allison***

Art Lab, Episode #4: Rainbow Puzzles

April 29, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

*Announcer’s voice* Hello, and welcome to the fourth episode of Art Lab! XD

If you recall (and even if you don’t), Hayley and I are doing a collaborative series called The Art Lab wherein we hope to inspire you to make fun and beautiful art. 😉 Click on Hayley’s name up there to visit her blog and see her beautiful entries and other lovely posts!

Recently I’ve been having fun arranging simple rainbow patterns in interesting ways. This is pretty much no-fail art. As long as you can wield a marker and a pair of scissors without dying yourself blue or hacking off a finger, you’re in good shape. XD

Word Prompt: Rainbow

Rainbow is kind of boring, and unoriginal, right? Wrong! Here is how to spruce up a plain rainbow drawing (or any drawing, really):

Start by covering your paper in rainbow stripes, splotches, swirls, or pretty much any pattern you can think of. Here is a pattern I drew: (Note: Your pattern can be super simple – plain rainbow stripes work wonderfully.)

004 (1280x960) (2) — The colors were brighter in real life. 😦 Bad camera! (Or maybe just bad photographer. XD)

Now, cut it up! (Although if you really like your art so far, you should save it and make another piece to cut up.) You may cut it up into nice even strips, but it’s much more fun to go wild. Cut it up into big pieces and small pieces, jagged and smooth, circles and stripes. Now place your “puzzle pieces” on a paper, but leave spaces between each of them. This is what makes it neat. The white space distorts your picture while still letting the pretty design show through. Like so…

For this one I cut a circle from the above design, then hacked it to pieces and re-glued it onto an ATC with spaces between each of the jigsaw pieces. The circle spread into a sort of Easter-eggish shape.

This one started as a simple rainbow-striped square. You can see how all of the pieces fit back together.

The background of the next one came from a marker-testing swatch. 😀 It makes things more interesting if you cut out shapes, like I did with the circle here. Just make sure that the inner circle is small enough to be glued on with space to spare.

Oh, and I almost forgot: rainbow stripes make bright and fun envelope art too, especially if you have several different shades of each color:

So there you are! A simple way to make beautiful art. Now break out those rainbow markers, colored pencils, or watercolors, and get drawing!

***Allison***

Art Lab, Episode #2: Dewdrops

April 15, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

I’m back with another episode of ArtLab!

If you recall, Hayley and I just recently started a collab series called Art Lab, where we post art inspiration and our art. (Read our first post here.) It’s my turn to post today, so I present… Episode 2: Dewdrops!

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I have both a word prompt and a photo prompt for today’s inspiration. Bonus point! XD

Prompts:

The word prompt is *drum roll please* dewdrops! I love dewdrops!

The photo prompt is a picture I took recently of grass bedecked with dew drops. Ahh…. 😀 (See more dew pictures in this post.)

Art:

This card I made looks sort of like the photo prompt, only I didn’t see the words “Happy Birthday” floating in the grass photo. XD

Here are a few tips for making the card:

Hang a dewdrop from any curved part of a letter, and if you really want to sprinkled them on, add some to a horizontal line as well (like on the cross of the “H”).
Once you’ve colored the grass with different green colored pencils, you may need to trace over some of the grass blades again with a pencil to sharpen their outlines.
To make the grass in the front look closer to you, make the dewdrops sharper and darker, and make the ones hanging from the back grass more faded.

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I also drew this snail-on-a-leaf ATC which uses the word prompt.

A few tips for drawing this:

I drew this using different “levels” of pencils. I used a 5B pencil for some of the darker parts, like the shading of the dewdrops and the leaf stem. The higher up you go in B pencils, the softer and darker they will draw, and the higher up you go in H pencils, the harder and lighter they will draw. (For instance, a 6B pencil has a really soft lead that draws a fuzzy, dark line. A 9H pencil has a really hard lead that draws a sharp, faint line. Normal pencils are usually somewhere in the middle of the two.)
Play around with the design inside of the snail’s shell.
You don’t have to do this in pencil! Try using markers, watercolors, or colored pencils.

Thanks for joining me! I hope you were inspired to go make some art!

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***Allison***

Introducing… The Art Lab!

April 11, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

Guess what, guys? Hayley and I are starting an art collab series! It’s called The Art Lab, and we’ll post some new art inspiration every week along with some art we made (usually ATCs or envelopes). The inspiration will be from either art (like today), a photo, or a word. Usually we’ll take turns posting, but today we’re doing an introductory post together. We hope our posts will inspire you to artistic adventures of your own!

*Update: We have created an official Art Lab blog where we archive all of the Art Lab posts.*

This is the lovely inspiration Hayley picked for us:

{via}

I made this ATC called “Hedgie’s Birthday” using the above inspiration. (If you don’t know what ATCs are, go here.) Isn’t the lil’ guy so cute? 😀 I love hedgehogs. ♥ I was inspired by the pretty banner and fun confetti to make a party-themed card. I made this ATC using watercolor crayons, water, and a black pen.