Saturday, June 26, 2010

Data Moleskine and Milano

Here is the third moleskine journal that I completed. I'm on a real STNG kick with my gentleman lately so it's no surprise that this next journal would feature one of my favourite characters.


Once again it doesn't really look too much like data but you get the general impression :)

I should also mention that I bought an accordion recently and have been taking lessons! I'm only on my second lesson so I feel bad for my neighbours who have to endure my constant practising but hopefully they will here some improvement! I love my little instrument but i don't think it will be too long before i have to do an upgrade.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Bad Celebrity Impersonators

So I have been working this week on a small project. After being inspired by some beautiful paintings by one of my favourite artists on Deviant Art, Lily-Fox. Hers of course are a million times more wonderful than anything i have been able to do yet but it was fun to try.




This journal is supposed to be of bettie page, whom I love. I'm making it for a sister of mine who actually looks a lot like bettie page herself! Lucky! Anyway as you can see it doesn't really look like either of them XD unfortunately. I think if I had just been trying to do a picture of a girl from the 50's then i could be pretty happy with it but i kind of missed the mark on this one. Still, it's better than the plain old cover right?


I'm probably going to finish this with a light varnish but i want to try it out on something else first so that it doesn't get ruined.

The next one is supposed to be mr. Presley himself and once again I find that it looks more like a bad celebrity impersonator than the King himself. Actually at first it was looking like my Elvis was starting to look like *shudders* someone out of a twilight movie. I restrained myself from burning it and decided to just try my best to fill the rest with enough references that people would know who he was. I gotta say I love that red acrylic ink. It's magic. I love that true red colour. It's just so applealing to my eyes.


I have one left to finish and i'll post it when i'm finished.



**The small journals that I have used are by Moleskine and have cardboard covers. The come in packs of 3 which is perfect for what I have in mind. They are 3.5 X 5.5. I used a mix of pigma waterproof markers for the black outline. The white area is Acryla Gouache and it's the one of the first times I have used it. It's not as opaque as I would have liked and I had to use a lot of it to get good coverage but i love how mat and chalky it looks. I used FW acrylic inks for the black, red and blue bits. I'm not usually an acrylics person but I LOVE the inks. I love how they flow and the coverage is awesome. One thing that I wish I had known before using them on the cardboard cover is that they tend to bleed out a bit. I prefer a crisp edge. It's hard to see but there is gold acrylic in this as well on the stars, crown and accents. It's a crappy old craft acrylic heavy body paint that's been kicking around my art drawer forever and still manages to come out every now and then. I might consider doing gold leaf in the future. Ooh and some of the shading-there isn't much as it didn't work too well-was done with water soluble graphite.**