CRE8365 day 27 - Cardinal rule

I have had a lot of fun playing with bird images, drawing and painting them, I have worked hard to try to get them looking real, today I wanted to play, one of the way we as humans learn is to emulate what another does, notice I didn't say "copy", but emulate, just ask any toddler and they will tell you :)

I was scrolling through Pinterest and one of the images jumped out at me, this artist (an artist duo) created some paintings/illustrations that are realistic with a big dash of surrealism tossed in for fun. The image I saw was a zebra finch with an almost ludicrously large head, eyes, and beak.

I had an image of a cardinal bird that I had been wanting to paint, so I took this artists' style and applied it to the cardinal and this is what came out. No one would mistake my rendering for something these artists may have done, but it certainly stretched my horizons.

My image was created using Sketch Guru and finished in Photoshop.

You can see the image that inspired me to take this journey and see more from this pair of artists here:

http://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/XueWawa/view

http://cre8365.com/

CRE8365 day 26 - Digital Koi

My submission for the day is a Koi fish done in Sketch Guru, then I popped it into Photoshop to adjust the color saturation and contrast. I have noticed that the work I do on my tablet looks richly colored, but once I move it to my laptop, it seems to lose color and contrast, I'm not sure which one is giving me a true representation...

A few years back I drew a koi in a pond with lily pads, this was inspired by another artist's painting. I wanted to do something somewhat serious in a less than serious medium, Crayola Crayons, what is less serious than crayons?

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CRE8365 day 25 - Closeup detail of Wandering Jew blossom

I am pretty happy with this one, it's a drawing/painting of a blossom from the Wandering Jew plant in our window. I created this using Sketch Guru and finished it in Photoshop.

This took me 3-4 hours though it didn't seem like it was that long. I feel like I'm getting a handle on Sketch Guru, it's a fairly simple app, but it has lots of potential. I pretty much only use 2 of the brushes available in the app, the line and spray. The only thing I wish that program had was a way to blend or blur, but so far I've been able to work around that limitation.

http://cre8365.com

CRE8365 day 20 - SIlly Penguin

On day 20, the prompt was "penguin", well I figured I could do a penguin, a silly penguin in fact, so that's what I did. I created this in Sketch Guru.

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CRE8365 Day 11 - What do you see?

OK, today's creation will be best understood by those who have dogs and/or small children AND glass doors or windows.... I have had both, but now, I just have dogs, though it is only one of them who does this. I'll stop being cryptic soon, and for those who might say "ewwww", I say that I am seeing the the creative side of everything, and yes, I do clean my windows, on occasion.... :)

I'm sure you have looked at clouds at some point in your life and saw faces, shapes, animals, my hyperactive imagination sees those things in nearly everything I look at, I was laying down after church today, trying to take a nap, the sun was shining through the bedroom window, I began to see faces and shapes in the dog nose smears on the window (OK, go ahead and say it.... ewwww). Especially on the left side of the smear, a profile began to take shape, my sleepiness vanished and I had to try to capture that image.

It's surprisingly hard to capture a smudge on glass with a camera, on purpose, I'm more often trying to hide the dirt and smudges when I'm snapping pix around the sky castle, I finally got in the right spot where I could see the smudges and more importantly, the camera was able to capture it.

I took the image and sketched this design using Sketch Guru.

Here is the original image, you can see the "face" on the left side of the dog nose smear, you might have to click on it, make it bigger to really see it.

So, what do you see?
Here is a closeup of the image above

There is a book by Carla Sonheim called Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals that teaches how to "see" faces and animals (mostly animals) in the random cracks of life, I have this book, it's been a major inspiration for me. You can see another image I created with this technique here (link).

Come over and check us out!

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CRE8365 Day 10 - Wandering Jew digital sketch

OK, here it is folks, today's theme/prompt is "houseplant", I don't normally have houseplants, at the very least, anything I expend energy and time growing needs to do something besides just be a pretty face, I prefer herbs for cooking and medicinal, it has to "earn" it's place in my life :)

This is a bit of an exception, though in all honesty, I am not expending anything on it, this is PB's plant, a Wandering Jew, we had it planted outside the house where we used to live, this particular plant came from PB's mom, from her garden. We usually grow this outside, it dies back in the winter and comes back from the roots, this winter PB decided to bring it in and see how it did.

Well, it did very well, in spite of the fact that the sky castle is cold, this plant is thriving, today I noticed a bloom on it, it actually flowered! Now THAT'S a happy plant.

I snapped a few pix of this plant in the window, my thoughts were to use the photos as my daily upload, then I decided to go ahead and sketch out the plant. This plant is very pretty, it's mostly purple with some green here and there, the blooms/flowers are a delicate pink.

Here is my daily creation, made with Sketch Guru.

Here are some photos of the actual plant.

http://cre8365.com/

CRE8365 day 9 - Girl in glasses digital sketch

Today's theme is Rose tinted spectacles, so using Sketch Guru (finished it in Photoshop), I created this pink bespectacled girl in a slightly whimsical style. I see this style done on YouTube quite a bit and it looks fun.

Come on over to http://cre8365.com and join in the fun, I have been having all sorts of fun, not only doing my own thing, but seeing what everyone else posts each day, I am making some great friends as well.

CRE8365 day 8 - Acorn Woodpecker in Derwent Inktense

I slept in today, it was so nice to wake up then turn back over and go back to sleep, that's when I have the most interesting dreams, some of them are bookworthy :)

The dogs began to go nuts which told me someone was here so I got up, sure enough one of our friends had come by, we missed him on Christmas so he didn't get one of my Christmas cards, I wanted him to have one so I asked him to stay a little longer while I whipped out another card. I enjoyed drawing and painting this while he watched and chatted with PB.

As an artist, on occasion, someone will ask me "YOU did this?" or they might say "You DID this?" or "You did THIS?", and I say "Yes", well this time the recipient of the card watched it being created, so there was no doubt as to WHO did it :)

This went along with the theme for Christmas this year, well last year technically.... this is an acorn woodpecker.

 

I am using this as my daily CRE8365 picture.

I also created this image, it goes along with today's theme, "perspective".

http://cre8365.com/

CRE8365 day 7 - Old Rock digital sketch

Today's motivation on CRE8 is "old rock", I immediately thought of an old rock (stone), with a craggy man's face... so that's what I drew. I used a program called Sketch Guru, it's free and has some pretty good pencils, I'm still not terribly comfortable with digital drawing, but this program makes it pretty easy. This is an Android app, there is one by the same name for Apple BUT alas, it's not the same program.

If you haven't already been to CRE8365, then click the link and head on over to check it out, this site is fantastic for motivating me to create something each and everyday.