Tag Archives: drawing

final kaleidoscope micron pen and marker drawing

Drawing Time is Scarce {when the weather is gorgeous}

kaleidoscope drawing photo progression gridThis week the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. We get a lot of false starts to summer here in Chicago, but I think we’ve finally kicked it into window opening, backyard barbequeing, fresh caprese salad eating, flip flop rocking, neighborhood strolling, doing-anything-in-the-wold-but-sitting-in-front-of-the-computer-summery-wonderfullness. Is wonderfullness even a word? Now it is. Anyway, I apologize for the quiet around here, but other than my continuing job hunt and the new patio set we bought at Target (it is pretty sweet though) there really wasn’t too much to report.

In the midst of all the aforementioned stuff and dealing with a couple of kids as hyped up on the beautiful weather as I am, I did manage to complete a small drawing. It’s nothing spectacularly exciting, but it’s still nice. I kind of regret the color scheme I chose though. I grabbed the first caddy of markers I could find, because my garage is a mess right now and it was one of the only art supply containers I could get to without scaling a five foot stack of boxes and chairs. (If you knew how klutzy and accident prone I am you’d be nodding in agreement that it was probably a good decision). That particular art caddy did not have a very good color selection. Oh well, whatcha gonna do, right? If you follow me on Instagram you probably have already seen most of these photos documenting the progression of my drawing, but if not, check them out below. I kind of wish I’d used the same filter on all of them for better comparison, but alas, I did not.

Speaking of Instagram, I’m becoming a little obsessed with it. I’m trying to show some restraint, and remind myself that the world probably isn’t all that interesting in what I’m eating for lunch every day. Still, I’m having a blast with it, and I love checking out what other artists are up to.

Are you addicted too? Want to be friends? Catch up with me on Instagram at megandowntherabbithole.

kaleidoscope sketch in pencil

black and white kaleidoscope drawing and cup of micron pens

black and white kaleidoscope micron pen drawing process

black and white kaleidoscope micron pen drawing process photo

black and white micron pen kaleidoscope drawing in process

black and white kaleidoscope drawing in micron pen

black and white kaleidoscope micron pen drawing with wine glass

black white micron pen kaleidoscope drawing

final kaleidoscope micron pen and marker drawing

Weekly Update {and some drawing progress}

detail photo of kaleidoscope marker drawing

Yikes…just realized that I haven’t posted anything in a week. Bad, bad, bad! Life has been pretty busy, but in a good way. My daughter was on spring break from school, so there was a lot of running around with the kids, which translates to NOT a lot of time to spend in front of the computer.

Tattoo update! I got some more work done last Monday and now it’s about 80-85% done. Unless we come up with some more cool stuff to add, which is always possible. We have to finish coloring some of the background and finish the sky area (all over my shoulder which was kind of painful and I’m not really looking forward to) then it’s done! You can see it in the picture below. Also…do you know how tricky it is to take a picture of your own arm with a cell phone? Of the approximately twenty I took, this is the only one I’m ever moderately happy with.

my almost finished tattoo

Not the best photos ever...but YOU try taking a good picture of your own arm!

We’re going to make great old people someday. Me and the BF spent the other night smoking cigars, drinking dirty martinis, and playing Bacci ball with some friends (which apparently I’m pretty good at). And you know what? It was awesome.

Newly obsessed with…Game of Thrones. Anyone else loving this show? I needed something to fill the void of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story. It’s very unusual for me to get SUPER excited about a show, but this one’s got me hooked. My BF made me watch the last episode of season 1 and the first episode of season 2 a few weeks ago and I loved it, which meant I had to start watching the entire first season on OnDemand to get a grasp on who all the characters were in relation to each other. And I felt like I was cheating because I already knew how the season ended. Anyway…yeah. Game of Thrones. Also, we decided that you could make a drinking game out of it. Every time someone gets beheaded…take a drink.

Instagram for Android is finally here, which I downloaded the day it came out (along with a billion other people). I’m the first to admit that I had quite intense Instagram envy of all you iphone users, and Android phone didn’t have anything even remotely as cool. If you want to follow me, my user name is megandowntherabbithole.

New site coming soon! Yup…I started working on a site redesign for megandowntherabbithole. I’m hoping to have it up by the end of this month if all goes well.

Amidst all this other madness, I did manage to squeeze in some more coloring on my drawing. It’s getting there! I actually had to make a trip to the art supply store to pick up some markers for the background work, but now that I’ve done that, I think it’s in the home stretch!

kaleidoscope marker drawing

detail photo of kaleidoscope marker drawing

detail shot of kaleidoscope marker drawing

How are things in your world?

Currently Working On {kaleidoscope art with Micron pens…my favorite!}

cup of micron pens and art suppliesOhhhh….Micron pens. How I love thee.

Seriously, I wish the makers of Micron pens would sponsor my artistic endeavors and just start sending me a box of microns every few weeks. I sure use enough of them. I have at least two of every size, along with the color ones that I just HAD to buy but never really found a good use for. I’m not sure I NEED every single size….I mean, is there REALLY that big of a difference between a .20mm and a .25mm nib? Wait – who am I kidding, of course there is! To this day, I still get excited when I go over to my parents house on Christmas and receive my stocking chock full of Micron pens and black Prismacolor markers. Does anyone else get super excited over things like that? No? Just me? Oh well….

Anyways, I found a partially started then abandoned drawing in the garage a few weeks ago when I was looking for materials for another project, and then THAT project got put on the back burner so I could revive THIS one. Fickle, I know. When I found the paper I just had the basic skeleton of the shapes sketched out in pencil, so I started going to town with my beloved Micron pens and filling in the details. I’ve probably put three or fours hours of work into it at this point. Don’t you love it when you start a new project and all you want to do is work on it ALL the time? Before I had kids I used to sit and work for ten, twelve hours at a time and get the whole thing finished in a few days. That can’t really happen any more but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far.

detail of kaleidoscope art done with micron pen

detail of kaleidoscope art done with micron pen

work in progress of kaleidoscope art in micron pen

 

rainbow sherbert

sherbert colored geometric kaleidoscope like drawingLast week I started and finished this picture. Wow. It’s like a dish of rainbow sherbet threw up all over the paper. I think this is the first time I did the outlining in a color other than black. The entire thing came out much brighter than I was expecting it to. I guess you don’t always end up with the picture you planned on.

bloom {tree drawing, take two}

tree drawing with geometric patterned leavesThis is actually take TWO of this drawing. Why? Because I’m a dumbass who didn’t learn my lesson in design school.

What lesson?

COMMAND + S!!!! (That’s Control + S for all you PC-types) Constantly! SAVE YOUR WORK!

So what do I do? I get all wrapped up in my work, never save, and then Illustrator locks up on me. No spinning rainbow pinwheel…just STUCK. Everything froze up and no matter what I clicked on nothing reacted. I tried closing all of my other programs (I have a bad habit of leaving roughly forty windows open at any given time), I tried walking away from the computer and returning twenty minutes later, but no luck. I had to force quit.

The funny things is, the second attempt always comes together MUCH faster. So much of the time spent on a drawing is the thinking, planning, composing, and rearranging, and once you already know what looks good and simply have to re-create it, it doesn’t take nearly as much time. I managed to put this one together in the twenty minutes I was waiting for the tuna casserole to come out of the oven.

I didn’t even want tuna casserole, if you want to know the truth. I wanted quesadillas. But I don’t have tortillas and that would have meant a trip to the grocery store, and that would mean changing out of pj pants and putting on shoes and going out into the cold….not happening.

I know…such a bum. But that’s what weekends are for.

small victories are no less victorious

So, you know how I’ve been constantly complaining that I NEVER have any time? (Yes, you’re probably saying. CONSTANTLY. Please just shut up about it already.)

I actually had a little of it last night (makes it sound like some kind of crazy drug, doesn’t it?). It was awesome.  Kid #1 fell asleep. Then kid #2 fell asleep. (Side note: I paid for this dearly. Kid #2 eventually woke up around 12:30am wouldn’t go back to sleep until 2:30 am, so I got less than 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up for work. But it was worth it). My boyfriend was out playing hockey. The house was perfectly quiet.

So what did I do? I gathered up my marker pad, micron pens, protractor, compass, ruler, poured myself a Captain n’ Coke, parked myself in front of the TV, turned on Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and had about two and a half solid hours of drawing time. (Side note #2: I’m a huge nerd about this show. And also The Universe on the History channel. I can barely do math in my head, but shows about astronomy and theoretical physics fascinate me. Weird, right?)

So yes…here is the beginning of something new. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out yet, but maybe I’ll keep posting as it progresses. I tried to do the same thing with photographing the beginnings of a few paintings, but as I said before, painting in messy and requires LOTS of time, so those projects haven’t progressed too far yet.

See? Below? Documented PROOF!