Hi! Today’s project is a little different to what I usually post :P It’s a drawing I made on tuesday or so and that I used to test my Prismacolor colored pencils.

It’s not perfect and I took a few “artistic licences” on the wing, for example :P Next time I’ll probably use more references but for this one I was more focused on expressing the idea I had on my head rather than making a perfect masterpiece.

Base is just smooth white opaline and I blended the colors just using paper stumps (and without any kind of solvent).

I used all the “warm” colors from my pencil case, which are:

• PC916 Canary Yellow
• PC924 Crimson Red
• PC918 Orange
• PC945 Sienna Brown
• PC946 Dark Brown
• PC935 Black

I absolutely LOVE those pencils! I can’t wait to get a few more (a few? I want the whole 120 case! ;D). Also, can you tell me which are your favourite flesh-tone colors? My case didn’t came with any :(

This is actually an old proyect, but since it’s from before I started this blog and I loved how they turned out, (and I don’t have anything better to post, lol) I’m gonna talk about this ATCs (:

ATC stand for “Artist Trading Cards” (or Artistic Trading Cards). They’re small pieces of art, measuring 2,5″x3,5″. I’ve even heard on mini-ATCs, which are 1.75″x2.5″ (for those who really see a challenge in small canvas!). Besides from the size, and that you have to include your contact information on the back of the cards, there are no limitation at what technique to use in them!

I really liked the concept behind ATCs, since they’re are supposed to be only traded, and never for sale (I think the cards made for sale are named ACEO). Besides, the small size allowed me to make quite a few without running out of supplies.

This ATCs are for a swap on the Oriental Stamp Art Y! group (if you like to do your artowrk with an asian flair, this is definetely your group!), my first ATC swap actually (and i read today that the returns have been mailed, so exciting!). The theme was Bamboo/Gingko and by that time I wanted to combine my passion for drawing with rubberstamping, and that’s where this came up.

There’s actually a little history lesson behind this ATC, he he. You’ll see, the girl is supposed to be Kaguya Hime (Princess of the Bamboo), which is the main character of a really old japanese novel. It is the story of an old childless bamboo cutter that found a little baby girl inside a shining stalk of bamboo. He named the girl Kaguya and she grew to be the most beautiful woman in the land, even the Emperor wanted her to be his wife, but the girl refused because she had to go back to where she belong, which was the Land of the Moon (you’ll see…the girl was an E.T, lol). The emperor was really sad, because he was indeed in love with Kaguya, so he refused to drink a pot of elixir of immortality that she had given to him before going away.

That, in a few words. If you would like to read more about it, there’s a better version on Wikipedia.

Now, the “artistic proccess”. I first drawed the girl in a piece of scrap paper and copied her in the five white layers, made of watercolor paper. I painted her with very dilluted watercolors and salt and let it dry.

When it was dry, it was time for the rubberstamping <3 I used a stamp that dear Heather Taylor (OSA ladie) gave me when I just entered the group (: Then I applied yellow and light green ink from my Colorbox Petal Point pad and to give it a watercolor efect i sprayed a little water on the stamp. I tamped randomly on the white part of the layer, so it’d look like a bamboo forest.

I cutted the corners by myself with a craft-knife, to resemble a corner paper punch I have seen on the OSA galleries before. But I wasn’t going to wait for 3 weeks and spend at least $10 in shipping for 5 simple ATCs, lol. I gotta say that by the 3rd I had regreted my decision, it was way more work that I though! :p Then I added some green thread to the corners (which I had seen on OSA too!)

Finally, I adhered the layer to a black heavy cardstock base and added my contact info on the back. Whow, I had a lot to say about this!

Papers: Black heavy cardstock (misc.), watercolor paper
Inks: Canary, Lime (ColorBox Petal Point Pinwheel)
Stamps: Bamboo vertical border (ArtNeko)
Other: Multiliner 0.1 black (COPIC), black ink (winsor & newton), watercolors (w&n), green thread (misc.), water, salt.

Hi everyone. Sorry if I’ve been a little MIA this week, but it was a busy week. Well, onto today’s proyect (:

Since I was 13 or something I started drawing. I never had previously shown any special skills at it, but the simplicity of the japanese animation characters encouraged me to try my luck at it (I first tried drawing Pokemon characters, when it was all the rage in my country, would you imagine?).

In my last years at highschool I thought about being a graphic designer, to specialize in illustration and comics. I had a big advance in a few years and I was pretty confident that I could be better. That never happened because my parents had serious prejudice about the designer’s live and didn’t allow me to study that carreer. I was so sad that, when I entered law school, I stopped drawing all of sudden, and I forgot my dream.

Over the years, Claudio (my fiancé) has encouraged me to go back and re-start drawing. Eventually, last December, I really listened to him and I did. It was like starting from scratch, I had lost any skill at it. But I didn’t let that discourage me. The idea of studying a shorter carrer about illustration & comics (3 years) in a technical institute, after I graduate from Law School, has been wandering my little mind, going stronger from time to time.

One time I couldn’t get anything done as I pictured in my mind. And I talked about it to a friend. I told him that I should forget about studying illustration, because I lack the natural talent needed for it. He said to me that wasn’t right. Lack of talent can be replaced with hard-work, that he had seen it before and he believed in me, because I knew how to learn from my mistakes and adapt pretty quick. I remember his words every now and then that I feel like giving up, and it gives me strength.

Well, I think I went a “little” into the random side. He he, sorry, my bad :) Well, you can notice an obvious japanese influence in all of my drawings. After all, that’s where I come from. But, with the time, I’ve tried to make my style a more “eclectic” one, trying to combine the japanese style with a more realistic one. I think that, so far, I have failed terribly at this :p But I’ll keep trying.

This is a series of “studies” that will help me on learning how to drak a hakama (kind of japanese baggy pants). The sketch I posted here is my favourite and I did it today, but if you want to see the other 2 I did this weekend, click on the picture (that will take you to my Flick account, where they are all uploaded <3).