Today, I'm gonna be a bwitch...

... and tomorrow, I don't know yet. Because sometimes being a princess just gets too boring.


Yet another Drawing Lab exercise: A portrait of my Mum "Modigliani-style" (@Satia: be prepared! ;D). I think it actually really looks a bit like her. Don't tell her I said that.


This is a quick blind contour of my parents sitting outside on the terrace. Mum usually tries not to show it too much, but I think she's often a bit offended by these...


Aaand another one: A dog. Obviously.

Acrylic waste and memories

Saving some leftover globs of acrylics - from palette into sketchbook (plus err... random creepy cyborg lady?).


Also, I found this old scribble in one of my (hundredgazillion) old sketchbooks. Easy to date - I supervised the LabVIEW lab in January 2010 (everyday the same tutorial just with another group of students... after a while that makes you dream in "G"). ;)

3 out of 30 cats

I recently got the book Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists by Carla Sonheim, and I must say I love it so far. Sometimes I get the urge to draw something but I don't know what, or everything I can think of seems stupid and/or meaningless, or the infinite possibilities just paralyze me. The funny little assignments in this book are the perfect antidotes for feeling stuck or just plain insufficient.
These are from exercise #1: Draw 30 cats and pick some to draw in a different medium.

Mantras, toothpaste and a hammock victim

And there's the next four sketches, also done at the Tureya ashram near Kodai, Tamil Nadu, where I spent my first fabulous three weeks.
The first two sketches are actually cheat sheets for the mantras we were singing for puja every morning and evening...



Once a week we took a taxi to Kodai to buy stuff and indulge in diabetes provoking coffee shakes:


Taking sketching advantage of innocent sleeping people:

Bye-bye India

Hello my beloved readers! After such a long time, you might be as surprised as my granny to hear that I haven't been killed by a tiger (or - statistically more likely - by that nasty plague I caught at the end of my travels). Indeed, I've been looking for tigers (not for mean stomach bacteria though). Although, unfortunatly but not surprisingly, I couldn't find any (although the bacteria found me).
Anyways, I'm back and, even though I didn't meet my ambitious goal of filling my whole book, I've got some sketches for you as souvenirs. All of them (but two, which have an acrylics background done with leftover paint before my departure) are ink sketches done with a brush pen with a splash of watercolor. Perfect travel equipment in terms of minimum weight and volume, but as much as I love watercolor, by now I can't wait to get my hands dirty with acrylics or doodle around with coloured pencils again. I get bored rather soon if I have to limit myself to only one medium for too long.
Alright, enough blah, here are the first four (as usual, bigger version after the jump):

Sketchbook Project - it will be done, I swear!

Of course, I could have just sent it in with a few empty pages, but what are all-nighters for if not for a good sketchy cause?

Cover:

"First" page:
(people can - and hopefully will - insert there own "screens" into the transparent pocket!)

Back:

And the cover as a whole:

If you want more detail, just click the images and you'll be beamed to my flickr (there's a dedicated set for my Sketchbook Project, in case you haven't noticed!).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go to bed... wait, no. Work. Knew there was something else. Dang.

Sketchbook Project - relaxingly stupid

These are very sketchy, indeed (no pun intended). But it's called The Sketchbook Project for a reason, isn't it?

Sometimes I must stop myself from working on a picture. Sometimes because the paper starts to dissolve.

((clicky-beam yourself to flickr to actually be able to read this!))

We have a saying that the first day of the new year will set the theme for the rest of it. If that's true, I'll spend 2011 drawing comics and eating loads of chocolate. Not too bad, actually. (Although, my boss/supervisor Mr G won't be impressed.)

Purple

I hardly ever do acrylics and there's a reason for it. I just can't handle them without ending up frustrated with the results (so, if you have any book recommendations or anything like that, I'd be most grateful). Anyway, I'm using up these canvases now. They've been lying around wasting precious space in my room for about two years and I'm glad about every single piece that doesn't have to move with me when I leave this place.


My sister said it looks like a purple pussy explosion. I kind of like that interpretation.

Sketchbook Project - Goddesses

A goddess of (everyday) life...


... and a goddess of hunt.

((Did I mention how much I love my little Diana?))

It isn't very obvious in the scan but the greenish-yellow part is actually very thick fluorescent acrylic paint (those shadows aren't painted but result from the surface structure - I didn't apply that paint particularly sparingly).
I have a thing for interesting surfaces and it always costs me tremendous amounts of self-control not to touch every single plastical looking or pastosely painted piece of an exhibition. I do hope people will enjoy feeling and touching my sketchbook when it goes on tour. May it be loved (or hated) and explored and rubbed and fumbled with to death (and then, may people take the remainings as souvenirs)!

Frustration times two

Another mini watercolor painting (they are all done in those miniature Moleskine watercolor books):


I'm very unhappy with this one. Especially with her lips. I fiddled around so much with them that the paper started to disintegrate. That was when I realized: it's time to move on. Just call it a pink alien that amateurishly tries to emulate human form. A pink alien it is and it's perfect. ;) (I do like the background a lot, though!)

Another source of constant frustration is this:


It's an acrylic painting I started almost two years ago and last weekend I decided I need to do something with it. But it just won't go the way I want it to. Or rather: I just don't know where to go with it (and I'm pretty sure I had no clue when I started it either, which may be the main problem here). I already thought about totally going over it with white paint and reusing the canvas for something completely different, but for some reason I just can't. I don't know, that would just feel like abandoning a child.
Also, it's so inconsistent. The red-ish part in the left is much "clearer", while the right and upper part (which I recently did) are a lot more orderless and heterogeneous. I can't really decide which way I prefer for this (if I have a choice - maybe it just tells us that my current state of mind is a lot messier compared to two years ago...).
Any suggestions or hints of inspiration? Challenges? Help! ^^

Just in case anybody ever wondered - this is the messy place fancy studio where all my messy artsy stuff is born (aka my bedroom): ((thank God, the floor isn't visible! *g*))


Just to conclude with something positive and bright and totally unmessy (picture taken at my parents' place):