Saturday, April 5, 2014

March Art Explosion

As the title of this post implies, March turned out to be a surprisingly creative month.  Most months, I struggle to finish one or two pieces.  During March, I did a teensy bit more...

At home, I finished up my first vector piece for my Adobe Illustrator class.


At work, I started utilizing my lunch break for creative "me" time.  I'm fortunate to have Photoshop on my office computer, which is my favorite digital art program.  I plug in my tablet, take a bite of sandwich, start doodling...and before I know it, the hour is up and I've still only had one bite of sandwich!  While eating has ironically moved to the back-burner during lunch time, I'm very much enjoying my creative break.

The only catch is that I can't work on paintings that are too big or complex, otherwise my computer crashes.  (And then I just want to throw my sandwich.)  That means my usual 300+ layer illustrations are out of the question.  So instead, I've been trying my hand at bite-size pieces...

...like landscape speedpaints!



I've never tried speedpainting before, but I thought it would be both fun and good for practice.  They each take 1-3 hours over a few lunches.  That may not seem fast to most people, but it's speedy to me!  (And those intimidating landscapes are getting a little less scary each time.  Hooray!)

I've also started a new animal sketch series.  The goal is simply to draw lots of animals in a fun, children's illustration style.  I've had a great time making these little illustrations to practice simple backgrounds, experiment with expressions, and draw new animals.

So far, I've got a snooty tiger:


A sneaky gator:


And a curious red panda:


What critter will be next?  Who knows!  But I will definitely be adding new animals to this series!

So while I'm not doing much eating, I am enjoying my extra art time.  I hope I'll have just as many new pieces to share with you at the end of April.  :)

(Note: I followed some wonderful tutorials on landscape painting techniques and making custom brushes on deviantArt.  You can find links to them on my deviantArt page.)

No comments:

Post a Comment