Ott-Lite TrueColor FlexArm Plus Lamp

According to Glen Epperson's source, Lynn Koolish, nowadays every American quilter owns an Ott-Lite TrueColor Tabletop Lamp. This little lamp, however, is too small for a drawer/painter. He suggested me to get "a drawing table version of the same light," the one shown on the left.

It's expensive, it's ugly, but it works! Colors no longer get distorted and I finally can draw & paint at night!:D

Media: technical pen.

Chateau? Not!

After my ego had been beaten badly by cross-hatching drawing, I decided to cheer myself up with a drawing I saw in this month's Artist's Sketchbook (It turned out to be the very last issue, just when I went to their website trying to subscribe to it). It was a nice drawing plus cute outside-the-line watercolor painting by Mari Le Glatin Keis.

I know next to nothing about watercolor but love it dearly nevertheless. My ultimate goal is to paint the images in my head with watercolor, which I know will take me years if not decades to get there.

But not color within the lines? That got to be easy, right?

WRONG!

I didn't know how to use brushes (always starting with the biggest one for the task), how to mix colors (having plenty on the palette), or how to create the right shades (how much water is enough?). Even though this is not a hard watercolor piece, I still managed to screw it up.

As I learn about watercolor, every painting can only get better than this God awful one. And this is why I place it here, to have it serve as the starting point of my watercolor painting life.

Media: pencil, colored pencil, watercolor.

Cross-hatching Hell 2

Another one from David Sanmiguel's art of drawing.

I fell for its simplicity. I thought maybe cross-hatching wouldn't be that bad on simple landscape. So after my last highly unsatisfing cross-hatching experience, I jumped in another one.

Another hell.

Yes, it requires fewer strokes, but it demands higher proficiency at pencil handling. I should've known. It's much easier to screw up a simple dish than a fancy one, because it provides no place for a chef to hide.

Enough cross-hatching hell!

Media: pencils.

Cross-hatching Hell 1

From David Sanmiguel's art of drawing.

I don't know which style of drawing I like the most, but I definitely know which one I hate the most -- cross-hatching!

I can't think of anything that takes so much work and achieve so little. Drawing is supposed to bring me joy, regardless of my skills. As I finished this one, however, I was full of anger and fatigue.

And what did I do next? Another cross-hatching drawing! I just refused to learn from my own painful experience and expected a miracle!

Media: pencils.

Sketching vs Drawing

If I was surprised by how much better my colored doodles looked on screen, now I'm the opposite. Maybe this is why I'm unable to focus on pencil sketching/drawing first.

But maybe that's just an excuse. My loose line drawing is still in its infancy; it can't be disguised by pretty colors, like what I've done with others.

It's time to build a good pencil drawing/sketching foundation. I plan to work through David Rankin's fast Sketching techniques and David Sanmiguel's art of drawing until I feel more comfortable with loose line drawing. But I'll continue with Jackie Simmonds's book, just because I can only stand so much grey.

Those 4 sketches range from OK to "What is THAT!?" Animal sketching is really not my thing. But since it was the first exercise in David Rankin's book, I had to do it. Copying his example was much easier than looking at the photo and sketching the deer cold. Even though I didn't do a good job with the first deer, at least it looks like a deer.

Media: pencil.

Strawberries, Apple, Onion, & Mushroom

I continued working on the exercises from Jackie Simmonds's You Can Sketch. The drawings look better on screen than in my drawing book. In my sketchbook, I'm only happy with the apple.

I didn't crosshatch the strawberries properly, so I used a colorless blender to create the same effect. Somehow they seem to look OK on screen.

The onion is a sad story, but it's hard to see the faults on screen. The original exercise requires a pastel pencil. Since I don't have that, I used a colored pencil and a colorless blender instead. Just when I was happy with being able to get away with it, I found it very difficult to add the texture on a layer of thick wax. (The colorless blender I have is a basically a wax stick.) I almost gave up, but the nice yellow blend called me back to finish it up. So I did.

I didn't have high hopes for the mushroom, because it was more of a sketch than a drawing. It looks OK, but you can bet that I won't eat a mushroom like this.

Media: colored pencils.

You Can Sketch -- Lesson 1

These doodles came from Jackie Simmonds's You Can Sketch: A Step-By-Step Guide for Absolute Beginners.

Because I have trouble with shadowing, I figure that sketching should be the first thing for me to work on.

I, however, don't have the patience with basic drawing.

So I told myself: OK, you can be sloppy with the boring exercises, but you have to do them. And this is the result. Not too hard to tell which are the boring ones, huh?

Media: pencils, colored pencils, watercolor pencil.

The Girl & Her Pencil Box

I usually draw with technical pens and then color with a combination of media. Here I used pencil instead, and that makes the the drawing softer and even a bit classic.

Media: pencil, watercolor pencils, colored pencils.

New Secrets for Youthful Skin

I did this one for my sister, Kelly, because she's always searching for the latest magical skin products to stay forever young.

The RoC Retinol Correxion creams are freaky: They do seem to work! On the 10th day, I washed my face and noticed the area around my eyes were glowing. Yes, glowing! Normally I only saw it after applying facial lotion or cream.

It's been a month ever since my first try. The glowing area has spreaded to my cheekbones, and pores in those areas have been tighten as well. According to the literature, it'll take 3 months for the whole process to finish.

I'm skeptical about cosmetic products, but this time it seems that they do keep their promises without charging me a fortune. (Those are all available at Longs.) I'm quite surprised!

Media: pencil, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, technical pens.

My Lamp

This lamp has been with me since I arrived in the States. Incredibly solid!

Media: technical pen.

A Leaf

The first time I felt that I was "getting it" with colored pencils. I finally had some clues about color blending and burnishing. A little leaf, but a lot of effort!

David liked it but said that those yellow lines were on the thick side. Next time I'll do a better job to make my drawing closer to what I see, but this leaf is definitely a milestone for me. :)

Media: pencil, colored pencils.

A Book Scenary

This sorry attempt was based on Cathy Johnson's watercolor pencil Magic.

Continued playing with my watercolor pencils. Continued being frustrated with this fuzzy media.

I initially painted it with darker colors, but after a splash of water, all of them became much weaker. I had to keep on adding more shades of colors, but it was still too light.

In the end, I grabbed my colored pencils and placed layer upon layer of colors on top of the watercolors. Still not quite there, but at least it was not so 2-dimensional.

Even though watercolor pencils give me the most grief, they are the media that I'm most obsessed with. Am I twisted?

Media: watercolor pencils, colored pencils, technical pen.

A Flower from Our Garden

It was a beautiful day. I walked around our garden trying to find a good target to draw. Well, guess what? I was overwhelmed by the amount of information out there and couldn't find anything manageable to put on paper.

Then I remembered what Cathy Johnson said in The Sierra Club Guide To Sketching In Nature. I made a small paper frame and looked at our garden through the frame. Voilà, I found this little flower that was cute and interesting.

Still had trouble with watercolor pencils. All colors got washed out, even though I thought I had applied dark enough dry colors. (I also accidentally colored outside the lines on various places. *sigh*) So as usual, I applied colored pencils to intensify their shades.

David said the black lines made the painting look like a cartoon. So I plucked a leave for my next drawing.

Media: watercolor pencils, colored pencils, technical pen.

David's Purse

David's Scharffen Berger Chocolate paper purse.

Media: technical pen.

Kleenex & Backpack

I doodled around my office while waiting for David to finish his discussion with Dan.

Media: technical pen.

My PowerBook

Since I won't have this set up anymore after the end of month (I'm gonna retire!), I felt that I should keep a memory of it. It's not a great doodle, but it means something to me.

Media: technical pen.

Mug, Stapler, & Speaker

While waiting for the traffic to calm down so we could go home, I started doodling around my office.

Media: technical pen.

Too Much Coffee

The whole page was an accident.

Originally I just tried to draw David's funny glasses and failed miserably. The very next morning, I tried to draw my coffee mug in 4 different styles.

#1 was my usual style, so it was fairly easy and David liked it the most.

#2 was my experiment for loose line drawing, and it wasn't very good.

#3 was an idea that I got from Danny Gregory's The Creative License. (Jon Pile said that it was a right brain drawing or a negative space drawing.)

#4 was just a pure disaster. I tried to follow Gregory's example again by drawing the rough outline first. The result was OK and I should've just stopped there. Instead, I couldn't stop myself from adding lousy shadowing...

To do some damage control, I added more doodles to explain the whole mug devolution, and somehow the ugly drawing no longer bothered me (or you wouldn't see it here).

Media: technical pens.

Misc.

This was the first time that I used mixed media in a major way.

I found that watercolor pencils are great for background. Because they lack the intensity, I applied colored pencils for depth. You can see different styles of drawing here. I'm still more comfortable with tight line drawing, but I try to practice loose line drawing as much as I can.

Media: technical pens, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, colorless blender.

The Baby Fox

This baby fox is based on Akira Toriyama's Manga character. I'm a big fan of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball is his most well-known work in the States but not my favoriate); his imagination is just incredible.

Media: technical pen, watercolor.

The Color Table

Following the instruction in Cathy Johnson's watercolor pencil Magic, I created this color table of my Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils (24 colors only).

Watercolor pencils are fun, but they are also a big pain in the butt. As you can see here, the colors between wet and dry paints are quite different; the wet ones are much lighter than the dry ones. I tend to forget about it and watch in shock as my paintings turn out much lighter than what I'd like.

Media: watercolor pencils, technical pen.

My First Colored Pencils Exercises

The flowers came from an exercise from Sandra Angelo's Exploring Colored Pencil. I had no clue what a "colorless blender" was but did whatever I could to make it look like the one in the book. Blending colors is tough!

Not being too pleased with the flowers, I flipped through the book and found the adorable giraffe on p.20. This time I only wanted to focus on color mixing. Therefore the trees.

I got pretty frustrated by now, so I just drew a purple pencil at the end. I thought it was fine, but David told me that the light and shadows weren't quite right.

Colored pencils drawing is no easy business!

Media: pencil, colored pencils.