Sherlock and Self Portraits

Recently I have really been enjoying painting digitally on my graphics tablet. I have been feeling more excited about drawing digitally than traditionally which is a new feeling for me.

I think I am finally starting to feel comfortable drawing in Photoshop and like I sort of know what I am doing now. Compared with my experience in traditional art,  I am still very new to digital painting - I only did my first digital piece in January of last year.

So it has taken me a year to finally be pleased with the pieces I create digitally and it really is a lovely feeling. I finally find more enjoyment in it than frustration. I would say this feeling started with the two digital paintings I did after watching the New Year's special of Sherlock (which by the way was amaaazing). I painted Watson and Sherlock and I really wanted to be able to achieve a likeness to the characters but in a stylised way. I think I achieved this with Watson, not so much with Sherlock, but I am still pleased because I think I made a lot of progress with these paintings.

I also wanted to experiment with different Photoshop brushes and not just use the basic round brush. I chose one from the dry media section I think and this meant I was able to create a lot more texture than I normally can and I love the way this looks.

The third painting I have done digitally is the one that I am most pleased with.  I have been feeling very inspired by Taryn Knight's (or TarynDraws) art recently - I love the texture that she creates in her illustrations, so that is what inspired this piece. I decided to just do a little self portrait and I really tried to be more adventurous with my choice of colour and texture (for example in the hair) and I think I was pretty successful. 

I am looking forward to continuing with digital art and I would like to challenge myself to do more full body paintings because I am getting too comfortable with drawing the head and shoulders. Also, maybe next time I should try and paint a setting for my characters because  I really struggle with this and would like to improve.

Thanks for reading!

Screen Printing

This Christmas I was super lucky to be given a screen printing kit from my Mum and Dad and I finally got round to giving it a go.

I was interested in screen printing because not only does it look really fun, but I loved the idea of being able to reproduce an illustration multiple times and print onto different materials. The idea of having a tote bag or a pencil case with one of my own illustrations on just excites me so much!

I am still very new to screen printing so my knowledge is extremely limited, however I do know that there are many different methods to actually get your design onto the silk screen. The kit that I received involves the stencilling method where you have to cut your design out of a self-adhesive vinyl material and then stick that to the underneath of the screen. When I was researching this method I repeatedly read that the stencilling method can only be used for very simple designs and not for long runs. When I read this I was a bit disheartened because I had imagined being able to print quite a detailed design, but I was undeterred and just as determined to do a more complex design.

As for the design, I struggled to come up with an idea that I wanted to use as my first ever screen print. It got to the point when I was so desperate to try that the design mattered less to me. In the end, I used my sister's interest as inspiration - she loves historical fashion. So I did a bit of research into historical fashion (which I have to say I enjoyed very much) and decided to try and screen print a lady from the 1820s. (Please excuse if it is not entirely historically accurate, I gave a lot more focus to the design of the image on this one.) In the end, I was actually really pleased with the design. I found that having the challenge of screen printing the image forced me to simplify the design a lot and think about how it would all fit together when cut out of vinyl and I just love how bold the image looks!

So, once I was happy with the idea in my sketchbook, I redrew it as carefully as I could onto regular A4 printer paper. I then went over it in a felt tip pen so it was extremely clear which areas I would like the ink to be in the final print. Once this was done, I layered it over a piece of the vinyl and taped them both to a cutting mat - then the cutting begins. I have to say I was dreading this step because I thought my design would turn out to be waaay too complex and impossible to cut out by hand with a little craft knife. But like I said I was determined and in the end it turned out ok. I had to simplify the design a bit from the original sketch and I really struggled cutting out her eyes, but I got away with only one small cut on my finger so I would rate that as a success!

The next step was to peel off the backing of the vinyl and stick it onto the bottom of the frame. This actually proved quite difficult because of the leaf border, but with some help from my Dad, we managed to get it stuck down well. However, it was at this stage that I started to have doubts about whether my design would be too complicated after all because the vinyl wasn't completely flush with the screen and it kept lifting on certain points.

With that done I could start screen printing! Yay! My kit came with a hinge bracket that allows you to attach the frame to a surface and this was SO useful at keeping the frame in the same place. It would have been so much more difficult without it. I went for a blue ink colour because for some reason this is what I had imagined all along, but I'm sure it would have looked good in other colours too. My first attempt turned out pretty badly and the ink bled everywhere, but the more I did the better it got. It was very much a learning process so I was experimenting with different amounts of ink and different materials to print on. I used a bunch of different papers and had best results on a random piece of grey card that unfortunately we only had one piece of. However, I would say that I got the best results on some cotton fabric. The ink just seemed a lot cleaner on this, assumedly because it was more absorbent. The ink did run a bit in the more complex parts like the hairline, but I am still really happy with the results. And of course, I can now use the fabric prints to make other things which is very exciting!

This one was printed on fabric:

I was very excited when I was screen printing so unfortunately I completely forgot to take any progress pictures, but I will make sure to do that next time.

Overall, I am SUPER happy with how my first adventure into screen printing came out. The prints are not perfect, but I was honestly expecting awful results because I had thought my design would be far too complicated. I didn't expect to be able to make so many prints either, eventually the results stopped being so clean and some of the small details came loose from the screen, but I was very impressed at how long the vinyl stayed stuck on. I can see myself being hooked from this point though so expect more - I can't wait to try again!

Thanks for reading!

Stamp Carving

For Christmas I was lucky to receive a Speedball rubber stamp block and a set of carving tools from my Auntie and Uncle. I have been wanting to try stamp carving for a while now and so I was so excited to finally give it a go.

I carved my first stamp on Christmas Day while watching festive telly. I started off fairly simply, just carving the details out rather than carving around them. I decided to carve a thank you stamp which is just under A6 in size so that I could make a bunch of thank you cards to send to my family and friends. I am really pleased with the design and how the stamp turned out.

I used gold embossing powder for some of the cards and it works really well with the stamp. That stuff is magical!

I then carved a stamp for my Mum's Etsy shop 'MidgetGemBeads' so she could use it to jazz up her packaging a bit. This stamp is probably a third of the size of my previous one and I found it a lot more difficult, probably because there were a lot more tiny details. I think this stamp would have looked better with some more white space to lighten the design up a bit, but apart from that I am relatively pleased with it and my Mum is too.

I think in my next stamp I would like to try and carve away more white space than I have tried before. I would love to try and carve a little person so  I am excited to see how that will turn out. I'll need to order a new rubber block soon!

Thanks for reading!

Full time marvel. Part-time demon slayer.

I did this painting as a Christmas present for my sister this year and she was really pleased with it.

Up until this point I had never spent so much time on a digital painting before. I had felt very frustrated with digital art because it is still so new to me and I find it so difficult, I still do, but with this painting I felt like I finally got a little closer to how I had envisioned it when starting. I think I acquired a much better understanding for painting on Photoshop and I am excited to continue learning and improving!