I wanted to try a blue or purple flower for today, inspiration from Vireya again! Hope you don’t mind, but you have so many fantastic flower photos!
I still need to do some more work on the flower centre, and add in some leaves for contrast & background. Need to let it all dry out really well before going back in now. But happy with the layered colours so far! Ordinary sketchbook paper today.I have ordered a couple more markers, and a pad of Kraft paper, will be interesting to see how the markers go on the different paper & with the non- white background.
I found a great free app called “Marker Match” which makes it much more easy to keep a list of which colours I have, and compare the colours of other markers on sale. I have found the “Touch New” brand has the same numbers & names as my Graphic Pro Duo and Mont Marte markers. The little colour square in the app is way more accurate than looking at the colour on the lid!
I saw these lovely poppies in a garden on a recent walk. I spent a while trying to draw & colour them yesterday, but was not happy with the result. I used a sheet from a Monte Marte Jumbo drawing pad with 95gsm paper, but I felt the colour were just too dull and flat. I couldn’t get the same lovely depth of colour that I get on other paper. I persevered because I figure it is all good practice! Interesting that different papers produce such different results.
I had started with only the briefest of pencil sketch outline, just some circles to place the poppies, then sketched the flowers with a pale grey marker before outlining in red or pink, then layering more colour. I wanted to try something different by filling in the background with colour, to fill the page a bit more & make the flowers pop a bit more, but it still looked dull.
After a bit more research - reading online & watching some more marker YouTube tutorials, I got up this morning & thought “ what if I outline everything in black fine liner?”.
So I did, and am soooo much happier with the result now! The poppies definitely “ pop” a bit more now!
Just popping in for a quick update - here is my latest drawing. Quite unplanned, I went into the study last night to print a recipe I had found online ( chocolate chip cookie dough bites, found via Frankie magazine website- will let you know what they are like if I make them next weekend!). I saw my markers on the desk & thought “ I must pack this up before work tomorrow, but maybe I’ll just check though some photos on the iPad for ideas…”.
And so I sketched this …and then I coloured it in!
Huge shoutout and thanks you to Vireya who takes such superb photos of her amazing garden, and posts them on her blog. I took some screen shots recently and used this one as inspiration, a dahlia from a post on April 15. And there are plenty more flowers there I plan on trying!
I borrowed a box of alcohol markers from a friend a few weeks ago, to colour in some black & white picture cards for work. We don’t have a colour printer, and figured black & white pictures would not be very appealing/ engaging for my students during my online teaching sessions!
I had a lot of fun colouring lots of little pictures ( about 8 cards to an A4 page, which I then cut & laminated into individual cards). In fact I had so much fun I started looking online for some not too expensive / but not too crap quality markers for myself!
I have bought a range of different art & craft supplies from Riot Art over the years, and although there was only one online review for their markers, it was very positive - and they had a good sale on! I would have bought some from Daiso, because their markers have had great reviews; but for some unknown reason they don’t have an online store in Australia. Officeworks had very little info - hard to tell what colours were in their sets, and really their website/ search is a bit rubbish. Cotton On/ Typo had some super bargains but lots of bad reviews for their markers.
So I put in an order with Riot Art for a set of markers, plus a few extra individual colours ( I mean they were on sale for 99c and $1.99, so hard to resist!). Of course I had sent my order off just as there were huge delays with Australia Post - at one point I got a notification that my parcel had gone from Melb, to Qld, and was now sitting frustratingly only 20 minutes up the road at the Sommerton Road dept ( but outside of my then 5km limit!).
It arrived eventually ( think it took 2 1/2 weeks!) and there was only 1 of the 99c single colours not in stock.
I had fun trying out the colours, experimenting with layering and blending ( watched a lot of YouTube for research!) and made a swatch/sample sheet of my colours. Then I remembered Monte Marte art supplies, and ordered a couple of extra colours to fill in the gaps - mainly greens, yellow, brown I think. The staff at Moorabbin Art Shed were very helpful over the phone, and my order arrived in a few days.
I have been experimenting with different colours, and different papers too. First I found a photo I liked ( I have been admiring the neighbourhood flowers when out walking The Dog). After playing around with a free photo to sketch app, I printed the photo on regular copy paper & tried colouring it in.
Photo sketch printed, then traced onto cheap sketchbook paper using the light box.
Today I found a photo, sketched a flower freehand from the photo, then coloured on water colour paper. Quite happy with the results, I will keep practicing, lots of fun so far!
