In an effort to gain more followers on Instagram (and, in turn, get more people to check out my Etsy shop and this blog), I've been trying to post a pic every day - often sharing the link to each "gram" via Twitter and Facebook as well. Of course, just as with my attempts to write a blog post every day, some days there is more to talk about than other days - and some days I work more on art than others.
But in an effort to try to get a least a little bit of art done - and an Instagram post put up - every single day, I've started doing some quick abstract colored pencil drawings. My thinking is that these might make cute little prints for blank notecards or bookmarks or other things I might eventually sell. And in the meantime, they help me get my creativity flowing and give me practice with how my colored pencils work on different colors of paper.
Usually the art I do involves a lot of planning - photos that are manipulated and cropped and used as source imagery for colored pencil drawings, or photos that are collaged together with patterns I've designed to make a composition for a watercolor or acrylic painting. Even once all of the planning is done, these pieces tend to take awhile. I'm still working on those acrylic paintings I started a few weeks ago. They're not big paintings - each is only 8"x10" in size - but because I put so much planning into them, they take time. Part of that is the detail I planned in, but part of that is probably due to the planning itself - the idea that I've already put so many hours into this painting before I even pick up a paintbrush for it... I have to have something to show for all of that time and effort; I have to get a quality piece out of it.
So these quick little drawings give me an opportunity not to worry about that. If they turn out great - great! If they don't, it was only about an hour wasted, not several hours. No harm done.
They've gotten a pretty positive response on Instagram so far (some more than others). I have done four lately. Here are two of them (I'll show the other two tomorrow).
I'm calling this first one "Retro Garden Doodle." I used a carefully selected palette of the eight colored pencils you see in the picture. With my floral colored pencil drawings I usually do a lot of layering and blending, for these doodles I let the colors stand alone. They touch each other and work together as a palette, but there is no blending to make "new" colors - other than some shading for the two colors used to accentuate angles in the background.
The colored pencils are Prismacolor brand and the paper is Strathmore Toned Gray paper.
This next one I'm calling "Retro Stick Doodle." I used a palette of only six colored pencils for this one.
Here are the responses I've gotten from Instagram:
But in an effort to try to get a least a little bit of art done - and an Instagram post put up - every single day, I've started doing some quick abstract colored pencil drawings. My thinking is that these might make cute little prints for blank notecards or bookmarks or other things I might eventually sell. And in the meantime, they help me get my creativity flowing and give me practice with how my colored pencils work on different colors of paper.
Usually the art I do involves a lot of planning - photos that are manipulated and cropped and used as source imagery for colored pencil drawings, or photos that are collaged together with patterns I've designed to make a composition for a watercolor or acrylic painting. Even once all of the planning is done, these pieces tend to take awhile. I'm still working on those acrylic paintings I started a few weeks ago. They're not big paintings - each is only 8"x10" in size - but because I put so much planning into them, they take time. Part of that is the detail I planned in, but part of that is probably due to the planning itself - the idea that I've already put so many hours into this painting before I even pick up a paintbrush for it... I have to have something to show for all of that time and effort; I have to get a quality piece out of it.
So these quick little drawings give me an opportunity not to worry about that. If they turn out great - great! If they don't, it was only about an hour wasted, not several hours. No harm done.
They've gotten a pretty positive response on Instagram so far (some more than others). I have done four lately. Here are two of them (I'll show the other two tomorrow).
I'm calling this first one "Retro Garden Doodle." I used a carefully selected palette of the eight colored pencils you see in the picture. With my floral colored pencil drawings I usually do a lot of layering and blending, for these doodles I let the colors stand alone. They touch each other and work together as a palette, but there is no blending to make "new" colors - other than some shading for the two colors used to accentuate angles in the background.
The colored pencils are Prismacolor brand and the paper is Strathmore Toned Gray paper.
This next one I'm calling "Retro Stick Doodle." I used a palette of only six colored pencils for this one.
Here are the responses I've gotten from Instagram:
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