Some place where I can post art and document my struggle to be more creative.
Warning: May include whining or tl;dr. Feel free to skip all that and look at the pretty pictures.
Remember that drunk drawing night from earlier this month? This is the son of the fabulous lady who I was drunk drawing with.
I don't know how professional craft bloggers can make their stuff, stage perfect photos and then write posts about them AND have a life. It just astounds me. I did this sketch on Friday and I'm just blogging it now on Monday night. Did I do any more sketches? Of course not! I kept myself busy making another card.
And right now I'm assembling a project that I started three months ago. I thought I had a lot of time when I started, but now the birthday I was doing it for is coming up fast!
So I think the next goal for myself is at least one more face before day #29 comes up. I can totally do this.
Tom Hanks in "The Ladykillers". Fudenosuke Fine Tip pen over acrylic paint that was gelli printed onto my sketchbook.
I was excited to start this challenge. I started gathering reference so I could bang out a face a day without effort. I was planning to stretch my abilities a bit and try a more cartoony, caricature style. I was gonna do ACEOs...I had such plans! But when the 30th rolled around, I didn't start. Then it was Sept 1st and I was continually distracting myself. I even laid down some marks in colored pencil and suddenly decided I had to do some bookkeeping. By 11pm, I was having a mild anxious episode and had to walk away from the computer, have a snack and watch TV. I had would myself so tight, I couldn't do anything. Later at 1am I curled up on my bed with my sketchbook open, telling myself to just get SOMEthing down and banged this out.
In the past couple months, I've been working on an artist's block that I've had for half my lifetime and I didn't realize that I could make myself physically ill trying to lunge at it. Note to self: whatever I was doing wrong at my desk, don't do that! So holy cow, it's going to be a lot harder to break this block than I thought!
My adjusted expectation is to get through the challenge with more than 5 entries (which is how many I did earlier this year), preferably with all 29.
It always seems that as soon as I have a block of spare time, there seems to be somebody I should be making a card for. Since I'm still learning, this takes me forever and I'm not clever enough to make more than one at a time (although I plan to change this in the near-future).
I originally wanted to make a pop-up card for my husband. He and I both work from home and it's hard to find time when I'm completely alone. I was also working at the last-minute, so I needed to find a technique that I could do in short bursts of time. I figured that a pop-up would require larger blocks of time and that I should make a card that lights up instead. Both of these things I plan on exploring more and designing my own, but time wasn't on my side and I had to get this done quickly without my husband noticing. At least I already had the supplies!
I did a quick search online to see if anybody had tutorials up since my last search half a year ago. And yes, Chibitronics had partnered with Lawn Fawn a few months ago and shared the results. The slide switch appealed to me because the lights wouldn't go on unless the card was pressed, so it won't drain the battery. Plus I wouldn't have to worry about building a sliding tab switch.
Then I went about looking in the Silhouette Store for a design I could use. I was this close to making my own, but it would have added anywhere between two and ten hours and I needed to get it done.
I managed to run my Silhouette Cameo while my husband was hanging around and he didn't notice that I was cutting a Birthday card. I then went to bed pleased with myself that I was a day ahead of time and that I could easily make the circuit the following day. I was seriously proud of myself.
Then the next day he was going to drive out of town on an errand. I waited. And waited. He left and for whatever reason I didn't get started. Which turned out to be a good decision because instead of being out of the house for two hours, he was gone for 20 minutes. He said that traffic was bad and that he'll try again the next day. Then he said he was going to do some sorting in the spare room. I waited. And waited. Never happened. He stayed in the office with me and declared at 11pm, "I'm not getting much done today. How about you?" I had to sifle a laugh.
The day I was going to gift the card, my husband leaves for his errands. I thought I could get the circuit done quickly, but drew it wrong and didn't realize until after I laid down the copper tape. And Oh no, I don't have that much time left! Quick, lay down the tape. Test the lights. Yes, they're working. Glue it to the base. Test the lights. The middle isn't working. WHAAAAT?! How do I troubleshoot that? Hell if I know. Just put the design on top and call it a day.
But oh yeah, it needs a greeting. Good thing I've been practicing a little (very little) with the Tombow brush pens. This is actually the main reason why I want to work on my hand. The calligraphy is Not Great. I had to define the letters a bit with the black liner. I guess I'll be downloading practice sheets later tonight.
I have a wedding card to make before the first week of July. I think I'll start on that this week. :heh:
