The art studios of Denise Wynn
At least I hope it’s over.
After the 100 day project this year, which ended in July, I was feeling the need to take a little break. The problem is I was thinking a one or two week break and it has turned in to a two month break! Where did the summer go?
Anyway, it’s time to get back to the art stuff. Hopefully you’ll see more art and drawings coming your way. Thank you for your patience while I took a little break.
A few months ago I did the zinnia challenge for Florals Your Way on Instagram. At the beginning of every month they publish a list of floral prompts to help artists decide what to draw. When I’m feeling in the mood to draw flowers I will often use this list for inspiration. Zinnia was the floral prompt for November 12th, 2018 and this was my submission. Continue reading “Watercolor and Pen Zinnia”
It’s been a bit of a crazy week for me. I agreed to puppy sit for the kids while they went on vacation in Alaska. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad but I already have 3 smallish dogs and it’s easy to forget how much energy a puppy has. Especially a puppy that doesn’t seem to realize how big he is sometimes. We had a lot of fun though. Continue reading “Puppy sitting”
If you’ve been following my blog at all then you know I love motivational quotes. I’m still going to keep doing my motivational quote imagery but I wanted to pull together some groups of quotes for your enjoyment. Continue reading “25 Motivational Quotes on Happiness”
Some of my followers will be happy to know that I’ve decided to set up shop on Society6. Society6 is a site that allows artists to upload their art to be sold on numerous consumer goods. Things like pillows, coffee mugs, wall clocks, shower curtains, etc. They will also sell prints and I like that feature as well. Continue reading “Yellow Flower Love on Society6”
October is a big month for art challenges on Instagram. This year I took part in drawlloween on my Tiny Troll Studios Instagram account using the prompt list from Mabs Drawlloween Club. This prompt list was put together by Mab Graves.
The idea behind these challenges is to take part as often as you can through the month of October using the prompts provided. Since it’s October the prompts tend to be on the spooky side.
I managed to participate on 21 of the days. Ragweed was out in force here in Texas and it laid me low for a few days but I did what I could. Here are all of my little drawings together. I had started out with a silhouette theme for all my little pictures. I thought the theme was clever but maybe it was a little too clever because most of my posts didn’t do that well. Maybe it was clever and there were just so many people participating they all got lost in the mix. Who knows? What I do know is the raven at the bottom, that took me all of 10 minutes to create, was far and away my most popular post for Drawlloween.
Here are my two favorite images from the month. I love the colors for grave and the natural separation of the ground and sky. I used colored pencil to get some extra detail in the dirt and that was fun. The werewolf was a favorite because he turned out better than I imagined he would. Even though I do small drawings all the time I was amazed with how much detail I was able to get out of his tiny silhouette.
Instagram had very different favorites based on number of likes. The witches kettle was the first post of the month so it made sense because over time it got more likes. The raven, on the other hand, was the last post of the month and didn’t match the theme at all and within 24 hours he had more likes than any of my other posts from the month. He is pretty cool though. The rat – for that one I have no idea. I mean he’s pretty cute but maybe it was the glitter paint or the splatters. The world will never know I’m sure.
I took the opportunity during this challenge to try a bunch of new techniques and supplies I’d never used before. Some of my experiments were more successful than others. Here I tried plastic bag on the alien, salt on the mushroom, water soluble oil pastels for seance, and a sponge for the creature from the black lagoon.
I also practiced my splatter technique with a variety of paints and brushes and I’m certainly improving. One thing I learned is that glitter paint doesn’t work that well for splatter.
So there’s all my drawlloween posts. I hope you liked them. Let me know which one was your favorite in the comments.
July was a good month for Etsy listings. I started a new collection of geometric patterns that I hope to continue in August. I enjoy the repeating geometric patterns but the books I was finding all had incredibly complicated patterns that do not necessarily make coloring a relaxing Zen-like experience. It then occurred to me that I could create my own, simpler and more enjoyable, geometric coloring pages – so that’s exactly what I did.
In July I posted 11 new coloring pages, 2 new sets of bookmarks, and one new set of postcards. It was a banner month for sure. Here’s a sampling of some of the listings that were posted.
If you enjoy geometric patterns that lend themselves nicely to a limited color palette or to rainbows of colors then please check out the new collection in my Etsy shop.
My husband recently sent me a link to a site called PaintsChainer that will colorize sketches for you. While it seems to be primarily intended for anime type sketches I thought I’d have a little fun with it. I wanted to see what it would do with some of my mandalas and Zentangles. The program worked better on the mandalas and while I would never color them this way myself the results are very pretty. They definitely have a watercolor or marker feel to them. Scroll down to see all the images and let me know what you think. I won’t deny I’m inspired by some of the color choices the program made.
Most of my Zentangles did not look so pretty but this one with the leaves turned out nicely.
July was a good month. I had a great birthday, my husband took me to Austin for the weekend and we explored and ate lots of good food. July was also a lazy month for me. I was feeling sentimental and downloaded Everquest II from Steam and ended up playing a lot more than I had originally intended. Sometimes it’s fun to just lose yourself for a while – in a game, a book, or binge watching a favorite series on Netflix.
Since I was goofing off so much in the world of Norrath in Everquest II I only got around to drawing 9 tiles. I suppose that’s not too bad, roughly one every three days or so. Still, not my best effort.
Since July 2017 was International Watercolor Month I decided to do something I’ve not actually ever done before. Coloring one of my Zentangles as opposed to coloring a coloring page of one of my drawings. The pattern I picked is called Clem which I chose because of it’s nice floral look. I added in leaves for some contrast. I will admit I’m very happy with how it turned out and I hope to add color to more of my Zentangles in the future.
In addition to using watercolor on one of my Zentangles I also had fun with watercolor on some of my coloring pages and on this original creation. I took a sheet of multimedia paper and drew some circles in pencil and then laid down some watercolor washes. After it was all dry I went back in with a pen and doodled lines to go with the flow of the colors. It was so much fun and I want to do more of this.
I know that sometimes my drawings have a circular theme but in this instance I actually set out to create a Mandala. It does feel different when it’s intentional as opposed to just a byproduct of how you draw. I can see why so many people like to draw them as a Zentangle. I find I can just look at them for ages because your eye keeps getting drawn into the center.
That was my July. Maybe not my most productive month for Zentangle drawing but I’m looking at it as my summer vacation. You can find more of my Zentangle tiles on my personal Instagram or on my tumblr. I forget to mention my tumblr account but I’ve been posting my Zentangle inspired art there since 2012.
June ended up being a good month for drawing some Zentangle tiles. We had house guests for a week – my mother and brother – but they didn’t seem to mind if I had the occasional doodle session while we were hanging out. I feel like I was all over the place last month but I was trying a lot of new patterns so it was fun. I started a Pinterest board just for patterns and I have been saving patterns I’ve tried in the past so I can find them again as well as new patterns I want to try. I drew 16 Zentangle tiles in total in June. Technically I posted the 16th tile on Instagram in July but I drew it in June so I’m keeping it here.
