I do love my tiny art. Mostly because I can create something in a relatively short amount of time. I still have to wait for layers to dry but it’s much easier to wait for a 3″ square to dry than a larger piece.
Another thing I like with smaller works is not having to worry about things like mixing up enough of a paint color. In fact I often have a little bit of leftover paint. Have you ever been painting something large and you’ve mixed the perfect color but you run out about 80% of the way along? I don’t enjoy that scramble to mix up some more of the same color. Continue reading “Tiny Mixed Media Collages”
I’ve been trying to create more flower artwork. I enjoy the technical aspect of it and flowers are a popular art form that people always seem to enjoy. Here are a few of my recent creations. These were all done on 3″ x 3″ squares of Canson XL Watercolor paper. Continue reading “Flower Artwork”
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.
I’ll be wrapping up my #100TinyBugs for The 100 Day Project shortly so I want to get all these bugs posted for everyone to see. Here are bugs 61 through 80 for your enjoyment.
Bugs 61 to 80
Just to mix things up I’m breaking up the bugs this time by top down view vs. not top down view. I really like the top down view for it’s symmetry but I also find that it’s a limited view. It doesn’t show just how interesting some of the bug shapes are. Usually the top down views are referencing specimen photos. I think scientists and collectors really like to take top down specimen photos. I certainly like it because there are literally thousands of them out there for me to use as a reference.
9 bugs in top down view
I did 11 bugs in various profile views. I even did two from the front – the one and only spider out of all 100 bugs and one leaf hopper with a giant face. One other unique “bug” out of this 20 was actually a chrysalis. I just figured I’d give it a go. Also, look at that adorable ladybug!
11 bugs in other poses
This set of 20 bugs included 3 bugs with distinctly pink color in them. A lot of bugs hint at pink but the spider, beetle, and moth all had some serious pink hues going on.
Bugs with Pink
I hope you enjoyed these 20 bugs. I’ll post 81 through 100 next week. As always you can also view all of my bug pictures on my Instagram account. Thanks for joining me on this fun adventure.
I was recently commissioned to do a set of 3 paintings. This was my first big commission and I have to admit I was a little terrified at first but in the end I was so happy with them I almost didn’t want to send them off. Continue reading “Haystack Rock Commission”
