4 NEW SKETCHES! <3

Hi peeps,

I've been frantically trying to catch up with making artwork for the print rewards I am yet to send out, and while I do feel like I'm drowning in the anxiety of it,  I'm slowly working towards it.

I created a few sketches I am quite happy with in the last few days, so here they are!

First off, I was still in dramatic lighting mood after finishing off my BEACON painting, so I worked on a small, simple, lighting concept, in one of my watercolour sketchbooks :

I struggled with the texture of the paper as I wanted a smoother look to my textures, but I am happy with how the lighting comes across nonetheless.

Next, I worked on a few sketches in my now-completed (!) sketchbook.

I seem to be on a skeleton kick in my sketches at the moment, and I won't fight it!

I wanted the character to look like they were turning to sand and their skin was gently sloughing off their bones, but for some reason, my brain decided to make it blue, and now it looks like ice...sort of...Oh well.

I like it nonetheless. :)

I used dry pastels for some of the background, which I hadn't used in a long, long, long time, and while I find their messiness quite overwhelming, their softness and coverage made up for it somewhat.

I will probably use them again occasionally, but probably mostly for background purposes.

I did try them again for this next sketch, but the whole drawing itself was a more painful experience right off the back of the blue one (as is very often the case when I try to sketch for an extended period of time), so I'm not sure I love this next one as much.

For some reason I REALLY struggled with the face of the character on the right. Nothing ever felt right. But I love the pose and their hands so I tried to push through it.

I also fought the colour scheme I chose intensely. I just didn't know where I was going with it.

Part of what I think threw me off kilter was that I added hair to my characters. If you've followed my work for a while, you'll already know that I don't love adding hair to my characters, but I've been actively trying to go out of my comfort zone with this particular inclination of mine, which results in some uncomfortable situation in my process. It's ok, it's a learning process and part of evolving, but it can be a struggle.

I was hoping I'd like this one enough to make it a large print, but I think I'll keep it as a small print. I like it, but am bothered enough by some of the elements that I don't want to promote it to full print status. Does that make sense? Maybe not, haha.

And lastly, I wanted to end this sketchbook with a bang, so I went a little overboard with a full page graphite drawing.

This sketchbook is A3 in size, and I rather greatly underestimated how much work filling a page that size would be. XD

This was great fun, but I also cried a few times. Which is nothing unusual for my process, but usually I reserve such displays of emotions for my paintings, haha.

It had been a long time since I worked with pencils of varied hardnesses, and I had a lot of fun! Most of the heavy darks in this are with pencils 4B and up, and the lighter cross-hatching was with HB and 2H to 4H tips. (Sorry US peeps, I believe you rate your pencils differently and I'm afraid I am not sure of the equivalences? Am I mistaken in thinking this? The internet was unclear...)

This sketch was a riff on this older Inktober 2018 drawing :

I always liked that composition a lot, but it felt more like a base for a more complex idea rather than a finished piece in itself.

Sadly, the original did not survive, so I am extra keen on recreating it in some way or other.

I also spent a few hours on this ribcage sketch, with the intention of making a small painting out of it, but for some reason I abandoned it and I can't for the life of me remember what my plan for it was?

I feel it could be a good template for a few different ideas, so I'm keeping it taped to my wall until inspiration strikes.

Anyway, that's it for this batch of sketches!

The light painting, the blue sand drawing and the graphite forest sketch will all become full-size prints for April, May and June respectively, and the spider-web sketch will become the mini print for July.

That leaves the big print for July, and all prints for August and September to catch up on, but I will probably start processing rewards before I am done with those, and send the next batch up to July asap as I just cannot withstand the anxiety of being so late with those rewards any longer.

My gratitude for your patience is beyond words, and I promise I am working away at it with every ounce of energy I have.

Thank you thank you thank you for being here.

Sending you all all my love,

M