So, after 2 years, 3 moves and building a new house from the ground up, I am once again ready to paint, draw, sketch and just plain try to be creative. I have not painted anything with pastels in almost 5 years (how sad).
Before the Studio
The new house has a room set aside to be my studio, but before I was able to set it up I was drawing at the kitchen peninsula. Not what I had initially intended, but a good place to start.
What to Draw? The Inspiration.
As I had not drawn anything in over 2 years, it felt as if my creative brain had atrophied. After several failed start/stops, I decided to use my favorite splash page from Mouse Guard as a kind of drawing exercise, much the same way one would do word problems to learn math skills. I have done this from time to time when I am more interesting in learning a technique or playing with new tools or media.
The Tools
The last few Christmas I asked for and received many art supplies, including watercolor pencils, Cotman travel watercolors and micron Sakura Micron colored pens. This choice of picture subject matter also allowed me to play with all these toys.
The Initial Drawing
The initial sketch was completed quickly and the drawing was inked with the Sakura micron pens (0.25, 0.45 and 0.50 mm black). Simple, yet fun.
The picture was painted using a combination of the watercolor pencils and Cotman pans. I used the colored microns to add details to the leaves in the tree and on the sword. David Petersen, the creator-artist of Mouse Guard, is such a talented artist, even my pale copy of his his wonderful work is actually pretty good. Eventually, I will create original works using this technique, which was quite fun and can be done virtually anywhere.
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