The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 15

Today starts the third week of the new year. By now, many people have given up on their resolutions. The most frequently made new year’s resolution is to lose weight and by the end of the very first week, 25% of people have given up! By the end of the January, that number jumps to 36% failures! In the end, only 8% of people who make resolutions are successful yet even so, those who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve their goals! Incredible. Check here for even more fascinating data on New Year’s resolutions!

Today we’ll be honoring those resolutions, hopefully maybe inspiring you to keep going at them, with our theme of: EXERCISE EQUIPMENT

Here’s what I’ve come up with for today!

Assorted pencils on sketchpad paper

PRANG watercolor on 140lb Artist’s Loft watercolor paper

Yoga balls are a great challenge to draw and I’ll probably have another go at one sometime. First you need a good circle, already a challenge, though to be honest I traced a shot glass! Then, you’ve got to get concentric circles which would be tricky enough to draw, but on the yoga ball they’ve got to curl around the ball and add to the illusion of it being a sphere. I really struggled with this one, but the shading sure helped. Still, you know it’s bad when you have to write what it is because you’re not sure anyone would be able to tell.

When I was working on the yoga ball sketch, we were having the monthly art day here with my mom and a family friend. The two of them were working on gesture drawings while I worked on some ATCs for the challenge. After lunch they decided to put up an art poster and try to draw from it. Our friend gave me a sheet of his rather interestingly textured pastel/pencil/charcoal sketchpad paper and I joined in. I’m not super pleased with my version, but it’s recognizable at least. I think I’m going to cut this up so I can make some ATCs out of the interesting paper. There’s a few spots large enough to cut a plain white ATC-sized bit of paper.

The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 9

The theme for day 9 of the ATC Challenge is: APPLES

In 20074 on tbis day, less than a decade ago, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. It’s incredible that something we consider so much a part of our daily lives is still so new! I feel like I’ve had my (android) smart phone for ages. In honor of that first iPhone, today is for creating apples be they drawn, painted, or sketched. Create a still life from an apple you’re having for lunch. Or sketch your phone. Or an Apple logo. Maybe cut up an apple and use the fruit itself to do some stamping!

Here’s what I came up with:

Prismacolor colored pencils and graphite on that horrible cheap watercolor paper

PRANG watercolor on 140lb hot press watercolor paper

I haven’t used my Prismacolor pencils in ages and I enjoyed it. However, the paper was frustrating along with how the graphite outlines resisted the colored pencil. I suppose knowing that it resists now I could use that for effect though, so as usual, at least I learned something new! As for the Apple logo? I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. Photography was hard again due to the lack of natural light, but it was also complicated by the fact that my ATC is shiny. I put the paint on rather thickly so I could get it to drip, and I think that put on so thickly, it becomes shiny sort of like in the pans of paint in the box. This is the first time my cheap grade watercolors have failed me. In addition to the shiny paint fail, I’m not happy with my drips. I had a hard time getting it to drip at all so I blew on it which ended up making some more horizontal drips which wasn’t quite what I wanted. I love the drippy brightly colored watercolor portraits I’ve seen others do. It’s very far outside my style, but I figured I’d like to try it for a few of my ATCs. On this first drippy ATC, I’ve learned I must use higher quality paints if I want to put the paint on so thickly. I think the other solution would be to use more water so I get better dripping and don’t loose too much of the transparency of the paint.

The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 7

Dayy 7 of the Daily ATC Challenge will be a skill builder day. Let’s make GRADIENTS!

Any art that makes use of gradients is fair game. Here’s what I did, just some basic skill building bits, but definitely something I’ve learned from! I’ve also found it’s much harder to get nice photos when it’s too snowy to do my photography outside.

Assorted pencils on sketch pad paper

PRANG watercolor on 140lb cold press paper

The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 6

Today’s theme is: RAIN DROPS

Today is supposed to be the last nice day for a while. We’ll be back to blustery days well below freezing in under 24 hours. Since today is a gorgeous open-the-windows sort of a day, all that snow and ice will invariably melt as it hits creating a very slippery ice layer underneath the later snow. Our theme is those melted drops of water just as the wintery precipitation starts.

pencils on sketch paper

watercolor on 140lb cold press watercolor paper

I used the negative painting techniques demonstrated in this video by MyPetiteCakes on YouTube. I need more practice, but it was lovely to get to try out the technique I found a couple days ago while perusing videos about watercolor! I will definitely be doing both watercolor and acrylic galaxies sometime soon too. Those look like such fun!