Getting Inspired by Ink

So today I made the excuse of having to pay my shop fees to The Wooden Cow Gallery in order to drive by Langell's Art Supply. I live on the west side of Albuquerque, which has much newer houses and development than the east side, but as such can be severely deficient in certain things. We have no traditional old diners, there are few really nice restaurants, and no real art supply stores. Yes, we have Michael's and Hobby Lobby, but no place where you can go for specialty goods, like high quality liquid inks. Once I got to Langell's today, I walked up and down every aisle to make sure I really didn't need anything else, and wound up with a roll of framing tape (the brown stuff you put on the backs of framed artwork) and several bottles of ink. I also got to get real advice on a product I had never tried from someone who had used it, and could even show me what he'd done with it--you can't get that at Michael's either. I wound up taking his advice and choosing 3 luscious colors of Dr. Ph Martin's Bombay India Ink--Teal, Cherry Red, and Terra Cotta. I also got a bottle of Koh-I-Noor black India Ink, as it is recommended for my Rapidograph pens. I am guilty of having used whatever ink I had on hand in the past, and we'll see if this ink is less susceptible to clogging.

My final bottle was Higgins Red Violet, to replace a bottle I'd just used up, part way through the project photographed above. It is a waist cincher that I found on Ebay for a steal because the pretty lace all over the front of it was orange and yellow. I've worn it once or twice as it was, but I seriously almost broke out in a chorus of Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves while wearing it. So the other day, I got out the waterproof red + red violet and brushed it onto the lace. Much to my delight, it came out a juicy deep red, though a bit uneven, as the different shades of yellow and orange soaked up different amounts of ink. After going over most of it with one coat, I decided it really needed another one to even it out a bit more. It may not be painting on a canvas or paper, but it's a start, and was a successful artistic project that was worth sharing.

Now it's time to go take down the Halloween decorations before it gets dark.

Digitally Enhancing Sub-Par Drawings Works!

I was never a huge proponent of digital manipulation in and of itself, but I've been using it more and more to clean up drawings and, better yet, to add color to them! My last blog entry about Eric and the Fake Beard was an example of one that I never would have wanted to add the color with a brush, and it turned out to be a great combination of natural-looking drawn lines and the crisp perfection of digital color.

I did a similar thing a couple weeks ago with "The Frog Princess." She was a relatively simple ink drawing who simply needed a little polish by way of digital color. For that one, I even got a regular laser mouse to use left-handed, as opposed to the track ball mouse, which must be used right-handed and has less control (to me in my hands). Here she is:

I like how you can give something a subtle gradient from one color to another, or just one color to white.

So as I was perusing some of my Etsy Favorites, I came across a pen and ink artist who puts different colored backgrounds behind her botanical drawings, and even lets her customers choose which color they prefer. Her name is Jodi Davies, and she goes by jodidoodles, if you would care to check her out. (Since everyone's tastes in art are different and every artist has a different style, I don't really feel all that competitive about pointing out other awesome artists.) I thought that the different colored backgrounds with a black and white foreground was a cool idea, so I tried it on one of the drawings I finished this week (okay, the only drawing I finished this week, shhhh!).

Not only did I add the colored background, but this was the first drawing I can honestly say that I completely altered on the computer. While I was fairly happy with the flowers and leaves around the face in the middle, the face itself just looked awful. And awful in ink is a fairly permanent type of awful. But not letting a little temporary lack of drawing talent hold me back, I scanned it in and proceeded to rip the face to shreds on the computer. There was much too much crosshatching on the eyelids and the face itself was not in the middle of the circle where it should have been. I was just having an off day. It happens. But through the wonders of the digital age, I fixed most of what I disliked about it, tried not to go completely crazy fixing blemishes (kind of like putting your makeup on in the magnifying mirror, cleaning up images on the computer can get a little OCD). Then I added a square of color behind it, and picked three colors to start with as the background. Here is the result:

Clicking on the image above will take you to the listing for the green one, but I made a listing for each of the three colors, in case one caught someone's eye more than the others. Also noted in each listing, if any of my readers would like it in another color, all you have to do is ask! I'm not sure if I will do any more like these, but it was certainly fun and a good exercise in digital manipulation. Please let me know what you think!

New Print! Eric and the Fake Beard

Eric and the Fake Beard

Most of the rest of the family was used to Eric’s flippant “one-eyed salute”, but tonight he seemed in an especially jovial mood. He bounced down to the dinner table wearing what appeared to be the remains of Aunt Edna’s favorite orange mohair sweater (quite honestly, everyone else hated the thing) tied by two strings around Eric’s neck.

“That better not be my favorite mohair sweater, boy,” snorted Aunt Edna as she came around the corner from the kitchen, wielding a plate of steamed vegetables and squinting at him suspiciously through the steam that had collected on her bifocals.

“You look like that wino that hangs out down the street under the bridge,” commented his sister, Juniper. “Only he bathes more!”

“June! Stop picking on your brother and go get me a serving spoon,” snapped a now-visually-acute Aunt Edna, having cleared the steam from her glasses. “I sure wish you’d ‘a asked me before you went and tore up that sweater,” she continued. “Though, I reckon it was getting a little long in the tooth.”

“Edna,” Eric’s Dad interrupted, “that sweater could have been the wino who lives under the bridge.” Everyone laughed at that, even Aunt Edna. Eric, lapping up the spirit of good humor at the table, continued to dance around, wiggling his homemade fake beard.
“Check it out,” he giggled, “I’m Brad Pitt!”

This print was inspired by the humorous illustrations of my Facebook friend, Erik Bergstrom (I modified the spelling of his name to protect whatever innocence he may have, plus I forgot to look to see how he spelled it). Okay, I guess it was also a little inspired by Brad Pitt, thought I hate to admit that, since I've never thought he was a handsome man in the slightest, so him growing some ridiculous homeless-wino-hippie beard has had no other effect on me except to make me chuckle. I actually got up in the middle of the night to draw this thing, and couldn't go to bed until I was mostly finished with it. The next day I finished it, scanned it in and added the color in The Gimp. The most difficult part was writing the story that went with it, since I'm much more of an editor than a writer (now watch me litter this post with typos...). So I hope my readers (both of them) don't think my story is too lame, it was the best I could do.
The print is for sale in my Etsy Shop here.

The Year of the Tiger!

Happy Lunar New Year! The New Year in the lunar calendar started on February 14th, and this year is the Year of the Tiger! To commemorate, I drew this tiger in black and red-orange ink yesterday! I had some fun with the contour-y, swirly, maybe a little mokume gane looking orange ink pattern. The black ink is waterproof Black Magic that was applied with a brush, and the orange ink was drawn on using my 0.50 Rapidograph drafting pen.

The lunar new year is celebrated in many Asian countries, and there are many shared traditions as well as ones unique to each country. The calendar is based on the Lunar (or Chinese) Zodiac. Similar to the Western zodiac, the Chinese zodiac has 12 different attributes, but each sign is given to a year, a month and an hour of the day, thereby creating the possibility of three different signs that lend attributes to a person's persona, based on when they were born. For instance, if you were born yesterday, February 15th, 2010, at 5 in the morning, you were born in the year of the Tiger, the month of the Tiger (your inner animal), and the hour of the Tiger (your secret animal). However, if you were born on, say, July 11, 1967, at 5:53 pm EDT (to use a completely arbitrary example, having nothing whatever to do with the day I was born...) you were born in the year of the Goat, in the month of the Goat (inner animal) and the hour of the Monkey (secret animal). The animal representing the year of your birth is the persona you portray to others, your external appearance. I'm not sure if I understand the meanings of the inner vs. the secret animal, except that the secret animal is the most personal, since it represents the relationship of the sun to you at the hour of your birth. Each of the animals also has an attribute of one of the five elements: Wood, Earth, Water, Metal, and Fire. These elements each contribute to the personality of the animal in some way.

The Year of the Tiger drawing measures about 8" square, and is available for sale in my Etsy Shop for a rather economical price.

Happy New Year all! Welcome to the Year of the Tiger!

5:52 Salacia

5:52 Salacia
Originally uploaded by jvdarcy

Salacia was the bride of Neptune, the Roman God of the Sea. The story goes that when Neptune was pursuing her, she was so intimidated by his greatness that she fled and hid in the Atlantic. Neptune sent a dolphin out to bring her back, and because the dolphin was able to charm her into marrying the God, Neptune gave the dolphin a place of honor amongst the stars, the constellation Delphinus.

This is my piece for Week 5 of 52 Weeks of Creations! I was a week behind, so I just decided to call this one my contribution for this week instead of last week. She started out as simply a study in ink textures and was really fun to create! The only un-fun thing was changing the ink in the pen (my 00 Rapidograph, see rant below) from blue to green, then remembering to wash it all out when I was finished so the ink wouldn't dry that way. I have some really interesting photos of what happens when you let the ink dry in the mixing cup...

Salacia measures 6" x 8" and was rendered in pen and ink and brushed liquid ink.

Five Days in a Row of New Drawings!

I did not post anything to the blog about yesterday's drawing, so I will do a two-for-one today.

Yesterday, I'm not sure if the image was inspired by the song, or if the title popped into my head as I was drawing and reminded me of the song, but this one is called "Little Wing." You can go listen to the original Jimi Hendrix version here, or my favorite, the remake by Sting. Whichever inspired which, I really like that song. I'm going to have to get Sean to play it for me sometime.

So this drawing measures about 5 1/4" x 6 1/2" on acid-free drawing paper and was drawn using archival, permanent ink. It is for sale in my Etsy Shop already...

Today, I wasn't going to draw anything, I was going to get back to all of the other things I need to do. But, no, this image popped into my head this morning and refused to not exist. It is entitled "Argyle Beard" (and subtitled "Baxter," just to piss off my friend Baxter). For this one I got out my colored pencils and colored in the tweedy-looking argyle in his beard, as well as his swell purple shirt. He is also listed for sale in my Etsy Shop.

On a side note, a couple days ago, I watched this video on TED of a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on genius. I found it quietly inspiring. I think my favorite bit was where she talks about separating herself from the creative process or "genius" as if it is a separate entity, and how it freed her to say to it, "You and I both know that, if this [work] isn't brilliant, that it isn't entirely my fault. As you can see, I am putting everything I have into this... if you want it to be better, you've got to show up and do your part of the deal... and I would like the record to reflect that I showed up for my part of the job."

So I suppose I have showed up for my part of the job, at least for a little while, every day this week. I'm not sure how many of those days my assigned genius came along with me, but we shall see.

New Drawing!

I started this drawing last night while watching the Yankees beat the Phillies in the World series Game 4. Finished it around midday today and decided to list it in my Etsy shop right away, just to see if it would be a seller. It's priced at only $20! This is not some digital print, this is an original drawing here people!

This abstract knotty tree is perched on the precipice of the unknown, and appears to be dripping its heart into the great oblivion below. It was drawn in archival ink (Pigma Micron, 0.20 mm tip) onto off-white colored acid-free drawing paper. It measures approximately 5.25" by 6.5". It is groovy. Tell all of your friends. If everyone wants to buy it at once, I'll have to make prints. Enjoy!