New Artage

I have two new pieces! Two! In one month! Holy Goodness!

This doesn't usually happen folks, allow me to wallow in my excitement for a moment.

So we had two pieces to work on this month. I had my "Illustrate Your Sense" from my ongoing project from "The Creative Grab Bag" and I also had my yearly foray into the annual Gunmetalblack contest.

So without further ado: Common Sense Bingo

Common Sense Bingo by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Another picture to add to my ongoing series from the book "The Creative Grab Bag"

This one asked me to illustrate my senses. The good thing about this book is that it has other artists using the same cards and I looked in the book to see what other people had done. Two people had done the same thing where they used food.

Well, I didn't want to do that so I went in a completely different way. Common Sense. Which is what I would like to think that I have a lot of.

Though my fiance' (soon to be hubby) has little to none. Several of these spaces are based on real-life things that he has done. Which to me are hilarious, so it's okay that they happen.

I based the bingo card on those really old kid bingo games from the fifties. So I used only a few colors for the whole thing and simple line drawings. Except for sketching out the initial idea this whole thing was done on the computer. Nothing was scanned for this.

The Sea Queen

The Sea Queen by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

This is my 2010 entry for the Gunmetalblack Contest. As I stated in an earlier journal entry I have entered this contest since 2006 and have always enjoyed it immensely.

So now we have the Sea Queen. Which sadly is on the absolute last page of GMB's Art Gallery. He has a ton of these underwater characters and flipping through his gallery inspired me with them.

So here is the break down of how this went. I picked the Sea Queen for my entry, then I printed a full size picture of GMB's original work. I then sketched out Sea Queen in the sketchbook very lightly deciding which details to keep or tweak or discard entirely (like I say every year, the detail, dude.) once I had the initial design down in the sketchbook is where I decide how to pose her. Now luckily the way I sketched her originally was pretty damn close to what I wanted anyway so it was cake from there.

I then took the sketch to work and made a copy of my final lines onto three different pieces of colored construction paper and decided on the medium blue-green which I thought look the most like water.

I then took my colored pencils and colored her in oh so carefully. I outlined different parts of her with black and other various colors.

I really enjoy how she came out. I believe her to look very regal like she is welcoming you to her part of the sea and with the way the colored pencils worked with the colored paper was fantastic. It was also very fun to work with her tentacles (although not to the extent of the original picture, yowzah).

I hope you all like her as well!

...

Now I need a new card to start working on. Which will be (drumroll please....)

Design a Character or Set of Characters.

Now this plays to my strengths a bit!