Drawing an Enderman

I love Minecraft. And I love drawing. I love tutorials. And I love my friend SamBeAwesome. So when I found out that she did a tutorial years ago on how to draw an Enderman (from Minecraft) – I couldn’t resist.

I started with some sketches while watching the tutorial.

And then I sketched out the plan for my piece of art.

Then I drew it out on the paper that I use for marker pieces, and I inked the line art. I got out my alcohol markers and started colouring.

And found that the markers I wanted to use were drying out. I wasn’t overly happy with the darkness of the Enderman (I hadn’t wanted to draw him black). So I made a monumental error and went over it with coloured pencil.

This is a very valid technique for art. A lot of people I follow utilise the method. But I borked it up. Maybe it was the wrong paper, maybe it was my technique. But it was horrible.

I tossed the paper to the side, and sulked. I did some other art for a bit. Then decided to go digital.

And I am SO VERY GLAD that I did, because I LOVE this piece.

Endermen don’t have texture to them, but I loved the look of the texture I did so much that I had to give him some little square spots too.

I may have to do more Minecraft pieces in this style. What should I draw next?

Rainbow Art

Earlier this year, my friend Sam posted a series of tweets appreciating her art in rainbow form.

Being a rainbow obsessive, I had to mimic this. But instead of tweets, I’m doing a blog post.

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple

And the reason I’ve only done one picture for each colour instead of four, like Sam? Because it was surprisingly hard to find art for a (mostly) single colour in my collection.

Yes, I AM rainbow obsessed. So obsessed that most of my art is ALL the colours.

Asda Colouring Pencils

I buy pens and pencils all the time – especially cheap ones from weird sources. So when I spotted a set of 24 colouring pencils at my grocery store for £1.50, I couldn’t resist. Especially when I spotted the pastel pack next to them. I’m a sucker for pastels.

The swatching was unsurprising. The normal pencils were fairly average for cheap pencils. And the pastel ones were kinda rubbish. Maybe just super pastel?

I tested the pastel pencils on different toned papers.

They still weren’t great. But there is definite improvement on the darker papers.

Okay, so lets do a piece of art on black paper.

It didn’t go well. I tried on white paper, but that was rubbish too.

I was very unsatisfied, so I redid the ice cream piece with my Polychromos. It was for a Scrawlr Sketch challenge.

The normal pencils were great. Just your average cheap colouring pencils. I used them to colour a page in the colouring book that I’ve been trying to finish for years.

Bic Cristal Pens

It’s not news to anyone that I love pens. And I’m always buying new pens. Recently (by which I mean months ago) I picked up this pack of colourful biro pens.

The colours are awesome. And once I’d gotten over the panic of them not working – they have a little blob on the nib to protect them…

…I swatched them and was even more certain the colours were awesome.

The back of the pack describes them as “Fashion and fun Colours” – which is a little weird. But they are fun.

For my art piece I did a Scrawlr Sketch prompt – butterfly.

And when the ink in my Bic Four Colour Pen ran out, I butchered these Cristal ones to fit them in.

It’s much more “Fashion and fun” to write with pink, light blue, purple, and light green than it is to write with black, red, and blue.

Christmas in July… in November

It’s nearly Christmas! So it’s probably time to write about the Christmas in July challenge I did five months ago.

Christmas in July is what it sounds like. People celebrate Christmas in July. And I did it by doing art. Throughout the month I did 15 different art pieces – for seven different projects. I was going to write a single blog post for each project, but since I left it so late I figured one blog post would do.

This means I can either show you the pieces chronologically, with the projects mixed up, or I can show you the projects, with the pieces mixed up chronologically. This was a really tough decision, but I decided to go for the chronological order.

The first piece I did was just plain old doodles. Mostly copied from images on Pinterest.

Fatty helped me with that one.

The second piece I did was inspired by a tweet from Cult Pens. Apparently Mechanical Pencil Day is a thing.

So I used my Staedtler pencil to do this lovely little snowglobe scene.

The next piece is snowflakes – the start of one of the multi-piece projects.

I enjoyed drawing these so much, that I did another page. This is piece 3b.

The fourth piece is the start of another project. I knew I wanted to do some gnomes, so I started off with my usual method for new things. A page of sketches from images on Pinterest.

Number 5 is the final snowflakes piece. I went digital, and I really love the result. I might make it into Christmas cards maybe.

Next up is more gnomes research….

…and then a sketch for my final design.

Eight is a bauble with a whole lot of metallic sheen.

Nine, which you’ll noticed is also number 8 because I messed up, is some bright presents.

10 is my final gnomes piece. Also very cute, and also perhaps a future Christmas card.

Number eleven, which is numbered 10 because I hadn’t noticed my mistake yet, is the first is a run/addiction.

I loved doing this “ugly” sweater so much that I used the outline to make a few more. Here are pieces 12-15.

Bi Pride Month Monster

September was Bi Pride Month, which I found out from my friend on Twitter.

I am bisexual, and I LOVE the colour palette of the flag, so I decided I’d do a drawing for it at some point.

A week later I saw this adorable monster in a Facebook group.

It reminded me so much of the type of monster I draw (but with texture and detail) that I knew I had to do something in honour of.

Bi Pride Month + monster = Bi Pride Month Monster

It wasn’t quite done in September, but it still counts. Bi Pride can be all year round. And monsters are eternal.

I shared it in the Facebook group the other day and the original artist was delighted.

Birthday Pencils

What’s this? A blog post written in a reasonably timely fashion? Madness!

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My birthday was October 22nd, and one of the presents that my lovely boyfriend got me was a set of colouring pencils from The Works.

They aren’t high grade pencils, but I have a full set of Faber Castell Polychromos that I definitely don’t use to their full capability. Maybe a set of lower grade pencils would be better for me.

Step one – swatching. I know a lot of people find this tedious, but I really love swatching.

Next step, making a swatch sheet for the inside of the tin. The pencils have no markings on to identify colour or anything, so I cropped that photo from before…

… printed it off, cut a piece of paper the same size and swatched them out.

I made two mistakes when I did this. Firstly, I didn’t make the print out and the swatch the same size as the tin. That would’ve made it a lot easier to tell which pencil is which.

Secondly, I stuck it onto the lid upside down. Instead of peeling it off and resticking it, I just rearranged the pencils in the tin.

Finally I got around to doing some art. There’s a piece I’ve been meaning to do for Halloween/October since I had the idea months ago. A candy corn unicorn. So that’s what I did.

Sketch first…

…and then the final piece.

I am very happy with it. It’s so cute. And the pencils are awesome.

A Late Trend

To be fair, when I actually did the art, it was still a current trend. But as usual I’m late in writing about it again.

What am I talking about?

A few months ago there was a trend in the online art community of redrawing the blue-haired boy from the cover of an old classic “How To Draw Manga” book.

A lot of people had the book as kids, and it was a nostalgia thing. I never had it, but I love hopping on bandwagons.

I can’t remember where I first saw it, but Naomi Lord did it…

…and DoodleDate did it…

…so I did it too.

Here’s the cover in question.

And here’s my sketch.

And here’s my final piece.

He’s mildly derpy-looking, but most things I draw are. I think he’s cute nonetheless. What do you think?

Animaloonies – an Update

I have several ongoing series on my blog. Well, I have several folders of ongoing blog series in my blog folder. I haven’t actually updated any of them in far too long. So let’s update one now.

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The Twitter challenge Animaloon Collective is another series I enjoy occasionally.

And just like every other challenge, there are some months that I do, and some that I don’t, and some that I add to my list of ones to do eventually.

I didn’t do Giraffe, or Whale.

I did do Spider – although he’s not a balloon. I appear to be very sucky at turning the animal into the loonie.

I didn’t do Kids.

January was Mythical, which you’d think would’ve been perfect for me. Except I was super busy and never got around to more than a sketch.

I did do Wolf, and had loads of fun doing it. I love this piece.

And then I did Dolphin.

I skipped Anteater.

I did Meerkat.

I only got sketches done for Hippo.

I did Llama – as colourfully as I possibly could.

I skipped Cricket and Lynx.

And I’ve done Fish. Which is actually today. So not only have I done a challenge, but I blogged about it in time! Go me!

Colours of the Month – an Update

I have several ongoing series on my blog. Well, I have several folders of ongoing blog series in my blog folder. I haven’t actually updated any of them in far too long. So let’s update one now.

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This is one of my favourite challenges. It’s run by Marker Universe on Twitter, and I love any excuse to be given a palette.

Even the palettes that I haven’t done are sitting in my folder for when I can’t decide what colours to do. I don’t always use rainbow for things.

Here are some that I haven’t done yet.

Here’s some more I haven’t done yet.

And here’s September’s.

I just realised August 2021 is missing. Imma go find that and maybe do that. I’ll let you know if I do.