Crafted By Colette

For December 1st-24th (and possibly a Christmas day bonus), I’ll be posting an art-related blog post every day.  If you visit my blog during this time, let me reassure you that I’m not just an art blog.  I do all the crafts.  You can look through my archives, or stay tuned for future posts, to see the other crafty things I get up to. 

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I’ve been spending a lot less time on Facebook recently, and a lot lot LOT more time on Twitter.  And one of the things I love about Twitter is the challenges.  So far I know of two art Twitter challenges, but I’m sure there are many many more.

The first one I found about was @AnimalAlphabets, discovered on an old DoodleDates video on YouTube.

Naturally I had to go and have a look.  When I looked the current letter was X…

So I had a google for animals beginning with X and drew this.

I noticed that the Twitter feed was sharing a lot of Xinjiangtitans, but figured maybe people couldn’t think of another animal beginning with X.  Then I realised that they were ALL Xinjiangtitans.  I must have missed something.  So I asked.

Yeah. I missed something.  I decided that since it was so close to the end of the alphabet I’d wait until the next round started.

The next round will be sea life and begins in the New Year.  For December they’re doing a two part Christmas special challenge.

I think maybe I had sea life in mind when I did mine, but then I have been meaning to draw an axolotl for months.  I did some sketches from reference images I found on Pinterest…

…and then I sketched out my own.  I coloured it with alcohol markers and I’m really pleased with how the blending and shading looks.  I love the outlining too.  Outlining in colour is something I’ve been wanting to try and I think it looks really striking.

Now, you might notice that he’s missing a Christmas jumper.  I may have cheated on that front.

It’s not a REAL cheat. I drew an animal beginning with A-M, and I drew a Christmas jumper.  I just didn’t draw them on the same piece of paper.  I love how it looks and I’m so tempted to change his outfit for different times of the year.

I promise that whatever animal I draw for the second half of the challenge will have a non-removable jumper.

I did say I knew of two Twitter art challenges, but this post is already pretty long and picture heavy, so tune in tomorrow to find out about the other one 🙂