World Watercolor Month 2025: Remaining Days

 Here are the pics for the remaining days I did paint for July. My main takeaway: still need to work on my patience.

Day 8: Tired

Day 16: Geode

Day 18: Rigid

Day 29: Submerged

Day 30: Ornate

Day 31: Tower

April Drawing 22-30 (Daily Markers 285-293)

Another April Drawing has come to a close. This last week was pretty fun.

 Day 22: draw fire. I chose to do a simple candle, and I used some references to get the appearance. A dark background might have helped the effect, but I think it turned out all right.

 Day 23: draw cold atmosphere. A winter lake beneath some mountains.

 Day 24: draw warm atmosphere. In contrast, here's a desert road.

 Day 25: draw liquid (ex. blood, paint). I had in mind a puddle of watercolor paint.

Day 26: use your fav colors. I really like these three colors, B16, B18, and Y08. I probably could have used more colors since the blank white skin makes her look even creepier than I intended. And I'm so rusty at drawing people.

 Day 27: choose three markers blindly, AGAIN! Another drawing with random colors. This time I drew some variations on seaweed and used BG60, BG11, and YR16. For random colors, these went quite well together.

 Day 28: use only colors that end with number 7. For this piece I drew inspiration from starfish. The hardest part was doing the rocks; because I could only use markers that ended in 7, the grays I used blend into each other a bit and the linework is obscured.

Day 29: use cheap markers (prefer non-alcohol ones). I drew a Portuguese man-o'-war for the non-alcohol marker piece. This was a really interesting challenge because I've spent most of the year getting used to alcohol-based markers, namely Copics, and then I had to use a completely different kind. The challenge suggested using non-alcohol markers, so I opted to go with the washable markers that are meant for kids. I got a set of Crayola Super Tips, and boy are the results streaky. I think this is largely because of the paper I used; the Bristol paper probably didn't take the ink the way Crayola intended. I did buy some Crayola paper, and while they aren't on par with the blending I get with Copics, the Crayolas did blend a bit better on the brand paper than the Bristol. Not having a brush tip did not help.

Day 30: do again the challenge piece you were least satisfied with and then compare the two pieces. I wanted to Day 26 again. I did not like how I left her skin blank, which made her look pretty ghastly; also, there was nothing in the prompt that indicated I could only use three colors. So, here are the same colors plus E33 for the skin. Also, I think the drawing is stronger than the original.

Daily Markers: Days 250-263

March ends another month of my one-year marker challenge, and it ends with me just over 100 days away from the end. Yeah, I've decided I'm going to probably stop the public daily challenge because I'm getting a bit burned out (I plan to continue doing daily drawings for practice and working towards pieces). Anyway! The last two weeks include the proper 250th drawing and more work using the Strathmore 400 Series marker paper.

I did a simple fanart drawing of the masks the Daughters of Aku where in season five of Samurai Jack. I would like to do more fanart from the series, and the season continues the series' tradition of gorgeous art, so there's a lot draw upon.

 A simple, quick picture for the first day of spring. Used a brush pen for the lines.

 The Magic Mirror from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is another subject I want to come back to, namely drawing the Evil Queen and Snow White. I want to do more Disney fanart and kinda work through the animated canon.

As for the pic itself, this was a fun challenge. First, I had to find good references for the frame of the mirror and had to pick and choose the most consistent parts. I had fun working out how to do the spirit's face. In the original movie stills, near as I can tell, the forehead grades pretty smoothly into the upper cheeks and nose. I am pleased with how I was able to get the gradation and getting it rather smooth. The blackness of the mirror background helped to pull the face's colors together.

 A quick pic of a green lady elf-fae being. I played a little with using some pink for undertones on the cheeks, nose, and shoulders. It didn't blend as well as I wanted, but it helps to keep it from being too monotone.

 A bit of a humorous self portrait. Sometimes the ideas don't come. So I drew myself trying to brainstorm something.

A pawn

For the last week I chose to do some fanart of Sailor Moon; when all else fails, fall back on fanart of the classics.

I opted to do those referred to the Inner Scouts/Senshi and Sailor Chibi Moon. For this series I wanted to play with using colored lines for most of the portraits, except for black for the eyes; depending on the color, I used a combination of Pigma Microns and Copic Multiliners. I was inspired a piece of Sailor Moon fanart by Chihiro Howe that used blue lines, as well as other pieces in her overall work. Using colored inks add a different look to a piece than what you would get from using black. Depending on the color and application, I think it can soften the line art once the color is added. The black being used for the eyes helps to draw attention to them.

Over the course of the series, however, I ran into a recurring problem and a gripe I have with the paper. You can see it in many of the above pieces, but especially with Sailor Moon's, the ink for the line art tended to smudge. I'm not sure if it was because the ink wasn't thoroughly dried or just the nature of the paper, but it was frustrating for the ink to get picked up by the marker and ruining an otherwise fine picture. I understood for the portions where the ink was applied much more strongly, such as under the neck, but it seemed to be worse around the nose and lips. Maybe I need to let it dry longer or apply less before coloring.

And there were some problems with Sailor Chibi Moon's image. Short answer: refilled a maker a bit to much and it was too juicy, hence blotting. If you want to see the original before my fixes, you can see it here.

And that's it for this month. April is here, which means time for the April Drawing Challenge. I've done pretty well for the last couple of years. I'll continue with the marker challenge, but I'll be using Sadyna's 30-day marker challenge prompt list for inspiration.

Daily Marker Challenge: 201-206, Lots of Knots

When I don't want to think too hard about what to draw, I will pick a pattern/theme and stick with it. This week that theme turned out to be Celtic knots and spirals. I first learned how to draw Celtic knots and spirals in high school, but they are are pretty technical and easy for me to forget how to do if I haven't done some in a while. Thankfully, I found my two books on drawing them, and largely drew upon Draw Your Own Celtic Designs by David James and Victor Gonzalez to refresh my skills. Thank goodness for compasses, guides, and rulers. I still freehand the final designs, but the skeletons of each was drawn with help. It makes things so much easier.

New Year, Still Going Strong

Happy Belated New Year! The old year is over, the new year started, and I'm still going strong with my daily drawings and the marker challenge. For the last two weeks I've been doing mostly original pieces, which I admit is a little challenging coming off of Pokécember. I got used to having a list as a starting point for images, so when I have to resort to my own inspiration it takes a bit more work. Also, I don't always give that much time and effort to plan my pics, hence my original images can be pretty simple in concepts and execution.

I wanted to take a break from fanart for a while and do some original ideas. Here are what I have for the first two weeks. I started with a simple sword, then a demon from a random character generator, and eventually I started doing masks.

So, I still need to work on doing more studies and refilling my creative reservoir. I have an idea to do some illustrations from myths and fairy tales, but I need to take time to plan, thumbnail, and do some referenced studies so the pieces are better. And I want to continue with the masks, but I want to push them. I also want to do more standalone and larger pieces, not just the 6x6 in. dailies I have been doing. We'll see if I can do that.

Pokecember: 25-31

It's the last day of both the year and Pokécember. It's been a pretty good year for Pokémon, from the overall 20th anniversary (did you grab as many mythical pokémon from the giveways as you could?) to Pokémon Go to Sun and Moon. I am glad to use this month's challenge to try out a few things with my Copic markers. And now, to wrap up the year of drawings, here are the last seven days' of Pokécember drawings.

 25. Fave Generation Trainer (24): XY. It was the first game where you could customize your character, which I was so happy to have. I could change the appearance and the clothes, which makes the player character more like me. I also really enjoyed the Pokémon and setting for this game, especially Poke Amie. Glad to have both customization and a slightly modified version of Amie back in Sun and Moon.

 26. Fave Trainer Class: Pokemon Ranger. If I was an actual person in the pokémon world, I'd probably be a Ranger. I opted to go with the XY design because, again, I just really like the design of the rangers in that game. The uniforms look nice and I would wear it.
 

 27. Fave Rival: Blue/Gary Oak. Going classic with this one.

 28. Fave Gym Leader: Lenora from Black/White. The first gym leader of the game, but I liked her a lot.

 

29: Fave E4 Member: Siebold. I really liked the Elite Four members of XY, so it was a tough call which one I wanted to be my fave, but Siebold one out this time. He's a chef and a water user.

  

30: Fave Evil Team: Team Rocket. Again, going with the classics. Even now, 20 years later, everyone knows who Team Rocket is. Opted to go with the game's version and not the more familiar team of Jesse, James, and Meowth from the show because I wanted to homage the classic game grunts.

 

31: 20th Anniversary Moment. I opted to go with celebrating the overall game's anniversary. I had a couple memories I was tempted to use, but I don't know if I could get them across in the available space. But I can say that the reference used was the Pokémon Red cartridge I held onto over the years. I'm pretty sure I started with Blue, but kept the Red cartridge from my second attempt at the game.  So, what's better to celebrate the 20th anniversary than referencing one of the games that started it all?

And that's it for this month and this year. I'm rather pleased with the progress I've made over the last half of the year with my daily marker challenge, as well as my larger goal to draw something everyday (462 days strong!). I hope to keep both streaks going for the next year. I want to do larger and more polished pieces, as well as get back to the basics to strengthen my overall skills. I'll continue to work with markers as well as try to do more digital and watercolor/gauche paintings. And, if I can get my act together, I want to get to do some comics, probably short ones first followed with getting to an ongoing story. It'll take work, but I want to do what I can to add to the world what positive things I can.

Happy new year! May it be a creative and positive one!