Squeeeee!  I got the most delightful package in the mail the other day & snapped a pic to share with you.  I’ve been following Emily Martin of The Black Apple for about a year now.  She’s primarily a painter, but she also makes dolls, ghosties and other crafty things when the mood strikes her.  She’s got a fantastic Etsy shop filled with prints of her gorgeous paintings and when she does a big update (one that includes original paintings and handmade goodness) things sell out in minutes.  Literally.  Like 3 minutes flat!

A couple of weeks ago Emily’s cat, Miette, was struck by some emergency health issues and required surgery (she’s recovering nicely, btw).  Emily quickly organized a benefit sale and knocked prices on her prints down to 12 bucks.  I couldn’t resist and snapped up two lovely scenes that I thought would look fab in my bedroom/office.  I haven’t framed them yet, but don’t you just love that mailer?  So cute!  I let out a little squeal when I saw my Black Apple package had arrived. 

I drew this little flying girl last night using the new watercolor pencils (not crayons) and am thrilled with the way she turned out.  It’s so much easier to get in and work on the details with the pencils.  I’m wishing I had a few more colors though, like a brighter pink, a nice copper and maybe a brilliant purple.  Ah the never ending world of art supplies!

Her dress is left plain because next week I’m going to be learning how to collage paper dresses.  She looked too sad with a vacant white body, so I had to at least scribble in a bit of color.  Can’t wait to dig through my paper stash and pick out a new dress for her!

Three cheers for colour! I’m so excited to be bringing my girls to life, first with the shading and now moving on to shading with color, but I’m finding it a little more difficult than I was expecting. I started off using some “Caran D’Ache neocolor II Aquarelle” watercolor crayons that I’ve had kicking around for years. I can’t even remember where or from whom I got them. I shaved & shaved with a box cutter , but had a really tough time getting them to a sharp enough point so I could do any small detail work. The big white crayon was great for blending though, as was the blender pencil that came in a sketching kit my stepson got a few months ago. Yay for finding art supplies around the house! Cuz my budget is tight with a capital T this month. This is my first try on paper:

After adding a bit of water, seeing the page get wavy, then seeing my black pencil lines get smudgier & smudgier (especially into the white of the eyes, which never fully recovered) I was starting to get frustrated. I tried to go over all of my lines with an ultrafine point black Sharpie. This worked well in spots, then got caked with wax & would stop working. Wipe it off…scribble scribble…try again. SLOW GOING. It worked out in the end, but I had to really scrape hard and when you’re working on paper? Just not a good idea.

I was convinced I needed to get the real watercolor pencils, plus some good non-watercolor pencil crayons & picked those up today. I went for a walk with the boys and they wanted to pop into the comic book store. Since I had the dogs with me, I had to wait outside and what did I see 3 doors down? That I’d somehow never noticed before only a few blocks away from my house? A little art supply shop! I love supporting independent businesses and the owner was a sweetheart. They welcomed me inside (yes, even the dogs!), then charged me only $1 for a couple of pencils, a little more for the rest ($1.50?). I’ll definitely be going back there when I’m in a pinch.

Can’t wait to do some more practice sketches on paper and then – on wood!

I’ve been adding blog posts over at Ning instead of posting here, but since the majority of what I’m working on right now has to do with the Suzi Blu workshop, I better start posting or it’ll be a good long while before we get a proper Cagey Bee update!

My girl sketches have grown leaps & bounds since we started adding shading. I love how Suzi shows us exactly what she does to give her girls depth. It’s not a lot, just a little around the eyes and along the jawline into the cheek, but wow! They don’t look like flat, lifeless little girls anymore! Yay!!!

As I keep practicing different faces, hairstyles and gestures, I find myself running out of ideas, drawing a complete blank. I flipped through a bunch of fashion magazines the other day and cut out models with cool hair or interesting dresses that would work for my sketches. Maybe I’ll glue them right in my sketchbook so I can always flip back quickly when I run out of ideas.

I posted this as a reply to a forum post on my Suzi Blu workshop discussing how we’d each lost our desire to make art, or if not the desire the gumption to just DO IT.  My story is pretty similar to the other ones posted there & the main problem boils down to something I struggle with in a lot of areas of my life – attachment to the outcome.

I loved drawing & making art as a kid, but once I got to high school it was time to decide what I was going to be for the rest of my life.  How does anyone have any clue at 16 years old what they’re going to be like when they’re 30?  It’s insane.

I decided I wanted to become a psychologist, so I filled up my course schedule with 3 sciences, math, statistics, English etc.  My electives got eaten up by the college prep stuff so I didn’t have time to take any of the “fun” classes in high school, like art or shop or home ec.  Which is funny to me now since those are the classes I would actually USE in my day to day life!  (After 1 year of college I figured out that even though I find human psychology fascinating, it would be very unhealthy for me to be immersed in it full time.)

Now I’m trying to make art for the sake of making art, for enjoying the creative process, for the love of feeling my hand move a brush loaded with paint across a canvas.  I’m trying to let go of my attachment to the outcome & NOT think 10 steps down the path.

Could I earn a living making art at some point?  It doesn’t matter.  Will I show anyone my art?  It doesn’t matter.  It’s not the point.  Just gotta breathe deep & let go!  And PLAY!!!!