Sketches by the Shore

This past week I've been spending my time on a vacation of sorts in Puerto Vallarta/ Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. Of course I had my sketchbook with me and in the afternoon I doodled on the beach.
Here are some pages:

The 'e' looks really odd but I'll just say it reflects the reclining position I was in as I drew.

For this doodle I even wrote a little poem:

"What this small kitten wanted most of all,

Was an escape to a a place where she knew no one at all.

Where she'd have luxury and simplicity at the same time,

One hand with a pina colada, and the other on a tree she could climb.

She wanted to sit still and gaze at the sky,

See stars glimmering and airplanes fly by.

She wanted to sit there all day and all night

Without receiving a single bug bite."

A super lazy attempt at drawing from life.

Inspired by storm that came in the afternoon

This is another lazy attempt at drawing something realistic, this time a photo from a magazine

I was feeling poetic again

Now I'll try to use 7-8 sentences to describe each day of my trip:

1 - Saturday - After arriving at the hotel I did, in fact, get caught in the rain and have a couple of pina coladas.

2 - Sunday - It was the first time I had ever fallen asleep on the beach.

3 - Monday - The highlight of the night was getting dressed up and going to the Italian restaurant at the resort

4 - Tuesday - It turned out that swimming in the ocean was not really an option due to murkiness and sting rays popping up, so from this day I resorted to swimming in the pool each day for as long as possible - that is until too many people got in.

5 - Wednesday - It really baffled me why in an almost empty pool, people would prefer swim into the small section of the pool I was using, only to stop and tread water in place (at the most). "Move! I'm actually getting exercise here!"

6 - Thursday - Took a bus trip to the downtown of Puerto Vallarta to get some souvenirs and later that night I saw sea turtles hatching and going into the the ocean.

7 - Friday - Got my overgrown hair braided.

8 - Saturday - I've never seen so many Duty-Free stores in an airport that REQUIRE you to go through them in order to get to your gate. Kahlua and Baileys it is!

Patterned Pottery II

Well, there was a second plate from that ceramics workshop I mentioned in my previous post. We used the mold method to create plates in shapes of flowers, picture frames, or as in my case - a seashell. Unfortunately, when I got this plate back, it wasn't as nice and smooth as when I left it in the shop to be fired in the kiln...It had small bumps and scratches, especially on the bottom side. After being melodramatically grief-stricken (just kidding!) I realized that pattern ornamentation just happened to be the best solution for disguising these imperfections. Just a happy coincidence, which has nothing to do with my detail addiction, of course.

Originally I was going to paint this seashell using red, black, or blue. However I ended up being seduced by some of the promises my craft paints displayed on their packaging. A bottle of Gallery Glass paint proclaimed it would give me a crackled effect if I applied it to another Gallery Glass color. The only other bottle of this brand I had was green - so voila - I ended up with green. Sadly, when I applied the crackle medium, it didn't fulfill it's duty, even though I followed all the directions on the bottle. What a shame! Oh well, you win some, you lose some I guess.=)

Here's what I ended up with though:

My patterned bowl now has a friend!

Patterned Pottery

So, a long time ago a couple of my friends and I went to a ceramics workshop to make and paint plates. Due to my scheduling difficulties I was only able to go and make my pieces, but was unable to paint them. In turn, when I finally had the time recently I painted them at home. Since I don't have a kiln at my disposal, I just decided to use regular acrylic paints and varnishes to decorate. I decided to let my pattern-crazed tendencies to take over the design of this piece, and I'm pretty content with the result.

I'll have to scout out some ceramic acrylic paints later though - because I can absolutely see ceramic plate painting becoming a new hobby!

inside

I wish we didn't have to carve out our names when making our bowls...but oh well

And that's what the bowl is supposed to be used for - as a hat, clearly

One plate piece down, one more to go!

Happy Hedgemas!

Yes, that's right - a cheesy title.

Here are some Christmas themed hedgehogs that I've been slowly working on for the past couple of days. Awww...look how fat they are!

Done in Illustrator + Photoshop
Used my own textures + free online textures

Process:

Step 1: hand- drawn sketch

Step 2: In Illustrator - inked with the paint tool and coloured with live paint

Step 3: In Photoshop - Added some grass and gradients to the hedgehogs

Step 5: Added lots of textures, still in Photoshop

Step 6: Added some shadow definition with the burn tool and levels mask brush.

 Done!