I've been practising drawing realistic eyes after last week's study of the human eye – much easier when you know what lies under the skin! This was my first practice sketch using a photo as reference:

Today, for something a little different, a nice, messy impasto painting:

I spent a good chunk of yesterday making serious inroads in developing character profiles for a short story graphic novel concept I'm working on, and also did some studies of the human eye for practice. In keeping with yesterday's post, here is what fuelled me:

I couldn't do a farewell to 2011 post without also making mention of a few changes I've made to my diet in the last little while.
If you've been following my posts over the past seven months, you'll have noticed that I often blog about artist's fuel. I like to document some of the food I eat, and often times the most beautiful colours come in the form of fruits and vegetables – food for the artist's soul! One of my favourite salads is a combination of avocado, cherry tomatoes, red, yellow and orange peppers, and carrots. My favourite smoothie has three huge handfuls of baby spinach as a base, with fruit and yoghurt blended in. I've even managed to get my sister and some of her colleagues to try it, and I think they're convinced!
One of the best things you can do to keep your brain sharp and your body healthy and strong is to fuel yourself with lots of fruits and vegetables. By bumping up my fruit and veggie intake over the past year, I think I've been able to work harder, for longer periods, and perhaps more creatively. I intend to continue this practice (along with drinking lots of water and making time for exercise) this year as well. Good health is yet another tool I use to be the best artist I can be!

I wasn't thinking of doing a New Year's post ruminating about 2011, but then I read Janice Tanton's blog. In a recent post Janice wrote about ten stupid ways and ten meaningful ways to measure success as an artist, and it really resonated with me.
These days we tend to measure ourselves by how many hours we worked, how much money we made, or how much recognition we got doing what we do – all important elements in their own way, but are they the most important?
Did I learn something new in my work process or take a leap of faith and risk failing? I can say that this past year I did, and often. Starting a blog about my work, launching a website and deciding to write and draw a graphic novel were three things I embarked on in 2011 with more than a little trepidation, but the rewards were much more than I could have imagined. I can say that because of the risks I took trying things outside my comfort zone, the quality of my work has improved and I've gained much more confidence in my abilities and worth as an artist – that was the greatest measure of my success in 2011.
I set the bar pretty high last year, so I'm expecting great things from me in 2012!

My wonderful husband gifted me with a Kindle4 this Christmas – screeeeee!!!!
Ahem.
Finding a cover for the Kindle4 has proven to be somewhat difficult, and after trying three different chain stores, two of which didn't sell Kindle covers and one which was sold out, I decided to make a cover of my own... BREAK OUT THE GLUE GUN!!!!
I found myself enamoured with the printing inside the Kindle packaging (I know, weird), so I cut it out and used it to cover an old day planner. I reinforced the front and back covers with cardboard and spruced them up a bit with some typography transfers. Finally, I cut a leather pocket from an old bound calendar to make a pocket for the device, and glued a hair band across the top for support. The same hair band made the elastic front closure (topped with a button for decoration).
Feeling kinda like MacGyver tonight... I wonder how long until the cover falls apart...

Happy holidays everyone! Here's a little festive colour from Christmas day – champagne and liquor with field strawberries... delicious!

One of my weaker skills in life drawing is rendering realistic noses, so I've decided to practice, practice, practice until I get it right and it starts to come more naturally to me. This is the first set of nose sketches. I began with a light under-sketch of the anatomy of the nose, including all the planes of bone and cartilage, then I drew a tonal sketch over top, using the underlying anatomy to define shape and density.

During the next two weeks I'll be blogging infrequently in order to catch up on my writing, and also to catch up on my HUGE reading list. I'll be back to regular posts the first week in January. Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all, and thanks for visiting my blog this year!!

I'm a little bit in love with my new Staedtler mechanical pencil. I'm not sure why, but I've always loved these pencils – something about how substantial the pencil casing and leads are, maybe. Weird, perhaps. I like how subtle my lines are with this pencil, and how I really need to be economical with the values in my drawings – it doesn't take much to get to the point where you can't add any more dark values.
Ah, does anyone else tend to wax poetic about pencils?

I had to post a picture of a beautiful sunset we had this afternoon. Even though the sun was setting at 4:30, it was eight degrees Celcius outside, and it even rained for a bit. Weird but wonderful on December 19!