Lunar New Year 2019!
Today’s post is a fun one since it features my tribute piece for this years Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year!
Tag: illustration
My Favorites from January 2019!
Hello everyone and happy February! It is time to reflect on the previous month by looking at some of my favorites from January, as well as wrapping-up my thoughts on the month! Lets get started! Enamel Pins! In January, I found my next obsession…enamel […]
Welcome 2019! Setting Goals for the New Year!
Hello everyone and welcome 2019! In today’s blog post I want to go over some of my goals for this New Year!
New Year’s resolutions or goals can be daunting, but I think it’s important to pick positive goals anyway, because it sets the energy and your outlook for the year. Even if you don’t meet some of your goals or they change completely, don’t beat yourself up over those things, because we all grow and change each month and so will our goals.
That being said, my whole outlook for 2019 is to be productive, consistent and have a fresh start! Coming out of 2018, I just felt stagnant and in need of new energy. 2018 was just a weird year, and even though I had important milestones that happened (such as graduating from my university and having my first solo show), it felt as if nothing really occurred in the year, and it went by so fast.
For 2019 though, there are specific goals I want to set for different parts of my life–achieving this fresh start I am craving.
Starting with…
Personal Health Goals
Meditating Daily
This is something that I have done on and off for a few months now, but for this New Year I really want to make this a daily habit. I want to become more mindful of my own thoughts as well as the world around me.
Daily Fitness
Similarly to meditation, the previous year I was never consistent with a workout regimen and my health, quality of sleep, and energy levels reflected that. This year, I plan to fix all of that and become more consistent, both in working out and my nutrition.
Work Goals
Original Art & Merch
A big goal of mine this year is to start selling original artwork, prints, and other merch! I’m already starting to work on updating my Redbubble shop regularly, and I am in the process of finding good options for creating prints. So stay tuned for more news on that in the coming months!
These two are now available on my Redbubble Shop!
Starting up YouTube again
This year I plan to throw myself completely into making videos again! I really enjoy watching YouTube (even though it is far from a perfect platform, but what is nowadays?), and as typical of me…if I enjoy consuming it, I want to join in on the making of it. I already have a number of videos planned and in the works, and my challenge is to have 2 videos up a week starting in February!
If you would like to see my most recent video, feel free to watch it HERE.
New Skills
Upgrading my Jewelry making skills
Something I’ve always wanted to try is silversmithing. I personally prefer better quality jewelry over something that is cheaper and has a limited lifespan. I know I like working with very process and tool centric mediums, so I have a good feeling that silversmithing may become a new favorite of mine…once I get the hang of it of course!
Digital art
I’ve only done a little bit of digital art in my time, and I’ve found it very overwhelming. This year though I plan to break through my awkwardness of using digital programs, and add this important skill to my tool belt. One of the ways I plan to tackle this is by making a webcomic; that way I can practice both the digital side of things as wells as visually storytelling.
Other
The last goal I will mention for this blog post is more in the hobby realm of things, and that is to finish at least 1 book every month. I love reading, but for the majority of 2018 I was in a massive reading slump. I didn’t finish reading any traditional novels last year (but I did read some graphic novels). For my reading goal this year, I am aiming for 24 books. Very low compared to other years, but I rather start low to move out of my reading block. 12 of the books out of my goal must be traditional novels. I’m planning on writing blog posts reviewing the books I finish, so keep your eyes out for that!
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So those are some of my goals for 2019! I hope you guys enjoyed finding out what I’m planning, and now I want to know what you guys are doing for 2019!
What are your goals for this New Year?
Let me know in a comment! 😉
Thanks for reading, and I will see in the next one!
RedBubble Update!
Hello everyone, and I hope you are having a happy holiday! I just recently published these four festive mermaids up on my RedBubble shop! It is a goal of mine for 2019 to regularly be adding new works to my shop, as well as some […]
My Favorites for August & Wrap-up!
Can you believe we are already in the month of September? Time has gone by so fast! But that means it’s time to do my favorites for August and wrap-up! Favorite reads of the month Didn’t finish any major novels this month but as […]
The 12 Zodiac: Leo!
Hello everyone, and today will begin my 12 zodiac series of illustrations and blog posts!
I have had these illustration ideas waiting for their final phase for quite a while now, so I’m excited to finally be sharing these with you. I spent a lot of time looking up different things about all the zodiac signs so that each illustration would have the right symbols and colors for its corresponding sign.
So to begin this series, let’s talk about our first sign…Leo!
Leo—July 24 to August 23
Since we are in the month of August, I thought it would be best to work on Leo. Leo’s are characterized as being warm, noble, loyal and humorous while some of their weaknesses are arrogance, vanity, and stubbornness. Do keep in mind though, if you are born August 19-25 then you could be a Leo-Virgo cusper. This means you can present characteristics of both signs!
Keeping these traits in mind I wanted the main lady of this illustration to have a very regal and fierce look about her. Her hair needed to be reminiscent of a lion’s mane since this is the main symbol and animal for Leo’s. She also needed to have the gold and yellow colors associated with the sign.
Orange was another color for Leo that I used throughout the illustration, with a lot of it being seen on the background sun motif and the sunflowers themselves. Sunflowers are one of the main flower symbols for this sign, but instead of making them a bright vibrate yellow, I wanted something a little more muted or closer to a burnt orange/gold. I found some good reference photos to use as a base for this.
Body & Glyph
Something I wanted for each sign was to make sure that their symbol or glyph was in line to the body part in which that sign ruled. For Leo’s, you rule the heart which corresponds nicely to your “born leader” attitude and affectionate nature. The glyph itself is often interrupted as a simplified lion with other interpretations relating to your ruling “planet”, the Sun, or even two halves of a heart.
In my illustration I placed the glyph as a pendant over her heart with her hands encircling it, which draws your eye to the symbol, but not in an overbearing way. I also made her dress purple to relate back to the royal and regal personality traits of the sign.
Finishing Touches
As is typically for me with most of my illustrations, I use a mix of supplies with watercolor being my core component. I also used colored pencils, some alcohol based markers, ink pens, and for the final flair…metallic gold watercolors. These are some of my favorite watercolors because they are rather versatile with how opaque you can make them, plus! Leo’s metal is Gold, so it was necessary to add a lot of this to really drive home the kingly and rich aspects of the sign.
Compared to when I first started this series back in 2017 with just black line art, my style and skill has changed considerably. I didn’t change too much from those original sketches, but I did make some upgrades when it came to anatomy, especially for the face since the original version had quite a different expression and style about the eyes.
I’m definitely looking forward to how all of these will look once finished and how things will change by the last illustration.
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I hope you guys enjoyed the first of this 12 part series, and let me know what you thought. What zodiac do you look forward to seeing next? Do you believe in horoscopes, and do you identify with your sign?
Let me know in the comments below! 😉
My Favorites for July & Wrap-up!
Hello everyone! We have officially wrapped up the month of July, so it’s time to recap some of my favorite things from this month! Books I Read… Over the past few months I haven’t done much traditional novel reading, and I still have a […]
What I Love About Tea
Why I Drink Tea I personally don’t drink coffee (I know—a college student and artist who doesn’t drink coffee, unbelievable!). I have tried a few times through the years, but every time I do, I always feel pretty bad afterwards. So I’m afraid coffee and […]
Current Art Updates & Future Projects
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” –Pablo Picasso
My Art courses this spring
Last semester I dipped my toes into the realm of printmaking and painting, and I am continuing that this semester, as well as trying out some 3D work—ceramics! I was honestly a little nervous to take ceramics since I am primarily a 2D artist, and some of my past 3D experience had a lot of misses. I’m happy to say though, that ceramics has been incredible fun so far, and pretty refreshing! There is something nice about the process of working with clay, and you may be surprised at how many principals from other mediums cross over! I can very easily lose track of time in the ceramic studio. It’s been a very calming experience.
The elements of craftsmanship and touch play a big role not only in ceramics, but also printmaking and painting. This is a part of working in the studio that I love, since it is really about the process of building up an image or form, and each step feels just as necessary as the last one. I’ve gained some pretty cool skills from working on craftsmanship, such as building frames, which has been more important than you would realize!
Real world experience
http://www.vagazette.com/life/va-vg-wcac-wm-0214-story.html
Just recently, my fellow senior art majors and I put together a professional show at one of our local gallery’s. For many of us, this was a very new experience since we normally show our work for the campus community, but this time we were presenting our work to the general public! I showed a total of 4 pieces, 3 of which were prints of mine and one watercolor piece. Both openings for the show (one for members and one for the public) went very well and it was so interesting to see which pieces people asked me questions about. Overall, I would say that my most popular piece was my watercolor sketch of my character Tiger Lily. I was pretty happy about this since this is also a favorite of mine.
Beyond assignments
Outside of general assignments, working on various drawings, paintings etc…I do my best to purse my own little art projects, mostly in what I consider my illustrative style. Since October when I took place in Inktober (a monthly challenge where you create an ink drawing everyday) and completed it; I thought it would be fun to give myself some kind of monthly challenge throughout the year. Of course this can be difficult to balance with everything else I’m doing, but I’m not going to stress about missing a day two, just as long as I draw something every day!
So for the month of March, I’m planning to do some illustrations based around Mythology! MythoMarch as I’m calling it! My basic prompt list is available at my Instagram, so if you would like to join, please do! Use the Hashtag #MythoMarch and tag either @Gossamery_dreams and/or @Ciarra_13 and share with us your creations! Art, photography, writing…it’s all welcomed!
Along with this, I have been finishing up an older series of mine of Artist Trading cards. I have been doing some Youtube videos about it, as well as posting previews and the finish pieces on my social medias. Once the series is finished, I plan to post all the cards up onto my Redbubble which is currently in the works!
It’s nice to set some littler goals for yourself to look forward each month to keep you motivated!
Another big project I’ve been working on for awhile now is nearing its finally stages. It consists of 12 illustrations that I plan to sell as prints on Redbubble as well as the originals in our store! More updates to come on that! 😉
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Thank you everyone for reading this little update of mine! If you are interested to learn more about my work or process, please do leave a comment saying so, because I would love to cover the topics that you guys are interested in!
Until next time!
