ACEOs Are Done, and An Afternoon of Sketching

The weather's been a bit weird the past couple of weeks; we're getting our fall preview, I guess. Temps have been more like the UK was in August (in the mid-60's in the day and the 50's at night), except for this weekend, where we had a small burst of summer heat.

I spent the afternoon sketching outside on my back porch.

And my ACEO cards are done and living in their clear sleeves and inserted  into Strathmore Frame Cards. I finished all of them yesterday. I activated the Derwent Inktense pencils with a brush I acquired in the UK at the art supply store in Bath, on the recommendation of the saleswoman. It's a Pentel Aquash brush, with a self-contained water reservoir - rather designed specifically to use with watercolor pencils, I think. It lets you work in watercolor out in the wild without having to deal with bowls of water.

Here are photos of some of the cards before cutting and packaging:

ACEOs for the fall (WIP)

I started working on some artist trading cards last night for a Halloween card/gift exchange among members of one of my online communities. Here are some progress shots.

I like creating my ACEOs on large paper and cutting them down to size. The pencils I've used to color these are Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. This is the first time I've tried them. I haven't "activated" the pigment with water yet, so I don't know how it's going to act. I wanted a good scan of these before I get them wet, just in case I mess something up.

I quite like my Pumpkin Witch. I think I'll do a few more of her over the weekend. I'm also digging my Totoro-influenced raccoon.

sketching again

I've been working with paper and pencil and ink a lot at home, to get away from the tablet and Adobe applications that I spend most of the day working with at the day job. However, I really enjoy working with the Procreate app on my iPad. It has the most "natural" brushes of any of the iPad apps I've been trying (and I've been trying most of them, believe me).

I doodled this while watching TV last week, and trying out the "fill area" feature they added in the latest update.

Right now, I'm using either the Sensu double-ended stylus ("fingertip" on one end and paint brush on the other end) or the Wacom Bamboo stylus. I am really seriously considering getting the new Wacom Intuous Creative Stylus 2 when it's released next month, and maybe I can hold off finally investing in a Cintiq drawing tablet for a while longer.