I don’t know how far this will go, since it is in the very beginning stages. But I was approached about doing some small pieces of art for a client that he could then give away to his customers. That made for a challenge for me.
What sort of art? I hadn’t done regular art consistently for a while, so finding a method that suited me would take a few steps. There there was the matter of what to do them on. Art paper can be expensive. I settled on getting some card stock at Kelly Paper, cards designed for announcements. This gave me a good surface to work with, and because this particular card stock has a pressed border, it’s very handy with a pre-determined frame.
So I experimented.
I’d been wanting to try and draw a firebird for some time, using a peacock in flight as the model. So I figured, why not try it now. It came out okay. Not ideal, but since I was getting a feel for working with the colored pens again, satisfying enough.
I went on to experiment with a second picture, that I called “Red Eye.” It was more intended to give me an idea of how well the differences in some red pens showed on the card stock (not as well as I would have liked). I played with the idea of people taking a late flight, so the eye cries planes instead of tear-drops.
Then I hunted down an image reference of a spot in Malibu, and did a miniature landscape of it, using stippling. This piece turned out more more along the lines of what I’d be happy to have out in the world. I’m much more used to doing stippling in black and white, so the possibilities of doing it in color shall be intriguing.
As I said, I’m not sure what will come of this, but it’s an interesting opportunity. I’ve been wanting to do some artwork a bit more often lately, and this is certainly an option.
I’ll be taking photos of the pieces as I finish them, just to have a record of what I’ve worked on.
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