Thursday, January 1, 2015

A new angel and some goals for the year

I finished this little lady on my blogging break. I wanted to to try an angel in the style of my gardening angels but without the flowers. She is a warm, hospitable, competent person, expert in the home arts.  Her pocket is like Mary Poppins' carpet bag, bigger inside than out. So far she has removed apples, flour, a bowl and mixing spoon. She still needs to pull out a table, a cutting board, a peeler, a knife, spices and some butter. The butter will, of course, be a cool room temperature, just right for cutting into flour for a flaky, delicate pie crust. 


I tried to draw her quickly with my Prismacolors, but I wasn't quick at all. I want to develop a lighter, more open style with the pencils--like the classic light hand with pastry crust. I did refrain from "underpainting" with hard Verithin pencils, a ridiculously time-consuming technique which involves smoothly filling in areas with a sharp, hard, colored pencil. It's like laying down a smooth, light watercolor wash, but slow. I like the soft depth of the Verithin "wash," but one of my New Year goals is to develop professional speed. I just need to start underpainting with watercolor. 

Here are some other arty goals for this year:

-to reproduce at least two new pendant designs in silver or pewter
-to make some one of a kind pendants in wood or other materials, for fun and to get more jewelry in my shop that doesn't cost me a bunch of money up front.

-to  develop my illustration skills by placing characters in more complex settings to tell a story. I want to practice on some of Hans Christian Andersen's less known tales.

-to incorporate hand lettering into some drawings

-to sell pictures on Society Six.

-to learn more and better ways to share my work through social networks. I now have an anthemsweet  Facebook page you can access on the side of this blog, as well as a Pinterest page. 

-to get my coloring pages up, and soon. Maybe that will involve getting a little more computer savvy so I'm not always waiting for smarter people to help me....  

In a day or two I'm going to give myself a make-a-thing-a-day twelve-day challenge. I'll tell you more about it then.

Happy new year, all!

2 comments:

  1. She's adorable. Now I'm feeling kind of lazy about not having any real resolutions for the new year. May all your goals be attained. Happy New Year!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is first time I've ever done New Year's plans of any kind! Unexpectedly, deciding not to touch the blog for ten days or whatever it was, created a space to realize what I want and put my desires into goal form. Another thing is having kids get bigger. Pent up energy is being channelled and released. Happy New Year to you!

    ReplyDelete