Winter is coming...

As much as I hate to admit it, winter is not only coming, but actually here.  :S  I used to love this time of the year, with all of it's snow and gift giving and outpouring of general love and awesomeness, something happened at some point in my life that has turned me against it. 

I'm not even sure why, but now I have such a hard time with the winter months.  My body doesn't seem to like it anymore either.  My hands get very dry and achey, I'm always tired and I pretty much as frozen solid the entire time.

But I keep trying to remember that this is a good time of the year and that I have lots and lots of stuff to be thankful for.  I'm trying to stay inspired and it seems so far that lots of color and painting anything I can get my hands on helps.  ;)  Here's a page from my art journal and a little daily post it doodle to try to stay creative so far. 

And a little digital something since it's been a month that I've shared anything digitally related. :O  Hope you enjoy! :D

Mixed media + hearts = love

Hearts seem to be popping up in some of my mixed media lately. 

Sketchdump

Just a sketchdump of all the weird things I've been creating with a new digital brush.

Free wallpaper and a new pony!

I doodled this up last night, and as a reminder to myself, I added Cutie Mark above it, to remember to add one (I'm forgetful like that), when I realized it would be fun to have her name actually be Cutie Mark. LoL! And such a name obviously requires an ability to draw and create cute stuff, hence the pencil and crayon. (Recognize them from anywhere? ;D) The speech bubble probably seems out of whack with the photo, since it also looks like she could be sleeping, but it's sort of how I have been feeling lately, as I've had a terrible cold thing I can't seem to shake and am always exhausted. This picture sort of sums up how I feel most of the day these days. As if I could fall over at any moment and either fall asleep or just lay there. LoL! I think this pony is definitely a relative to Pinky Pie.

And here's a couple of wallpapers I drew up last night that I thought I would add for you guys to use.  :)  They are for personal use only and I would appreciate no altering/selling/redistributing/etc. of them, but if you want to use one as your Iphone 5 or desktop wallpaper (size 2560 x 1440), you are free to do so.  If you have trouble saving them, you can download the Iphone one here and the Desktop one here.  Enjoy!  (If other sizes become a high demand, I will be more then happy to create them.  I just wasn't sure if anyone would even like them, so I just did a couple of basic ones for fun.  Leave a comment if you'd like to see more sizes.  :) 

Some random things and weird practice.

 Some weird painting practice things.  I don't even know... O.o

 This is a bit out of season but I couldn't seem to help myself. I've been wanting to do a creature in this style for ages and this is apparently what came out of my head.  :p

These are just some hideous scribble pages of me trying to get back into my drawing groove after going a week or so of having almost done little to no drawing.  :/  I hate when that happens.  It feels like forever before I can get back into my drawing groove.  >.<  Hopefully this week won't be so quiet around here and some good ideas will eventually pop into my head.

Some random things and a dancing bug

Just some random things.  I'm pretty sure you can figure out the gist of them without any descriptions for each, so I won't bore you guys with any of that on this post. ;)  If you do have questions, feel free to ask.  You can also find me on facebook and deviantart if you'd rather contact me there. 

And an interesting fact I just discovered is that I just saw a link on my stats that led to this post, that is apparently based off of my original blog post here.    They referenced use of my page and even the page that I used as reference (I'm assuming I was somehow their main reference for that to happen).  So I guess that's pretty cool.  I can't imagine anyone learning anything from that post though LoL!  If anyone does happen to use it to make a sketchbook, I'd love to see how it comes out.  ;D 

 Just a little doodle. I called him Mr. Ducky at first, but now that I think about it, I'm not even sure he's a duck? Should it be sir clucky? Does it even matter?

Regardless, this came out way better then I anticipated. O.O The hat seems a bit out of place with my terrible shading on it, but it can always be removed I suppose.

 

I wasn't sure what to do with my doodle, so I added him to this. I still don't quite know the adventure, but it makes for a fun, weird scene I guess. That rabbit and key could definitely be fun in a series of their own. I really should try writing this stuff out sometime and come up with actual ideas that make sense. :/

Sketches and more people

 Some quick sketches and color/line/whatever else practice while recuperating from a nasty cold.

The pet here was originally a cat. But it looks more like a dog to me. :/ But I liked the way the girl came out.

Tea and sketches

Sorry for being so quiet. Just been insanely busy. :S And I've been uploading some of my sketches and whatnot to my scrapbook file rather then to my regular DA page, just to keep it from looking to terrible. :) But took a few minutes to doodle this up last night. Wanted to try creating some quirky characters and wanted to do something similar to Alice in Wonderland, so I somehow created this. :/

Oh, Can you spot the white rabbit? :)

Just some random practice, specifically working on eyes.

Just some random sketches. Trying to work on my people skills, which really really suck. :/


I've also been putting some other things into my scrapbook file on Deviant art. They may not get shared in other places, so click here if you want to check them out to see if you've missed anything. ;)

Sketchy stuff and aliens

Aliens version 1. Didn't like the moon and stars, so...

...created version 2. :)

And some random sketches just to keep my creative juices flowing. ;) Happy Thursday! :D

Doodles

Random doodles and practice stuff. I've went so long without sharing any of my work before, that I want to keep a visual reminder of the things I've drawn that I can easily reference later. Thus, the mass amounts of sharing lately. ;)

Ponies and pastels

I always have the hardest time getting back into drawing if I skip a few days. :/ Even if I draw by hand, digital drawing just eludes me if I don't draw with it everyday. Even if I have twenty ideas, my mind just goes blank looking at that white screen. :/ So I normally fall back to drawing random ponies when that happens. And I ended up creating this little pony. I suppose her name is Galaxy? I tried playing with another brush, that I really need to use on a project, so it was great practice for that at least. :)

Here's the same pony with a small scene of her own. I need to draw more backgrounds. :p I don't care for my trees at all, but I like the rest. Although I had to darken the pony a bit so she wouldn't blend in so much with the background.

It is winter here. Nasty, cold, leafless winter and I absolutely can not wait until spring. And I've seen so many pastel colored arts lately, that it makes me think of Easter and flowers and all things beautiful, so I decided to sketch some pastel colored things myself to work on my coloring a bit. It's one of the first times I've actually drawn something in a way that I like. And I actually picked the colors myself rather then using a reference or pre-created color scheme like I normally would. Hopefully that means my artistic talents are getting better. ;D

Is it really almost Christmas? :O I keep trying to tell myself I have more time then I do. And every year, I always try to tell myself I'm going to make at least one handmade gift for everyone, which never happens. :/ But, if you're in the holiday spirit and want to make stuff either as gifts or just as a treat for yourself, be sure to check out these fun sites. They have tons of ideas!

101 Handmade Christmas Ornament Tutorials

101 Simple Handmade Gift Tutorials

Henry Happened

And if you're looking to buy some Society6 prints or merchandise, they're doing a promotion that currently runs through December 9th. Here's the link to my items, but if you have your eye on an artist or their work in particular, be sure to check out their work while you can to see if they have an offer available as well. :)

Society6

Their site notes: Promotion expires December 9, 2012 at Midnight Pacific Time. *Offer excludes Framed Art Prints, Stretched Canvases and Throw Pillows with insert.

Now, on to sharing some pictures. These are actually reworked images of the pony sketch I shared before that you can view here and here.

Holidays and warm ups

Just a warm up of a silly bunny. :3

I'm thinking I'm going to do my Christmas cards by hand, as I don't have that many and I don't always get to draw traditionally anymore. But I can't seem to help from coming up with Christmas ideas digitally. Here's one that clearly doesn't have much pre thought to it. I think it would be a good item for something like a postcard? Maybe a good layout for a letter to Santa? Possibly a calendar page (which is why it says December)? Haven't decided what else to do with it yet, but it's fun to create items for the season. :)

Some new sketchy-ish things

Some new sketchy sorts of things.

This is currently my new avatar for DeviantArt.

This was done with the chibi-like pink sketchy pony I posted yesterday.

And this....well, this is a lochness sweater monster. :p I hope you like him. He's sort of shy but really fun to be around. :)