Menagerie of Creativity » Illustration

Hyacinth in Ink and Watercolor

Alicia — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:38:59 +0000

I drew a hyacinth with a cute little bee for a friend’s birthday. I used some watercolor and my Manga pen set (indian ink) and you might not be able to tell from the photo, but there is some metallic pen too.

Illustrating a bunny

Alicia — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:32:56 +0000

I enjoy being able to practice art through different mediums, including digital. It’s fun to take a sketch and move it from an idea to a digital illustration A while back, I created a bunny illustration.
This is the final result.

I’m posting this because I thought it would be interesting to document the stages of this bunny. First, I drew a fast and rough sketch of the shape.

I immediately knew I wanted this bunny to have some attitude and tribal-esque lines. So with tracing paper I kept the shape and re-drew the bunny to get the below image, which is pretty close to the final version.

Then I scanned it into the computer and imported it into Illustrator and did a live trace. This gives me a baseline to work with. The lines can be rough, and not where I want them to be…but from there I spend time moving the lines to get what I want. I’m not particularly fast at it yet. The same process happens with some of the logos I create, but I haven’t done much as complex as this bunny for any logo. So doing things like this are good practice.

I wanted to post the rough stage after the live trace, but I seem to have lost those files…

Orchids in Ink

Alicia — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:57:31 +0000

In April of 2009 I visited Washington DC and luckily bumped into a great orchid exhibit (although I can’t remember which museum we were in). I wanted to do a few art pieces for xmas gifts and waited too long to let the oil paint dry so I decided to do some ink drawings of some of the orchid photos I have on hand.

Each received a light watercolor wash for color and the ink was applied on top. I have also included the photos that served as inspiration.

The Art

The Inspiration

I was also lucky to have the opportunity to see my aunt who traveled all the way from England over the holidays. She has asked me for an ink drawing inspired by her stories about her chickens. That should be interesting.

Below is a photo of my aunt and I, albeit a bit of a fuzzy one. The rough part of being the only one who can operate the digital SLR camera is that when other people touch it, they don’t understand quite how to get it in focus.

Holiday Card Flower Illustration

Alicia — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:50:16 +0000

This holiday season some lucky people will be getting a holiday card from Robert and I with a hand illustrated North Carolina flower on it. I really needed to decompress today. I feel like I am constantly working and it makes me agitated and irritated. So I decided to do some drawing because I don’t always feel like cleaning up paint. I drew the below flower freehand in pen and ink. When I am sketching before I paint, I tend to spend time on proportions with a ruler and light pencil, but I just didn’t have the patience today.

I liked the flower so much that I scanned it into the computer, did a live trace in Illustrator and added holiday colors to it for a card. The printed version will sport a lighter, brighter green so the pen lines don’t get lost. If you want to make sure you are getting the card this year, please email me your mailing address. I lost them all when my computer crashed nine months ago.