A Year and a Day

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of me opening this blog, and I had wanted to post something to commemorate the moment, but I just couldn't decide what to share. I have many projects scattered about various corners of the house, more than one sketch pad in my backpack, multiple images captured on my camera phone, the beginnings of entirely new digital art pieces on my hard drive, but it's still not easy figuring out what to put on here and when. Some people carry journals around to write down their thoughts on the day well my sketchbook is more like a journal. The images in my head come from various encounters, dreams, random thoughts, the what ifs all tied into one journal entry. Some might wonder where the image of a man in armor fighting stone reptiles: Man It's What's for Dinner comes from or where a rose with petals shaped like skulls: Roses are Red may come from but that can be simply answered by the statement of, I see things differently. Man It's What's for Dinner started out from a Google image search, that's right I Google images, I had noticed that most of my artwork was beginning to focus on the female form and I didn't have enough male form based artwork so I searched for body builders. When I found a pose I liked I printed off the black and white image and used it as reference, instead of the body builder having the tight spandex briefs, that in the reference photo was obviously giving him a wedgie, I turned him into a gladiator. Roses are Red began as a what if I could turn a skull into a rose thought, so I found an image of a skull and used Photoshop to skew the skull into positions that would replicate the petals of a rose to serve as a template for me to use as reference. Once I got the sketch completed I got it into the computer and used Photoshop once again to airbrush the colors in.

What mostly matters is that inspiration comes in all forms and from anywhere and it is important to continue to pursue new sources and create what comes to mind. In one year and one day I have posted 48 entries and have gained an audience that continues to come back for more. I thank you for joining me on my journey and continuing to return as I continue to be inspired and learn new techniques. While I work on more sketches and pursue new reference materials I will share these photos:

Despair

This is a piece I'm considering for a writing project. I'm hoping that I can create enough poetry to go with some of my art pieces and vice versa. It's an ambitious project and will take me quite a chunk of time to complete, but various pieces of poetry and artwork for poems will make their way onto this blog, for example one of my previous entries LOVERS will be making it's way onto the manuscript pile.

This may or may not be the final image, I have a different image also created and I've been debating between the two, as to which one is the stronger representation for the poem. When I make my final decision I will make another post to share the journey of art and writing with you, but for now here is the initial rendering.

Despair

You can also now find some of my pieces like this one on deviantART: http://angela-way.deviantart.com/ this will be where you can purchase some of my pieces until I am able to print sizes larger than 9 X 12 and set up my amazon.com store. Or you can contact me through the e-mail on this site if you would enjoy owning an original art piece of mine.

Green Milky Way

I've been learning new techniques on how to create starry backgrounds out of the book EXTREME WORLDS drawing and painting sci-fi art by Francis Tsai out of the Impact series.

As part of a request on www.hitrecord.org calling for visual artists to create stars and galaxies I thought this would be a good trial for the new technique I've been using. The reason this image is done in shades of green and black is part of a story we are creating for the HitRECord on TV show on the new television network Pivot, it started with a story by a contributing artist roswellgray where she tells us how she is losing her sight due to being diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa she was diagnosed as a child and is night blind and unable to see the stars the way that those of us not affected by this diagnosis, that the first time that she was able to see the stars was through night vision goggles. I'm not certain this is how she saw the Milky Way for the first time, but this is my interpretation.

Deadly Desire

I've been blocked lately not on ideas for projects, but more so on what to work on first and what to release next. Going back to my previous posts Roses Are Red and Concept Art I feel it is time to release the full piece that I am calling Deadly Desire:

Deadly Desire

Though it is difficult to see there is a small skull rose pendant being held by two skeletal hands around her neck. I used the pattern stamp brush set to black marble for the floor, walls, and alternate stairs, once that was set I used the pattern stamp brush set to white marble to fill in the remaining stairs for both marble settings I used the brush's Multiply blending option. For the gold tone I played with each layer's blending options using pattern overlay and color overlay and playing with the opacity of the overlays.

Hedy Lamarr

I was debating on whether or not to post this, leaning more toward not posting this portrait attempt. However, the more I continued to think on what I could do with this the more it grew on me and the fact that I am still learning how to use inks just reminds me that not everything is going to look right. I know what mistakes I made and I will be learning from them so that I can improve. When I began the black and white pencil sketch I was looking at an odd angle to the computer screen and what began as a sketch of Hedy Lamarr began to look more like Helena Bonham Carter, but instead of crumpling the sketch up and throwing it over my shoulder I took some advice from my high school band director, John Howell:

"If you're going to make a mistake make it look good. That way if anyone [points] says 'hahaha she made a mistake! [rubs chin] But it looked good.' "

So with that in mind, I took out the metallic colored generic permanent markers and went all out. After shading with the different colors it became a bit of pop art, but more of a likeness of Hedy Lamarr, not an exact match but I will make another attempt. Here is the current attempt:

Hedy Lamarr