Drawing Lab Challenge compilation

I spent last week taking new pictures of all my Etsy items on my shop. I think the shop looks more refreshing now. I'm also creating a new cute design set. Will talk about it soon. But for today, let's talk about some sketching!

I have totally neglected my participation in Drawing Lab Challenge for so long. It's about time to catch up with it now.

These are 3 labs I just did last weekend. Not really complete pieces, just hand drawn practice and I enjoyed them very much :-)

Lab 41 : Nature Walkabout

The idea of this lab is to grab paper and pen and walk outside, observe and draw whatever you see. Fill the page. Come back and connect all the things you draw together to make one piece of work. This is my final:



And this is what I had drawn before:



Lab 12 : For Your Eyes Only

Basically just to draw eyes. There are more details in this practice but I was too tired to follow everything. So, I just enjoyed drawing. First realistically:



Then stylized:



I wish I would draw more weird shapes, play something with these but it seems that I kept repeating some similar lines. My imagination didn't work very well that night :-P

The last one, Lab 24 : Scribbly Drawings

Just scribble. Work lines from within not from outline as we generally do. I drew my little bear doll. It's a strange feeling not to draw outline first but It's getting more fun as I drew and drew. I guess I could keep on drawing through the whole book!



I love my little bear running on the lower right corner, do you?

Drawing Lab Challenge : Imaginary Creatures

I had a bad headache this morning.

Luckily, I didn't have much work today (actually, I had some but with such headache, I thought it could wait :-P) So, after finishing some work edit, I decided to play with my brand new set of this water color paints I just bought :-)



The last time I painted water color was when I was at school, a long-long time ago. What made me go out and buy this set was a challenge called Drawing Lab Challenge hosted by Gumnut. The challenge is to create art pieces based on a wonderful book, Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artrist written by inspiring Carle Sonheim. The book is full of exercises for those who love drawing, amateur or professional, anyone who wants to boost up his or her creativity.

This week's challenge is creating imaginary creatures. I set up the tools with brown paper cut off from a shopping paper bag. The little piece of flower-pattern paper on the right side of the shot is the other side of the bag :-)



Then, I followed the book's instruction : paint random marks on paper. I had no idea what I was doing. The brush in my hand felt awkward and I didn't know how to mix the paints or how to work with water. I just put colors on paper.



While waiting for the paints to dry, I did more on my Moleskine. This time I tried to make it as pretty as I could. I was amazed by how translucent yellow looked and Green looked almost fluorescent. Watching red flowing and blending with dark green somehow gave peace to my mind :-)



Let's come back to the brown paper. The next step was to imagine : from what I painted, could I see imaginary creatures? I didn't see it at first but when I started tracing some paint borders, my creatures took shapes...



Can you see my creatures? The obvious one must be the penguin with his fluffy scarf :-)



And now another spread for my Sketchbook Project!



I had so much fun with this exercise and by the time I finished this fun drawing, my headache was long gone :-)