#this difficulty in transferring an idea from head to canvas c':

[elvyn]

Justice

[mysticsparklewings]

Dancing Beads

I'll be honest with you guys, I've had a rough past couple of days. Heavy anxiety hanging over me like a thick fog, making it difficult to think straight, let alone work. That's why I submitted a WIP shot of this drawing earlier in the week. It was technically finished, but I just didn't have the stamina and focus to get it ready to post on Wednesday, and I pretty much knew that I wouldn't have it in me to make something else new to go up today. That said, I am feeling a little bit better and I hope that means I'm coming around the bend and will be truly back and ready to rock in another day or so. In the meantime, let's talk about the artwork, shall we? This is sort of an extended OOTD (Outfit Of The Day) drawing in a similar vein as this first OOTD drawing I ever did, OOTD: Witch Socks. I say extended and cut "OOTD" out of the title this time because of A. This drawing was done over 2-3 days and B. I obviously was no longer wearing the outfit by the time the drawing was finished. And also, secret reason C. I didn't actually wear this outfit out of the house; I just liked the way the colors worked together and thought it would make for a cute drawing. And honestly, even for someone like me who enjoys dressing eccentrically, I think this would've been a little too far over the edge to wear out and about anyway.  (I promise it looks a lot more socially acceptable in the drawing than it did in person) It's funny though, my last OOTD drawing was heavily inspired by the socks I was wearing that day, which looked like witch boots (hence the title it had), and this time my funky socks are once again a key point, but this piece got named after the pose and a different accessory. ...And I just noticed that this OOTD also has a pose where my head is in-profile facing the left...huh... Anyway; the key player here is the little plastic shiny red bead necklaces. They aren't much here in the drawing, but they're what set this whole thing in motion. My mom was cleaning out her purse and found them, remembering that she'd meant to give them to me when she initially brought them home from something they did at work, and since I was right there I just slid them on until I could put them away properly. (I have something of a small collection of bead necklaces like this for reasons unbeknownst even to me.) And at some point I was just feeling really good and kind of cute/kooky that day, and that's more or less where the idea to draw my outfit was born. From there, I'm not really sure where the pose came from other than the very loose/swinging nature of the necklaces and I wanted something fun and dynamic. And I swear I've tried to draw or seen this pose somewhere before, but if I did it must've been something I never posted because I sure can't find it in my gallery.  (Although it was at this point that I pretty much knew what the title for this was going to be ) And to be fair, I'm not sure the proportions/anatomy came out exactly right. At first, I thought the legs (or at least the calves) were too short, but then I re-evaluated and decided the arms were too long, so I shortened them and I feel like for the most part that fixed/evened things out. I just really didn't want to have to re-draw the feet because I felt like they (especially the one on the left) came out really good the first time. Weirdly enough, the hands didn't give me a ton of trouble the second time around, as I worried they might. And I also didn't have that much of a struggle getting the profile of the face right, which is unusual because of all the ways to draw a face, that's usually the one I have the most trouble with.  Then again, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised since a while ago when I was last drawing people more consistently I did do more profile faces and hands than usual, but I don't know. It's just kinda weird to not have that much trouble with them when in the past they've been main problem areas for me, at least during the sketching phase. Either way, as far as the actual drawing part goes, I think the most difficult thing this time was the bodice area because I wanted to get the proportions pleasing to the eye, but the tank top to still have reasonable folds, and the overall flow to work with the rest of the piece. But even that still wasn't too bad. The beads also took a while, since I was indeed fully committed to drawing every individual bead, but that really wasn't difficult, it just required patience. Little did I know, the difficulties would come in transferring the sketch to where I wanted it. I think I've gotten my fill of alcohol markers, given three of my most recent drawings were little kitties done almost exclusively in those, and so that combined with just not having done much with colored pencils in general lately (other than as smaller detail things or using water-soluble ones more like paint than pencils), I decided to do a bit of a return-to-form and make use of an extra piece of toned gray paper I've had waiting around to be used since like March, and do some good ol' colored pencil work. The joke was on me because I was very quickly reminded why I haven't used the gray paper a ton, especially compared to the toned tan paper I have; for reasons I can't figure out, it's incredibly hard to see through the paper to transfer lines, even with my lightbox on the brightest setting! So after several minutes of disappointed pondering, I dug out a charcoal stick I've had sitting in a "junk" art supply box (of which I have two; they're just boxes where the random stuff I don't really use or reach for very often that I don't have a good way to organize ends up) for the last half of forever and scribbled on the back of where I'd already transferred the lines once onto a regular piece of white paper (having hoped the black ink lines would be easier to see through the gray paper, which they were, but it still wasn't enough) and then used a mechanical pencil with the point shoved in to transfer the lines onto the gray paper. It's a very round-about way to do it, but it worked. And I went with the charcoal this time instead of trying the gelato trick that I learned with my Fly By the Moon piece because I thought the gelatos might not work all that great with the colored pencils, and I also thought they might make more of a mess trying to transfer onto regular paper instead of onto canvas. This ended up being a good choice also because the charcoal I was able to mostly erase/lift after I touched up the transfer in a few places and then I went back in with proper ink lines to make sure I wouldn't lose them once I started coloring. The lines finally taken care of, I could finally get to the fun part: coloring. And after some behind-the-scenes swatching experiences made them seem better than I had previously remembered, I decided to use my Schpirerr Farben colored pencils. Though I did make the mistake of using my white Prismacolor as a base for the skin. Not that it was a mistake because a white base wasn't needed (it was, and for everything else I used the white from the Schpirerr Farben set as a base), but because the Prismacolor pencil being wax-based, where the Schpirerr Farbens are oil-based, there was a conflict of texture in the layering. Kind of luckily though, I went too dark with the shading on the skin originally and had to work in more layers to fix that, and in that process, I think I managed to get the texture thing mostly under control. I did purposely use that in the hair though, since hair normally has...well, you know, noticeable texture. Otherwise, coloring was a pretty basic colored pencil experience (for me, anyway). I'd put down a base, then the base color, then work on the shading, and as I did certain parts I'd go back and adjust others based on what felt right. I have to say, I think the main drawback to the Schpirerr Farben pencils is really that they only come in 72 colors. I was able to do some mixing and shading and things to get the colors to where I needed them to be (the purple-y blue and red-orange colors on the socks, in particular, I had to mix to get), but I was really missing the wider selection I get from Prismacolor (150) or the Faber Castell Polychromos (120). Which isn't a huge deal, but it is a point for having multiple sets of pencils (or if you're the brand and not the consumer, making larger sets/adding new colors), even if you're loyal to a particular set/brand. Especially if the pencils play well together; the more you have, the wider color range you have to pick from. Other than that, I can confirm they do still layer and blend really nicely without much fuss (as had been my impressions back when I first talked about them). They're just soft enough that it always surprises me when I go to add a layer and the color goes on better than I thought it would because I figured I'd reached my limit on layers already.   Considering they've recently branched out and made a watercolor set recently, I'm not sure as to how much stock I should put in Schpirerr Farben possibly returning to their pencils and making more colors...Does the watercolor thing mean they've closed the book on the pencils and want to focus on other supplies now, or does that mean there's hope that they'll continue to innovate on their products, including potential upgrades to the pencils? I'm not sure. Either way, once I finished coloring the figure in, I went back over the ink lines where I'd gotten colored pencil over them and they'd faded/washed out as a result, and then did the white outline with my white gel pen. Then I left the drawing alone overnight because it was missing something, but I wasn't sure what and I couldn't think of anything that night. When I came back to it the next day, I ended up deciding on something slightly complicated; A soft purple PanPastel background with one triangle shape masked/blocked out, and one triangle done in washi tape. This would end up evolving from the second triangle just being bigger to it being a slightly different kind of triangle and going in the opposite direction. And also I changed my mind on which washi tape to use about three different times, finally settling on this metallic-printed on for a little more intrigue when you see the piece IRL. (Even though here on the scan it just looks dark and borderline out of place ) Then to "blend" the metallic into the drawing as a whole better, I added the little dots in the background around the head with a gold shadow gelly roll, since in-person the color looks really close to the metallic print on the tape and the dots kind of tie in the "beads" theme a little better. (Again, this doesn't translate as well into the scan, but I kinda knew that was a risk with both things when I put them down.) And I did go over a few of the beads on the necklaces with the same pen to tie everything all together. Then I signed it with my white gel pen, and I felt much better about calling it finished. And you know, it has its flaws and all, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out anyway. It's a little more simple and there's not a ton of deep meaning or impactful influence behind it or anything, it's not terribly experimental, but it's still a fleshed out, polished drawing. And I really enjoy that, as it gave me more room to just kind of hone in on and practice skills I'm already fairly comfortable with, and sometimes that's just what you need in art, you know?   I'm not sure what I'll end up making to post next--I've got some ideas, of course, (never a shortage of those around here ) but I've been a little too muddled to settle on anything just yet, so we'll just have to wait and see. For now, I'm trying to focus more on being gentle with myself until I seem to be back up to snuff to really buckle down on stuff. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram