Galaxy Explosion

 A couple days ago I watched a video showing 

how to make a zentangle inspired

galaxy on canvas. 

In that video Sam Taylor walks you through

making your own galaxy.

This is the one I made.

You should try it for yourself.

 I started with an 8" x 10" sheet of art board.

Using a roll of frog tape, I traced a circle in the center.

(Frog tape. Pretty cool name. Yes?)

Then I used Grumbacher watercolors and filled

in about 3/4 of the circle with galaxy colors. 

A handy dandy toothbrush made the perfect

spattering tool for white paint stars.

 Just the appearance to this point made me think

of an exploding galaxy.

Think exploding water balloon.

Spewing out whatever is inside.

Showing force in expulsion.

I used printemps shooting away

and beadlines to show this expulsion.

 As I added other tangles, I kept with the idea

of pushing them up and out.

 I really liked what I had at that point,

but the instructions were to shade

so shade I did. 

Kind of strange feeling shading on an art board,

but it worked. Hahaha!

 Here is some detail prior to shading. 

And here you can really see those paint spattered stars. I love the way it looks! (Those strange little bumps you see are where I tried using glow-in-the-dark white paint for the stars. Mostly it made little bumps that didn't glow at all.)

So, what do you think? I think you should watch the video and give this technique a try for yourself. And . . . I still have two more pieces of art board.  Just sayin'.

Simple Watercolor Flowers

Let me just say this, if I can do it so can you!

A couple weeks ago I was getting ready to go on a road trip. I knew I couldn't take a lot of art supplies, so I decided to prep a watercolor page before I left. What you see above is all the prep I did. I took a decent size paint brush and spread some generic flower shapes onto a piece of watercolor paper using my Grumbacher watercolor pans.  Not a lot of attention to detail. Just got some color slapped onto the page with the focus being a couple flowers and what could pass for a sunny area.

Next I started adding some lines. I drew around the petals and stamin of the main flower, and detailed the stem.

I outlined the petals of the flower bud, and started turning those orange arms into something - maybe some aloe, or cactus arms.

I finished the cactus-aloe-octopus arms, and detailed the green leaves. The flower bud didn't really have any way to anchor it to the rest of the picture, so I added a stem leading up to it.

Did a little more details on that stem and those leaves.

Then I started filling in a sun.  Basic flower design for the sun -  a center and some petals. That makes an awesome and easy sun.

I completed the sun with some loose 'nzeppel tangles,  and some rays in those petals.
And I was done.  Seriously, the drying of the watercolor paint almost took longer than the drawing.
All in all I have probably 15 minutes  worth of work in this drawing. Simple and direct. Sweet and easy. The clock is running. Go!

Floral Color

Recently, I posted the black and white version of this tile as part of a weekly challenge. You can see the post here.

This is what I started with. Some fescu, some mooka,  some sunz, some printemps, some tipple, and some flora. All tangle patterns with a bunch of aura-ing. Then today I added color with Grumbacher transparent watercolor pans and some Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. Highlights came from a white gelly roll pen. 

Lots of fun and super easy to draw! Soon I will provide a step-out for flora. Hopefully :). Have a great week!

Pluggin' Along

It's been a rough few days here at the house of Hendon. Somehow I have managed to mess up an achilles tendon. Not cool. I do happen to have one very awesome podiatrist, however, she surgered both feet about 25 years ago and she is still in business. Heck! She's even younger than me by a couple years. I know that 'surgered' isn't a word, but it aptly fits the situation. 
A routine of therapy and staying off the foot is about to drive me up a wall. We are trying to prevent a more aggressive approach and are giving a two week grace period.
So here I sit on my lovely chaise lounge with my ipad, drawing desk, a ton of pens and pencils and markers of every color, and a ton of projects that need to be completed. I am still working away on the 106 ATCs I need to complete for the CZT Deck Swap. I have exactly half of them finished. The one above just reminds me of the Wizard of Oz! Does that not look like the yellow brick road and the Emerald City? Totally not planned, it just fell that way! 
Hopefully my foot will start feeling better, instead of worse which it has done today, and I will be able to get back into the swing of things with this blog. Thank you for being so patient. 
Oh yes, I spent a good part of last week taping together a new journal/calendar/planner but was so unhappy with it that this afternoon I ripped it all apart. Threw away the remains of the journal, and salvaged what I could from the gelli plate prints and watercolor paper. Taking a new direction with that and hope to show you some progress in the next few days. 
Have a great Sunday! May God bless your day and your time and may you be faithful to Him - cause He deserves it. (Something I forget on a regular basis.) Hugs!!!

A New Year's Coming

These are the last three of my New Year's post cards for the swap. I used mixed media paper and cut my own 4" x 6" postcards - rather than buying them. In the last two cards I tried something new. Not sure how I like it yet. I used pen nibs and a speedball wand, which I dipped into Liquitex Acrylic Ink to draw the pink string and the green vines. Other colors in the cards came from Grumbacher Translucent Watercolors, Wink of Stella Glitter Markers, and At You Spica pens. It's almost new year's day. The cards are in the mail. It's a new record :).

New Products to Try

I bought some new products a while back and I've been trying to find some time to play with them. Here is my completed project. Well, mostly completed. I just realized I wanted to do some white gel pen highlights. I will go back and add those. Here's a look at what I used.

These are some really awesome watercolor paper blocks! I used the 4" x 8" block of fifteen cold press pages. The really cool thing about these blocks are that all the pages are glued together along the two long sides - thus making a block. What this translates into for the artist is a smooth, flat product upon completion. I used a lot of water and a lot of layers. Normally when I do this kind of project on a loose piece of paper - I finish with warping, a product that will not lay flat. With this glued block you work on your project and because of the way it is glued together - your project dries in place and you have a flat project when you are done. Ta-da!!! I like this a lot!

I have been wanting to try these out for quite some time! I've been following Tracy Weinzapfel's blog, she likes bright colors just as much as I do. I saw one post where Tracy had a set of Grumbacher Watercolor Pans laying on the table with her project. I really love the way her projects look, so I went online to amazon.com and bought both the transparent pans and the opaque pans. So easy to use, the colors are vibrant and they layer well, and the pans are big so they should last a long time.

For my first project - - - I am very happy with the results!