Inspiration Avenue - Books

'Books'

Colored Pencil with Marker on Sketch Paper

I was really excited about this week's word prompt for Inspiration Avenue's Weekly Challenge.  As an avid reader I have lots books on my bookcase shelves, so much so that I've had to resort to stacking them two deep and on top of each other wherever possible.  I'm a huge fan of scary, gory, murder, mystery type novels and have the likes of Stephen King, Patricia Cromwell, Dean Koontz, John Saul, Michael Connelly and many more author's adorning my shelves.  In fact, I am reading a new Dean Koontz book titled, "Relentless" but have only just begun the first chapter.

I love working with colored pencils and marker.  If you've never tried this technique, I really urge you to give it a whirl.  You can use any brand of colored pencil, I happen to have a very nice set of Prisma Color  Premier colored pencils and Markers.  I use the colorless blender marker all over and use varying shades of gray for shadows.  I need a new 10% gray though, didn't get the cap on all the way and it dried out.  The colorless blender is awesome though.  It removes the waxiness of the pencil and makes it look more like a pigment ink or something.  Pretty cool effect with little effort.  I have some colored markers but have not tried those with the pencils yet.  The best part is, you can use ordinary sketch paper as long as you don't overdo the marker.  

That's my art lesson for the day.  lol  Hope you are having a good week.  Only one more day and I get a day off!  Not sure why I'm excited, I'm going to be on call for ers as my boss is going to a Toby Keith concert this weekend, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed I won't have to go in.

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Inspiration Avenue - Circus

For this week's Inspiration Avenue challenge, the theme was Circus.  I immediately thought of elephants, trapeze artists and a lion tamer, but decided to go with a clown.

I wanted to show emotion with my clown so I made him a sad clown.  Why is he sad?  Because he gets such a bad reputation.  Raise your hands, how many of you readers are afraid of clowns?  I thought so!  lol.  I'm not sure why so many people are afraid of clowns.  Sure, there was John Wayne Gacy (for those of you that are too young or not from Illinois, click here to find out who he was.)  There's also 'It' from Stephen King.  But outside of those two, I really don't see what's so scary about them.

What do you think?  Clowns: scary or not?

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Inspiration Avenue

'Wish'

Marker and Colored Pencil on Sketch Paper

This is my first submission for Inspiration Avenue.  It's a weekly challenge that anyone can enter in any medium and you can even win prizes!  How fun!  My boyfriend said she looked a little sad and I told him that not all wishes come true, maybe she's wishing for the impossible.

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Creativity Boot Camp - Day 7

'Fly'

Marker with Colored Pencil on Sketch Paper

This prompt was a lot of fun fore me.  I knew immediately what I wanted to do when I saw it.  We have six parakeets and have had most of them since they were only 8 weeks old and couldn't fly very well.  One pet shop clipped the wings so short on one of the birds the poor thing couldn't even flutter to the floor.  He would drop like a rock, so this illustration means a lot to me.

In case you were wondering, I decided to separate my blogs.  Just in case I ever decide to start selling my artwork ( I already got a gmail and Etsy account with the same name...lol ) I thought it would be best to keep them separate and apart.  Thank you Retta for your insight on the subject, I really appreciate it.  I also thought it might be easier for those that only want to read about my weight loss journey or just my artwork escapades.

You can find my other blog here if you would like to see my other Creativity Boot Camp exercises.

If you're wondering how I got the eyeball on my banner, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the original sketch.  Photoshop has some fantastic little tricks you can do to enhance your images.  I'm off to bed now, I'm exhausted but it was just too hot to sleep tonight.  Hopefully I'll fall asleep fast and hard.  LOL.  Can't wait to start on tomorrow's prompt: ornament!

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