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This year's Advent calendar was made by Semja for me, and it's AWESOME! Chess all the way! :D

( Just look at this lovely modelling! )

I always admire when people are good at working with clay and/or modelling paste - it's one of the techniques I've tried, more than once, to no avail. Lucky for me that Semja has this skill!

Another postcard for someone on postcrossing - this time, it's a combination of drawing, painting, and papercut. It has transparent windows! The book page, inkwell, ink blob and large leaves are see-through.



Materials:
Watercolor paper: Florence watercolor paper, smooth, white, 200gsm. This was a bit of a compromise: it's the thinnest possible paper for watercoloring, but the thickest possible paper for reasonable papercutting. (Still: not much detail possible.)
Transparent paper: Folia, 115 gsm (I chose the thicker variety, for obvious reasons), light green.
Fineliners: Staedtler, different sizes.
Acrylic pens: FlySea, white and black.
Watercolors: various brands, no idea which was what. It was not my watercolor box. I'm not at home and didn't grab the box in my bag when there was a perfectly good one open on the table.
Knife: snap-off utility knife. Cheap but good. XD Seriously, it performed really well (as in: non-wobbly, good angle, and ergonomic in my hand) but it's a no-name thingy, no manufacturer printed on or anything.
Varnish: LUKAS spray varnish, satin gloss. (Added to protect the watercolors before gluing everything together.)
Spray glue: Ghiant Hightac, an ancient can. Oh well, it came out a bit yellowed and blotchy but it still worked... Somehow.

More pictures (of the papercutting and of what the card looks like with backlighting) behind the cut.

( Pictures! )

I'll definitely make more cards with this technique. It's so much fun! :D

Two animal postcards for people on Postcrossing.





Both cards are made with acrylic pens (various brands) on watercolor paper (JAXON Aquarell Postkarten, and by the way, those suck, I am only using the box up so they are finally gone). I like that the acrylic pens behave almost like watercolors when you spread the color with a wet paintbrush but are waterproof after drying. I used spray varnish on the cards anyway, to protect them in the mail.

...and I mean, shocking in a good way, but I was definitely shocked when I opened that package.

Like... Maybe you remember the lovely little handmade sketchbook that antaresnox had sent me? You remember how super happy I was? Well. They did it again. Only this time... uh.



Yeah. That's a HUGE PILE OF HANDMADE SKETCHBOOKS and I totally did not expect this. I mean, they had told me there's more where that first sketchbook came from, and asked me if I was interested (which, I mean, HELL YEAH), but I was thinking it would be, like, two or three maybe (which would already have been extremely generous, considering all the work that goes into something like this!) not... um... THIS.

It's a fascinating assortment of different papers, too - a lot of them have toned pages (which is my personal preference for sketching), but there are also some books with watercolor paper (including some papers I don't know yet but am very excited to try) and "normal" sketching paper for pencils or fineliners - in short, everything an artist needs! (I imagine this will actually keep me busy for a while...)

Now, there's a bit of a dilemma: of course, I want to SHOW OFF all those pretty sketchbooks, but I guess you guys don't want to look at sooo many pictures of paper all at once! XD So, uh, let's just start with the first of these books I'm going to use. (I will show the others in more detail when I get around to using them.) And, of course, I immediately grabbed the CHESS SKETCH BOOK WHEEEEEEEE!!!! ....ahem. Can you tell I'm excited about this?



Look at this! It's a button hole stitch binding, with a chess pawn as the button hole, and it's AWESOME!!!



Roughly postcard size (a bit smaller), toned paper in various colors inside, and I LOVE IT!!! (It's an extremely eller-y product - antaresnox knows my taste extremely well!) And the best thing is, antaresnox mentioned something about wanting to make the other 15 pieces as well, which... O_O Uh. I mean, I have no idea what I did to warrant that kind of effort, but, um, I'm hardly going to complain, right? XD It's in my bag now, so, I suppose you'll get to see a few sketches on toned paper in the next few days... (Yes, that was a threat.) I can already tell this is going to be soooo much fun! I always love handmade things, and the book lies completely flat when opened, which means it's going to be perfect for my purposes. Happy Eller is happy! :D

This is such a funny coincidence - not just one but two people decided to send me samples of their selfmade watercolors over Easter! :D I was soooo happy to find these in my mailbox! (As you probably know already, I make my own paints, so I also almost always appreciate what others produce.)

Tarabel sent me this lovely set of five colors that looks like a forest theme or something...



...and Nil sent me ten different dots, mainly fascinating earth tones, and some of the colors also glitter a bit. :D



I'm soooo happy and I can't wait to do something with the new paints!!! :D Actually, I have a plan... XD

As I mentioned a few days ago, I drew ATC outlines for Atlicedrawsstuff to color... And she was super fast! (She found someone to swap the card with already, too.)



Atlice used Ohuhu markers (alcohol-based), colored pencils, and gel pen on my fineliner drawing. :) I really love the colors she chose!

This one is a papercut card I did send on Postcrossing. Someone stated they like horses, I happen to like horses too, so the decision was easy! Also, it's a very fast work (20 min or something), so I didn't feel bad about giving it away.



Papercutting is one of those art forms that are incredibly complicated and slooooow when you're a beginner, but where the working speed increases exponentially with practice - and, of course, if you've ever watched really experienced papercutters, you'll know they'll produce something like this in two minutes or less. (Interestingly, it tends to be faster than drawing the same thing!) Basically, I'm viewing pieces like this as practice. It's cut from one of these super cheap white square note sheets that come in those plastic cubes - you know what I mean. Fixed with spray glue on 300gsm construction paper. Simple, but I kind of like the composition, and I hope the recipient will enjoy it.

The saga of artistically questionable postcards goes on! This time, I drew the address of someone I already knew a bit from the Postcrossing forum - and they're another paleolithic art nerd! YAY! Of course, I could not resist the temptation to produce some cave art fanart.



I prepared a piece of thick Kraft paper (A6 format) with sand (collected myself, of course) and acrylic paste, so the result looked kind of like a sandstone cave wall. (The closest approximation I could manage, anyway.) I then took charcoal and pastels and drew on it, which was somewhat tricky. I fixed the end result with spray varnish. (Also, obviously, I had to send it in an envelope, but I’m told it arrived undamaged, which makes me very happy.) This was SOOO much fun! XD

Another postcard for Postcrossing. This time, I decided to combine watercolor and papercutting. The person this card is for is another North German and loves the North Sea coast in particular. I am, of course, always happy to help out with North German nature... Comfort zone. LOL.



The seagulls and the island with the lighthouse are cut from cheap white note paper and pasted on a watercolor background, Winsor&Newton Payne's Grey on Vaessen Florence Texture White watercolor paper in A6 (postcard size).

I'm actually quite happy with this one - in hindsight, I'd change a few things about the composition, and also, give the birds more detail, so maybe there's going to be a remake of this one in the future. Possibly also with a nicer seascape... And better papercutting paper that doesn't deform... (Initially, that lighthouse was more or less straight!) Yeah, many things went wrong here, because I didn't want to spend hours on this piece, but all that can be fixed in a remake. The overall concept is fine as far as I'm concerned.

I made this one kind of indirectly for Postcrossing... A nice person sent me a very lovely, very detailed drawing with fineliners and watercolors, and of course, this made me very happy! So happy, in fact, that I offered to send her one in return. She took me up on the offer. Her profile stated that tulips are her favorite flowers, so, that was another easy decision...