Challenge: 29 Faces (Day 1 = Setember 16!)

I have never participated to art challenges, but, perusing my friend's Tammie Lee's blog, I found this one that appeals to me and seemed fun. It's called 29 faces and it's been launched by Alaya Art.

I should have started at the beginning of the month, so I am entering the game late. I wonder if I'll be able to complete the challenge by the end of the month. I'll have to do a couple of faces per day to catch up...but that's fun and good practice, too.

Here my 3 mini faces for the day:

#1 Baby's got her wish.

#2 Student learning a new lab procedure

#3 Mermaid waiting for a pray

 29 faces

The originals are about 2-3 inches...the only way I have to make something quick!
Copics and random paper.

Many thanks to Ayala for this intriguing opportunity!

Ritratto di Bimba (Bella's Portrait) finished

It's done. And I think I sort of saved it.
Thank goodness for my husband's constructive criticisms and the mixed media approach that allowed me to correct at least partially my mistakes with pencils!

What did I change?
-Her eyes were/are not aligned. I used a dark brown pencil to redraw the lower and upper lids outlines to create the illusion of new boundaries.
-Her lips were vampire-like, way to red and dark, like if blood had congealed on them (yuk!). I used a white pastel pencil to tone down the redness.
-Her smile was sort of uncertain, so with a dark violet and brown pencils I pushed the corners of her mouth further sideways and upward.
-Then I used  dark and reddish brown pencils to define better her cheeks and the smile-puffiness under her eyes (what do you call those thigies?...8 month old kids cannot possibly have "bags" under their eyes!).
-After this, I darkened the left side of her face, because somehow it looked too broad before. This also, I think, helped giving a more 3-dimentional look to the face.
-I added wisps of hair here and there, to avoid the impression she was wearing a lopsided wig.
-Finally, I toned down the contour of her face and collar overlapping white pastel pencil to the too severe and bold multiliner sign.

I think that's about it.
I feel better about it, now...so I think I can safely hang it in Bella's room without making her cry in fear of creating an unpleasant "mommy thinks I am ugly" complex. ;)

Hope you guys are all happy and enjoying this beautiful September day. Hugs and kisses,
Astera and family!

Portrait of Bella in progress

Hei there! How are you guys? After my summer vacation, I came back to a ton of work, daycare-born weekly colds, and unavoidable evening exhaustion. The most stressful times are gone, though, so I have a measure of tranquility that allows me to draw again. In fact, I have picked up the portrait I started in June  and am finishing it.

Here is a glimpse to the work in progress:

I got stuck on the inks, because the lamp in the living room that I normally use to work broke and we needed to get a new one. That and the fact that after dinner I just wanted to curl up doze off while watching TV...

Once the inks were finished, the fun part began and coloring has been relatively fast.I enjoyed a lot coloring the dragon!

So, after coloring everything, I started working on the face, which is unusual. Usually, the face gets colored first, because I usually have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do and it's a lot of fun, plus I tell myself that if I make a mess I can start over by transferring everything and giving it another try without too much grief. Instead, this time I was so happy with the lineart that, modestly speaking, I had no doubt, the coloring of the face would be very easy. I started with the skin, with which I was pretty happy. Then I proceeded to the mouth and the eyes...which turned out way too dark...now she looked like a not-so-pretty vampire.  Plus, with colors, all the irregularities and symmetry issues that I could not see in the inks became very clear. Why do I always miss these flaws until the very last moment? Looking at it in the mirror (I know I should have done this ages ago!) showed all the problems even more obviously...how to fix them?

Back from Italy...

Oh my, it's so good to be on vacation!
This was my mantra for the past 3 weeks. Every single day was a new perfect gift to enjoy, every new and old sight a nourishing treat for the soul.

Yes, I am back now, but I am still basking in the exhilarating feeling of freedom and relax that we experienced in Italy. I have never appreciated my time off like this year. After the baby, we have had so little time for ourself and have been leaving in a survival mode for almost two years. This trip to Italy has reset us and replenished our energies.

My  mother in law took charge of Bella, leaving us free to go see friends, sleep a bit more in the mornings, and most definitely spend more quality time with each other, our families, and Bella too. I am so grateful for this! Bella in turn, flourished during this period: she has experienced lots of new things, met lots of people, befriended her cousin Pit (those two are unbelievable together), learned how to walk properly, and grown at least an inch.

How was June for you guys?

Ritratto di Bimba in progress...

Hi everybody! In little more than a week I will be going to see my parents in Italy! Finally...it's been two years since my last visit and it feels like forever. So much has changed and I have missed my family and friends enormously. I am looking forward to introduce Bella to all and I am curious to see how she will behave during the trip and in a completely new environment (actually, I am mildly concerned about the flight...we've been told to bring lots of little new toys with which to entertain her...I wonder if that will be enough or if she will try to take the airplane apart...my anticipated apologies to our fellow travelers).

I don't expect I'll have time to draw at all (it used to be difficult before the baby!) and my internet access will be limited. These are the last days when I'll be able to post anything. So I though to share the project that I have just started: Ritratto di Bimba. It's the counter part to the Ritratto di Bimbo from several months ago (you can see it here).

Let's see how much I will be able to advance in the next few days...there are so many things I have to organize before we leave...

In case I could not write again before the day of the flight, let me wish you a very happy and sunny June. I'll be back in July!

Pirates! Finished!

Here is "Pirates!" finished. I hope you, as well as my dear Pit, will enjoy looking at it.

Talk to you soon!

PS: When the picture was finally almost done, I left the drawing pad on the coffee table together with a couple of pencils, as I planned to pick it up again the following evening. That was a bit of a mistake. In the morning, while I was making breakfast, little Bella got her hands on it...I always try to give her pens and pencils to see if she likes to draw something, but usually she just sticks them in her mouth and chews on them. This time, though, she must have felt inspired, because she grabbed a nicely sharpened black pencil and she "improved" the look of the beach. I didn't even realize it until I set back down to continue my work. Too bad I was in a panic, otherwise I could have taken a photo of the nice bold stripes she had made between the crocodile and the parrot...;)

Pirates! (WIP)

My nephew Pit, has developed, like many children his age, a passion for "Jack and the Neverland Pirates" cartoon, so I thought I would make him a picture with my take on the theme.
Here you can see the (slow) evolution of the piece starting from the minimalistic sketch I posted weeks ago (yes, that's how slow I am!).

I imagined the "pirates" on a beach near the seaside town of Albisola (near Savona, Italy). The landscape is not very accurate. I actually think the beach is more stony than sandy, but I took a poetic license for the occasion.

I am not so passionate about going to the beach, as I am a pretty bad swimmer and I don't like sunbathing. My family has a country house and we always went there for the summer, so I grew to enjoy hiking and running in the grass more than building sand castles. Hence my poor knowledge of the beaches near home! ;)

For sure Bella and Pit will have a blast in June, when we go to visit Italy, though. Of course they are the two pirate-wanna-bes in the picture, although I realized I made them to look a bit older than they actually are.

Can you spot the mistakes I made?

My friends caught immediately the weirdness in Bella's left leg...I was hoping it would go unnoticed, but clearly it was not so inconspicuous. I managed to fix that while coloring, luckily.

The sky had me concerned for a while. I built up layer after layer of light greyish blues because I did not want a color that was too intense, but at some point I picked by mistake a marker, I don't remember which exactly, that turned out to produce the most in-your-face aqua effect ever. I spent the rest of my time that evening just trying to tone it down. I think I saved it in the end, but just barely.

There are also issues with the prospective, which I did not pay too much attention to, since there were no buildings in sight (how smart am I?). The perspective blunder became evident to me only half way through the coloring phase, so it was too late to do something about it. We will have to live with it! :D

Not having watched cartoon, I have only a vague idea of the content, which I assume must be tame and rather sweet, given it's targeted to small children. Anyways, since I am a pacifist, abhor the use of weapons, and dislike to see children handling toy-guns or toy-swords, I omitted them from the picture. Maybe this position is too strict (actually, as a kid, I would have loved to have a toy-sword) , but what can I say...it does not feel right to see little ones pretending to shoot or spear each other. Bottom line, my pirates are more bohemians of the sea, treasure hunters, than cannon shooting ocean outlaws.^^

The crocodile was suggested by my husband, to pay homage to the Disney's Peter Pan movie. Of course it's just an inflatable to help the kids swim and I really did not want to make it too realistic, because it's not supposed to be threatening. However, the more I colored it (bright yellow and green), the more my husband complained that it looked like it was going to attack the children. Hence, the bright pink scales...the definitive deviation from natural colors appeased my husband and, hopefully, will make sure Pit will find it funny, not scary. ;)

That's all for the moment. I have been adding a few more details and I'll show them to you, as soon as the sun is out and I get to take a decent picture of the final piece.