Animating My Portrait Sketches

Another quick post on animating my sketches - I recently found the app, Muglife, that creates 3-D animations of photographs to create memes, etc. Since the app was free, I decided to give it a try on some recent portrait sketches. Amazingly, it recognized my sketches as actual human faces and performed its magic!

Tommy Kane

For all of these portraits, I just uploaded the photo and let MugLife do its standard magic. I have since paid an additional $3.99 to use the Creative Mode in the app through which you can change the animations to do different things. But, I haven't really used that yet - other than playing around with it.

Have you tried MugLife or other similar apps? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experience with it/them.

Sketching everyday things

Lately, I’ve been revisiting books and artists who inspire me. One such book and artist is The Art of the Affair - An Illustrated History Of Love, Sex, and Artistic Influence by Catherine Lacey and illustrated by Forsyth Harmon. The book is a delightful read - full of information and gossip about writers, artists, and other celebrities from the Jazz Age. But, what I really love about it are the watercolor and ink illustrations by Forsyth Harmon. She uses black pen lines to give definition to the illustrations but does most of her shading with layers of watercolors. Truly inspirational.

I attempted a few Sktchy-inspired portraits with her style in mind. Needless to say, her style is very difficult to replicate!

For our Christmas card this year

In reasearching Forsyth’s work, I discovered her still lifes on her website. I love these drawings of everyday items that seem to have so much beauty and personality to them. It was so eye opening to me to discover so many subjects for art all around me. I also saw the challenge of finding beauty in things that are so commonplace and ordinary that you never really look at them, much less find beauty in them.

So, I decided to start sketching my everyday items around me - starting with Forsyth’s book.

A digital drawing using Procreate and my Apple Pencil

A favorite snack - also done with Procreate and my Apple Pencil

I think I am hooked on drawing the everyday items around me! Have you tried drawing the most mundane, boring items around you?

Stay tuned for my next post on working in Procreate and animating my drawings with Sketchbook Motion.

I made it to 100!!!

Today, I made it to my 100th portrait in 100 days! For this last portrait, I decided to draw my daughters, Jade and Chloe from a photo we took on a playground in Hayes Valley in San Francisco.

Here is my 99th, which I wasn't happy with - but I've been staying up so late every night to watch the Olympics, I was too exhausted to redo it.

And my 98th portrait.

Thanks so much for following me on this journey! I think I'll take a little break to catch up on all my online art class homework before I start my next 100 day project.

Portraits 86 - 92 for the 100 Day Project

It's been too long since I've posted my portraits for the 100 Day Project. Here are portraits 86-92 in reverse order.

Which is your favorite of the bunch?

Portraits 84 & 85

Sktchy has been running occasional art challenges on Instagram featuring a particular person who has inspired lots of artists and one particular photo to draw. Portrait 84 was done for Sktchy's latest art challenge.

For portrait 85, I drew a Sktchy inspiration photo of the coolest kid. I love her sunglasses, hat, Mother Teresa tank, and frog!

This is her brother, whom I've drawn previously. They look like such a fun family!

Portraits 80-83

Here are my latest portraits for the 100 Day Project. I've been trying to loosen my style and improve my watercolor skills.

This is a piece done of a friend's niece. Such a cute inspiration photo!

This is a Sktchy portrait that I attempted in an effort to also work on skies as I've been doing in Shari Blaukopf's Sketching Landscapes Craftsy class.

This is a portrait of Megan, my dear friend's niece who recently tragically died in a car accident. I plan to redo this in an 8 x 10" format that she can frame. I tried to emulate the loose, sketchy style of many artists I admire, especially Sktchy artist Dominic Beyeler.

Finally, this is another Sktchy portrait in which I tried to loose my style like I did with Megan's portrait above. More practice is needed!

Which do you like best? Do you prefer a looser style of sketching?

Portraits 68 - 70 for the 100 Day Project

My latest Sktchy portraits for the 100 Day Project.

Portraits 64 - 67 for The 100 Day Project

Here are my most recent portraits for The !00 Day Project.

Portraits 59 - 63 for the 100 Day Project

Here are my latest portraits for #the100dayproject:

Portraits 55 - 58 for the 100 Day Project

My most recent additions to the 100 Day Project of 100 portraits in 100 days.

Portraits 51 - 54 for the 100 Day Project

Here are my latest portraits for the 100 Day Project.

Portrait 50 for the 100 Day Project

I can't believe I am half way through the 100 day project!

Portraits 40 - 49 for The 100 Day Project

I managed to keep up my work on the 100 day project during our vacation. Here are the portraits I did on our trip and one when I got back.

Portraits for the 100 Day Project

Here are some recent portraits of my 100 day project.

Drawing inspiring artists

One thing I definitely love about the Sktchy app is being able to pay tribute to artist who inspire or support you by drawing them! I did that with varying degrees of success over the last few days.

Vin Ganapathy is a huge inspiration for me. He has been one of my teachers at Sketchbook Skool and is one of the first artists from whom I've bought original artwork! I love his portraits done primarily in Tombow brush pens. They are so expressive! I used my watercolors, Kuretake brush pen, and some of Marc Taro Holmes's watercolor techniques to draw Vin here. I loved the shadows in this inspiration photo.

Jane Royal is a beautiful water colorist who I've met on Sktchy. She paints people with the minimum of graphite lines and really lets the watercolors do their magic. She has been very supportive of my art. I wish I had captured her likeness better here. Nut, it's the thought hat counts, right?

Who are your favorite artists? Have you drawn or painted them?

Latest Portraits for the 100 Day Project

I haven't posted my latest portraits in some time! Though you can always click on the link above to see my entire 100 day portrait.

And finally, yesterday's portrait.

Thanks for following along!

Sktchy's WAXHandy Challenge

Sktchy is a fun and inspiring app for artists and people who want to inspire artists. Each weekend, Sktchy has a themed Weekend Art Extravaganza (#WAX). This past weekend, it was #WAXhandy and the challenge was to make art featuring hands. Here are my contributions.

The funny thing is that I was recently explaining my 100 day portrait project to someone in my figure drawing group and how I undertook it to improve a weakness I felt I had with portraits. I was saying that I have such trouble with drawing hands that I was telling her that I should do a 100 day project with hands and feet! I don't know if I can do 100 of those, but drawing hands for this weekend was challenging and fun!

What is your experience with drawing hands and feet? Do you relish the challenge or find it easy?

Playing with Koh-I-Noor Magic Pencils

I was inspired by Sktchy's weekend crosshatch challenge to pull out the Koh-I-Noor Magic multi-color pencils to do these drawings. It was fun!

Have you tried them? What do you think?

Trip to Monterey

This weekend, I took a trip to Monterey, Carmel, and Pacific Grove with my friends, Julie and Sharon. I had a lot of fun introducing them to the Sktchy app and drawing them!

I drew this at lunch at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had an awesome table with this lovely view.

Possible Athena? (16/100)

I'm exited to start working on illustrating a book about Greek mythology with my good friend, Steve. We are starting with Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. All I know physically about Ahena is that she has gray eyes.

So, in doing my 16th portrait for the 100 day project, I thought I would look for an inspiration for Athena. I love Marissa Poetzl's light eyes in the inspiration photo for this drawing.

What do you think - does she look like a good Athena?