Watercolors

I signed up for a monthly subscription art supply box, SketchBox, a few months ago.  It is really fun because it encourages me to try new mediums that I have either never tried before or been too afraid to really embrace before.  For example, my very first box was filled with watercolor paints and an awesome watercolor brush that holds water.   I have experimented with watercolors before, but only casually, and because I spent the money on the box, I felt motivated to give the paints a real try.  It took a lot of learning and fiddling to get it right, but I love them now.  I might even try a landscape some day soon. (But don't get too excited, I'm still pretty terrified of muddy watercolor horizon lines.)

As those of you who follow me on instagram (@griffindrygoods) know, I started out with my favorite subjects, vegetables!  What else?  The eggplant was the first veggie I experimented with.

When I was happy with the way they looked, I moved on to asparagus.

I jokingly called them the Hulk veggies because of the color palette. Next came carrots, and boy did they take a long time to do.  After the eggplant, I decided that the outlining with micron pens should come before the watercolors, so I spent hours drawing each individual leaf on the carrot tops before I got around to adding color.

And so, my Salad Series was born.  It snowballed from there, here are the rest of them without discussion.

How do you get yourself inspired to try new things?

Wedding Invitations

John and I wanted our wedding invitations to reflect our character and interests.  We also are using our favorite fictional universes at our wedding reception, so it made sense for the invitations to match.  I have previously posted about this, here and here.  While it was my original intention to make six complete paintings, and as a result, six invitation options, I only ended up using two designs.  I made a Doctor Who inspired invitation, and a Firefly inspired invitation.

In the Doctor Who invitation John is the doctor and I am a companion, (inspired by Donna in "The Runaway Bride" only in that she wears a wedding dress.

In the Firefly invitation, John is Simon and I am Kaylee, a character you all have seen me play before.

I love how both options turned out and of course, we had them printed by Moo.

TARDIS

Who loves Doctor Who?  I do!

I've been working on a nine inch tall TARDIS.  It's for the wedding, so I won't give specifics on how it will be used, but I can give you some sneak peaks.

I made it from cardboard and paper mache with a top piece made of sculpey.  I gave it a coat of white paint as a primer so that the paint color would really pop.

The hardest part was the lettering for the Police Public Call Box signs.  I printed the sign for the door on the computer.

What kind of crafts take up your time?  What's your favorite TV show?

Catching Up

Hello all.  It has been quite a while since I wrote a serious post, and I am sorry for that.  I have been running around the last few weeks and it has been hard enough just crafting, without writing about it.  First off, I spent a weekend at my sister's for her baby shower.  The whole family is very excited for her son's arrival, so a lot of my crafting has been baby-centric for the last few months.  My mother came for a visit after that, and we played tourists for the week, visiting art museums in Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo, and of course the beach.  Then came Thanksgiving which ate a week of my life so easily, and finally, John's parents came to visit at the beginning of December.  While all the visits and trips were exciting and fun, the near month of hosting or being away was exhausting, and I feel like like the ground is finally under my feet again and I have space to share what I've been up to.

I've completed two paintings, this abstract one, and one of the San Diego skyline at night.  I haven't been satisfied with the photos of the skyline paintings that I have been able to take, but I do have these two detail shots:

I am really happy with both paintings, and hope to list them both on my etsy shop when I can get some better photos.

I have also been enjoying making baby clothes.

This cute cardigan.

And this onesie.  The great thing about baby clothes is that they are so quick to make that I finish one and can move onto the next quickly.

I also make a paper mache box and painted it to look like a Super Mario cube.

I expect that we will be using this as our ring box for the wedding because the companion cube is too big to really put in a pocket.

Well, now you are pretty much caught up on my recent crafts.  What have you been up to since I last posted?  Any big Christmas crafts?

Drawing Challenge Part 6

This 30 day challenge was a really great way to stay inspired to draw every day.  Having a prompt made me go outside my comfort zone and draw things I hadn't drawn before.  This post represents the last 5 days of the challenge.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing the work I have produced during this challenge.

Day 26, something I don't like.  Wasps, enough said.

 Day 27, someone I love. John, that is all.

 Day 28, I felt like drawing a squirrel.

 Day 29, a place I want to go.  Glasgow City Chambers, representing the area of Scotland my Grandfather came from.

 And day 30, a banner congratulating myself for completing the thirty days,

and reminding me to keep drawing.
Now that I have shared all thirty days of drawing with you, my posts should return to normal crafty projects, but before I am done, which drawing was your favorite?

Drawing Challenge, Part 4

I had a really great time doing this week of drawings.  I got to choose subjects that were really interesting for me to draw and things I had been trying to figure out in my head how to draw a lot recently.  So with no further ado:

Day 16 was inspiration and since I had been looking at the huge (and I mean for the east coast in an apartment complex) trees in our neighborhood recently and trying to figure out how to draw or paint them, I went for the tree I can see out my window.

 Day 17 was my favorite plant, one of my tomato plants.  I got the composition off so it is mostly the pot, but you get the idea.

 Day 18 was just a doodle.  As you can see I kind of let it get out of control and it covered the whole page.  It was actually slightly too big for the scanner bed, so about a half inch is missing off the bottom.  I like the bottles in the bottom left and on the right above the cloud, so I think I may be drawing more bottles in the future.

 Day 19 was something new.  I took a long time figuring out what that meant, a new object, or something I haven't drawn before?  I went for something I have never drawn before.

Day 20 was something orange and my favorite orange thing is carrots.  I love carrots!

  I am having a great time with this.  I am currently in my last week of drawings so expect this all to wrap up in the next two posts. 

30 Day Drawing Challenge part 2

Here is the next week of drawings.

Meg Murray from A Wrinkle in Time.  I really identified with this character growing up and always felt that here description was very much the way I saw myself.  I gave her early nineties glasses because that is when I first read the book and so she has always looked like this in my mind.

 Day seven was illustrate your favorite word, which is a weird assignment because I love language.  I don't really have a favorite word, but this one works.

 My favorite animated character has to be Superman and I chose to draw him the way he was drawn in The New Batman/Superman Adventures, that started to air when I was eleven.  It was a half hour show with two stories, one about Batman and one about Superman.  It was one of my favorite Saturday morning treats.

My favorite television show ended up being a bit of a silly choice.  I chose The Great British Spelling Bee, because I had been recently inspired by it.  In retrospect it should have been Doctor Who.

 And day ten was favorite candy.  This is vegan chocolate covered nougat from Desiderio Chocolates on etsy.  You should try it, it's amazing.

30 Day Drawing Challenge part 1

Remember the Challenge I shared with you in this post?

(Credit to Be Up & Doing, a very cool blog.)
Well, I promised to share my drawings, and today I have days 1 through 5.
Day One is me.

 Day Two is a polar bear.  Because since I was five and my older sister got me a stuffed one, they have been my favorite.

 Day three is potatoes, because is there a better food?

 Day four is my favorite place, sappy but self explanatory.

 And day five is my best friend of 25 years, Camille who writes Gluten Free Soy Free Vegan.

The next five drawings are coming soon, so keep your eyes out for them.