Tag Archives: #zefiart

march 5. a month of daily art.

Posted on by
2

Another quick sketch using tea plus red wine. Turns out the red wine is a huge disappointment. Nothing red about it… just a stain. Not a particularly good one either, I admit I was hoping for something redder.

So its back to pencils, tea and the new acrylics. I ended up buying a box of 36 small 20ml tubes cause that way I have all the colours to play with, and when I run out I can always buy what I need. This set is to keep for use in Athens, since it looks like I’ll be here quite a while this year.

I have tons of paints on Paros, but of course, you always need more paint… especially favourite colours. But I work bigger on Paros than I do here, so the mini tubes are fine for here.

I really hate having two homes. You sort of need two of everything if you live in more than one place. Sure, my HOME is on Paros, but since mom lives in Athens I’ll always be here for some time in winter to be with her… not to mention the constant renovation projects I seem to attract.

So, till I go back to Paros, hopefully by the end of this week, I’ll continue working on smaller works for my daily art. Bigger ones are more like weekly art than daily. Sometimes monthly…

z

march 4. a month of daily art.

Posted on by
4

Seems I’m not quite done with the tea bags.

This one might actually be my favourite one yet. I mean in terms of pencil and tea. I loved the donkey as a pencil sketch on its own, not sure if the coffee improved it, but this one works. The patchy cow and the splotchy background are a perfect match.

I’m happy with this.

Seems I’m on a sort of barnyard animal streak. Not sure how long it will last, but I’ve always loved animals and cows, donkeys and hares have always been favourites. Though I’d never tackled a hare before.

By the end of this month I think I’ll have to work on finally selling stuff online. The sketches are small at a little over A5 size, easy to post, and totally affordable, even if I sell them with a mat board.

I’ve been looking into restablishing my etsy shop, which has been opend and doing nothing for months or looking into an art online shop. Its a lot of reading and research and testing and it will take time to work it out.

On a positive note, my new smaller/newer/more portable laptop has arrived finally and this is the inaugural post using it! YIPPEE! And so far it seems the WordPress app actually words properly on it!

Its so much better and faster than this ancient old tablet and so pretty! I’m donating the old tablet to a nephew to play games on. He’s happy. I’m happy. Win win.

z

march 3. a month of daily art.

Posted on by
6

They say it takes 30 days to form a habit. Let’s see… maybe after a month of daily art I’ll keep at it and not take long unproductive breaks. Hope springs eternal.

Then again, with summer coming up and with it being the busy season on a tourist island, who knows…

Today I share a quick sketch of a hare looking startled to be featured on a blog. This time I got bored of working with boring ol’ pencil cause I can’t really smudge and work it with my fingers, and can’t get the depth of tones I’m used to with pastels or charcoal.

So, I started to wonder what I could use to give it that extra dimension, given I’d already donated the crappy acrylics to some underage budding artists, and had no other art supplies on hand.

I found tea bags. Handy as a beverage and an art material.

Never one to knock back the chance to work with tea (having stained my share of fabrics and doilies with it) I decided to give it a go. Thing I discovered about using tea as an ink is that tea gets darker as it dries, so bits I thought looked too pale and went over ended up a little darker than expected.

Still, I rather like the effect. Art meets clumsy tea drinker.

Meanwhile I thought I’d give coffee a go as well. Since we don’t have any instant coffee at home in Athens (my go-to for coffee staining) I asked mom to make me a greek coffee to paint. She thought I was going to paint the coffee cup and even put it in a nice cup with matching saucer. Instead, I dipped my brush into it and added a bit of dimension to the donkey I drew on Day 1.

Its a totally different colour and unlike the tea, it doesn’t darken as it dries. Its more of a WYSIWYG medium.

(‘What you see is what you get’ for those unfamiliar with the old fashioned graphic design term. Pronounced wiz-ee-wig.)

I got my new acrylics today but not sure if I’ll jump right in or if I’ll play with tea a little longer.

Depends on how many black tea mom has.

I’m also eyeing off her red wine…

z

march 2. a month of daily art.

Posted on by
1

If it wasn’t for the last minute nothing would get done around here!

Today’s contribution is a pencil sketch of a donkey. It brought back memories of art classes at Campion school, working with soft lead pencils. Its been a long long time since I worked with pencil only.

Even before art school I sketched with charcoal. There are so many types of charcoal to chose from… willow, konte, pitt, in stick or pencil form… there’s never been a need to pick up a plain old fashioned pencil for anything other than scribbling a quick note.

A few months ago I saw a shop that sold more than those horrid HB pencils, so I got myself a 2B and a 4B. Since the traumatising experience with the crappiest of crappy crap acrylics I bought by accident, I had no choice but to venture down memory lane and remember how to work with pencil.

It not only brought back memories of high school art classes, it also reminded me of sitting at my desk in 4th grade, sketching horses and tall skinny girls with my best friend as the teacher droned on about history or math.

It wasn’t too painful… (sketching with pencil, that is. Math was painful!) I might try it again.

Although I ordered proper acrylics to pick up tomorrow.

z

ps… I worked on the donkey a little more, adding a touch of greek coffee to give it a bit of depth. Seems rather appropriate – greek coffee for a greek donkey.