Based on my previous post, I've decided to make an ACEO out of the sketch. This time I drew things a little differently, i.e giving the elf dark hair, and some flowers as composition aids. By the way, ACEO stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals which is a miniature art with measurements of 2.5" x 3.5". For more info on ACEO, you can read the comprehensive description from Wikipedia and Associated Content. The following ACEO is made from 300 lb Saunders Waterford hot-pressed paper. I have a love hate relationship with this paper. It still has a bit of texture, almost like cold-pressed. It's not a true white colored surface, more like a warm ivory. I used a bit of Raw Umber for the background, which became a bit muddy because the paper absorbed the color so much. Hmmm .... maybe I should give Arches Hot-pressed a try next time. Anyway, the image below is the EXACT real life dimensions of my ACEO: The image was sketched with a 2B pencil, inked with sepia acrylic ink and colored with watercolor. I used masking fluid and (as an after thought, white gouache) for the white dots.

I consider this a sketch for an idea I was working on for an ACEO. I didn't use proper brushes for this, just my petit Kuretake waterbrush. Thus, brush strokes were a bit loose and not very precise. I wanted to experiment with color palettes, as well as using blue undertones for the skin. The skin wash was made from a mixture of naples yellow deep and permanent rose, which produced a nice peach color. Now that I've done this sketch, I'm trying to figure out how to make the focal point less static. Hopefully I can work it out so I can produce my first ever ACEO soon.

The goal of this watercolor exercise is to practice painting the nose, in particular the upturned nose, which is what I really suck at. Well, as you can see, the woman I painted looks like she had a botched nose job. Resemblance to Mischa Barton is accidental. Just some random model I drew from one of my bridal magazines (don't laugh - bridal magazines make really good art references). I underpainted the shadows on her face and ears with Dioxazine Purple and Permanent Alizarin crimson before giving the skin an overall wash of Raw Sienna and Permanent Rose mix. This was painted in one of my handbound sketchbooks filled with Canson Montval 90 lb cold-pressed paper. As you can see, the texture of the paper can be seen. I hope to make a sketchbook with 90 lb hot-pressed paper soon. I don't think my style is suited for cold-pressed surfaces.

I am beginning a slow process of creating a character on paper, tracing it and transferring it on paper to eventually inking it. This particular character was inspired by the half-breed angel Gabriel in the movie Constantine (played by Tilda Swinton). For my character, I drew her in a center parted skirt as opposed to flare pants Gabriel wore in the movie. She was inked with a Tachikawa Maru nib using FW black acrylic ink (click here for an intro on Japanese nibs - this opens a PDF file). I need to practice inking my sketches more. My lines are horrible! My current workflow of transferring my sketch on the work surface is a tedious one. I had to trace several times (one is to be kept as a master) before I can have a copy I can work with. This process will get easier once I buy myself a good printer, but the ones I see in Miri "IT hypermalls" are the cheap, low-end models. Sighhh, I suppose I have to wait until I get to Kota Kinabalu or Kuala Lumpur to get one, OR if I'm really impatient, I can just go across the border, suffer the miserable exchange rate and buy ...

Oh my goodness! I just had a scare. I went into my blog just now, and saw that my categories and recent comments were missing!! :shock: I think a part of my soul is in this website already (a good thing), because when the disappearing act happened, I felt like someone stabbed me in the heart. I had worked on customizing the template, did some PHP programming, and then all of a sudden, the categories were gone!! It just didn't make any sense, because it was working before! I was cursing my web host at first (hahaha, sorry Shinjiru), but when I did a web search I found out that there are bugs in the current Wordpress I'm using (version 2.6). Apparently, the bug alters the 'wp_taxonomy' table in the wordpress database, where my category names went missing. Essentially my categories still exist, but their names were deleted in the database. I'm not well versed in SQL. I did learn about it, but it was yeeeeeeaaars ago. So I googled and googled some more. In the end, I downloaded a plug-in that manages the wordpress database. I downloaded it, uploaded it to my server, activated it and took a deep breath. Hey, whaddya know. IT WORKS!! Anyone with ...