Whimsical girl with hazelnut eyes art journal page

I have to tell you I've been waiting for some time to return to soft pastels. But something wasn't quite right or I wasn't in the mood to try them again...until today when I grabbed my soft pastel Koh-i-Noor brown set of 12 soft pastels and some other nice bought in open stock and started to draw a face.

At first she was meant to be an watercolor sketch I started a week ago and didn't quite finished it. But since I wanted to play with soft pastels, I thought why not do transform this page into a gorgeous soft pastels whimsical page?

And I think the result came out pretty surprising, considering the fact that I started with a bare sketch and ended with this page!

And this time I wanted a hazelnut brown eyes girl in my journal, a different face from what I usually draw - fantastic girls with blue, green or greeny-blue eyes. I thought that if my eyes are hazel brown, why not pick this color, too?

And to make things even more interesting, I have captured her on camera! Here you can see the video on YouTube:

        Hope you like it, and if you do, please LIKE IT and SUBSCRIBE! Thank you!

See you soon,

Cristina

Art journaling redheaded girl

Hello dear creative soul!

Earlier today I've managed to upload and publish a video on YouTube with my latest art journal creation! This time it's a semi-profile gorgeous redheaded girl that turned out so precious.

I have worked a lot on the video for this page, I guess I had 6 or 7 videos to merge and create one final file. But the result is stunning! I am very proud of it, although I haven't managed to add sound until now, the image and annotations help you follow the whole process from the start to the end of it.

I am working in my handmade art journal, just the same as I did here, made out of an old calendar paper, the one that you usually throw away at the end of the year. I had my eyes on this one, as it has thicker paper and as I thought, it proved to make a great art journal. I just have to add gesso and there we go! 

However, because one side of the paper is glossy and the other one is not that much, when you paint on the glossy side you should be careful to add an extra layer of gesso, as the colors tend to peel off the page. unlike the page linked above, this time I'e worked on the glossy side of the paper and at some point I have peeled out some color when I pressed too hard on her eyes and hair. But as you probably know, that is not a problem and the situation can be fixed with some acrylic paint. 

Now let's see the video! It speaks more than I can write about it in here. And I'm sure you're going to love it! Please LIKE IT and subscribe to my channel to follow my artful adventure!

Till next time,
Cristina xx

Portrait sketch using INKtense pencils from Derwent

Today I woke up to a cloudy sky. Half of the light intensity I was expecting to see when I opened my eyes. I was tired after fighting with allergy symptoms last night that caught me up until about 3 AM in the morning. Not long after, the rain started. Clean and kinda cold air. After my husband went out for work, I said to myself that it's time to get up and do something that I really love. So I took one of my art journals and an INKtense pencil and started to draw a face. I chose to use Derwent pencils because they cannot be erased with the eraser, so I won't be tempted to go back and erase the face and start over. If I'm going to mix it up, I'll just have to move on and see if I can continue or add some gesso to cover it.

This is what I came up with after 10 minutes. I really love to sketch with colored pencils, especially if they are watercolor: when adding water, the color will blend with the area right next and the effect is gorgeous! And because I absolutely love colorful pages, I decided that I should go for some color and added all kind of INKtense colors on her face. 

Yeah, this reminds me of Fauvist style, a style that I'm drawn by a lot, and I see beautiful results even with watercolor (ink) pencils, not only with acrylics or oils. 

At this point, I wasn't sure I want to add any water to it, she was already looking stunning. But you know me, I have to go beyond my comfort zone and try something new every day, so I went ahead and added water. 

And boom! the result was amazing! I couldn't believe my eyes how gorgeous she turned out! Oh, wait, I do believe it! :)

I worked on a sketching art journal paper, so the pages are not quite suitable for watercolor, but hey, after bending a little, the page came to it's original shape in the end. And this is just a watercolor sketch, but it's one that looks amazing! That's only a reminder that i should sketch faces more often, no matter if it's watercolor, acrylics or oil pastels.

What do you think of her? I would like to read your thoughts in the comments below!

See you soon,
Cristina

Watercolor illustration of a profile woman

Lately, I find myself digging so much into illustrations and watercolor. Although I love to get messy and splash the acrylic paint on my art journal pages, sometimes I feel an urge to create some simple, fast illustrations. Why I love illustrations? Because they are fast to draw, not looking for perfection in any way, and are clean and neat. Whenever you have a very small amount of time, it's great to go for some fast watercolor sketch that drys quickly and you are ready to move on.

So the other day I posted this on Instagram:

Wasn't really sure what to do next, because I loved her so much just the way it was at first: a pencil sketch. But then I was also in the mood for some watercolor splash, so I thought why not give it a try? 

Being afraid I could mess this up, I started to add a little bit of skin tone and then another, and so on, until I got this:

And wow, it looks really good! Like I want to paint more of this! Which is what I did, but I don't have photos just yet. What I do have are a lot of other photos from the pencils sketches I did, photos that are also posted on Instagram. 

This sketch was made after a photo I found on Google searching for profile faces. It looks pretty much as the model, but maybe I'm just subjective. What do you think? The model can be found here. Please leave your comments below, I would love to hear from you!

See you soon,
Cristina

Dreaming of summer days

Inspired by Jane Davenport online class, I drew this beauty into my journal-book. A journal book with hard cover and glossy pages, but perfect to add gesso on them and then color with acrylics.

Here you can see the name of the book on the right page. I just added more color and completely transformed the page, so can no longer read "master chef".

Ink sketching is fabulous!

Even "ugly" faces can become famous!

Ink sketch in my Canson A5 art journal. 

Handmade paper stencils

 The leaves you see on the left page are handmade stencils I made.

This girl you see here was painted on my A4 art journaling, a journal with sketching paper from Derwent, who still takes water very well. 110lbs/ 165grm is more than OK for me, because I gesson my pages most of the time, and even if I don't it's still OK. And when you build layer after layer, even better!

And after using the paper stencils once or twice, you can create collages in your art journal. Imagine this stencil on a complementary color background! Just lovely!

I've also used this stencil to draw with my Inktense pencils. And look how gorgeous it came out!

The documented Life Project - Week 2 - Serfie!

This Selfie received lots of Likes on Facebook, and I thank you for that. It was build on my agenda paper directly, after doing some collage using newspapers cuts. I've started to draw the face and the eyes, without thinking too much of the shape and if they are properly aligned. In fact, I believe the left pupil is bigger than the right one, but I just left it as it is. I do love the lips, though. They look more than perfect to me!

It is true that when you just draw or paint and don't think too much how the result is going to look like, in the end you'll gonna love what you've created. 

This picture has a little Instagram effects applied to it. I just loved the colors ans saturation. 

This was week 2 - I think the most loved prompt until now! Let's see what's next on week 3!

Saying "Hi" to 2014

Good morning or good evening where ever you are, dear creative soul! I know I haven't been writing much on this blog, and it's mostly because I've been doing a lot of writing on another, publishing articles about life and personal development, finding your soul and practicing forgiveness. I'm on a journey, and I only now discovered how much I really enjoy to write.

I haven't been neglected my art journal, though - I have a lot of beautiful and inspiring journaling pages I'm going to post about in here, so bear with me. 

I'm gonna leave you with this art journal page while I get myself back to post about what has been going on in my life and with my art creating process.Until then, stay tuned on your way and keep that smile on your face, shining like nobody else can, but you!

Not perfect, just like me! Oh, but I love her ;) 

Journaling my life

It is true that I have been journaling and not posting a thing in here. I did wrote many articles, but not necessary about my art journaling creations. And totally left this place with no interesting posts to read.

Recently I've created this cute face on my A5 Canson Journal I bought from Barcelona this summer. I wanted to create something simple and still beautiful, and as I didn't had too much time to work on her face, I've choose to use watercolors and oil pastels.

I did her face free-hand without worrying about the result. The result came out pretty interesting and I decided to try another girl with the same technique. 

 First I've started with some stamping, one flower stamp that belongs to a 3D stamp set, used all over again changing direction of use. Then I went and filled in some color with the oil pastels. I have covered the whole flower petals, but next time I'm going to leave some petals blank and run with watercolors over it. This was the next step, water-coloring the pages with different colors, with lots of water and sprays. Once you get the desired result, let it dry. Or use a heat gun if you can't wait that long ;)
After applying the background, you'll need to draw the face and hair and also fill in some shadows and highlights for the face and neck.

Et voila! The finish product with some text added and the pages are ready to be loved and appreciated.

Journal girl - Messy face

Haven't been posting about my girls lately, but I've created a lot...and I've been doing some illustrations, too! Here is a girl a little bit different that what I was into until now, just trying different styles and techniques. Love ones more than others, but they are all fun to draw and color!

This face has a messy look 

I've started by adding some background. Painted red over some notebook leftovers I had and then cut them into pieces and created two hearts and some squares that I placed randomly onto the page.

Than started to actually paint the face with acrylics, free-handed and without too much care! Don't let yourself fooled, the acrylic used is not black, but a purple mixed with some leaf green, resulting a dark purple. I don't use black too much, it's too bold to me. 

I have to stop and remember myself to take more photos in the process instead of 'jumping' into the almost finished result. Next time!

A close-up

And the finished result. I should have played more with the background and add more colors, texture, stamps, etc., but for now I'm happy with her!