Well, haha to me, because of course in January I had to be struck down with the flu and I didn't get around to it. I didn't really mind all that much. The theme of that month was 'artist dates' and frankly I don't feel I have any idea how to do a sketchbook page around that. Mostly because I think my entire life outside my work and chores is pretty much an artist date. It's not a new concept to me and I feel artist's dates were invented for those of us who need a little extra push to make time for themselves and their art. That's just not me anymore.
Anyway, I didn't want the second challenge to pass me by, so I got to work on the theme of February, which was 'sweets'. So of course I had to draw something cutesie. I wanted to draw a manga like girl in sweet pastel colours, but she herself wanted to be an elf surrounded by brightly coloured flowers, so I let her. I did however steal her eyes from a book about manga style girls, so I could see how those were done.
After I drew her in pencil I went over the lines with a brush pen and coloured in all the 'empty' spaces between the flowers in black. I liked the background so much that I even decided to do just a flower page for my colouring book zine (still in the making, don't ask) and I want to do some pages of flowers in my sketchbook at some point as well.
When the base of the drawing was done I took my pitt big brush markers and coloured everything in. Her face I then added to with coloured pencils over the maker colours. I really like this technique. It's like doing an underpainting in marker and then doing the details in coloured pencils to define shading and such.
So here's the result of my first sketchbook challenge contribution. As the word on the page already says: she sure is SWEET! Hope you agree! ;-)
Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy week!