Custom pet portraits are back. You can find them in my Etsy shop (^・ω・^ )

Here are the latest ones I did for Natasha and Kristin.

(scanner ate all the blues as usual, but as my professor once said - traditional art should be viewed in galleries and on walls, not through a monitor's screen)

A.

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Long story short - I'm fighting depression. No point in phrasing it differently. I'm on a good path now but there were times which I'd gladly erase from my memory.

Here are illustrations to the book I wasn't able to finish (and lost the whole gig) due to total lack of control over the way my brain works.

And I loved this book. Loved the stories and it hit me hard that I had to give up on them.

Finished+almost finished illustrations:












Unfinished illustrations:






I have lost many things career-wise then. Contacts, commissions, trust. Right now I'm working hard to build it all back again! I'm very positive and have a gang of people who support me :) I can fight now!

A.

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Last year sneakers got so worn out I had to throw them away. Which wasn't a pity because they were plain(!!!) anyway. If I remember right I bought them right before going on a vacation and didn't have time to decorate them (with cats and stars, of course).

This year though, I had time!

Process was the same as in the previous sneakers I've made (here and here). But if you need a step-by-step, you can find it here too (*＾v＾*)

 I've been in the mermaid universe for some time now. Right now I'm even deeper in it *sinking lower and lower*

A.

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(like a bottle cleaning brush)

I really wish I could be a part of more books like this one.
Pretty please ・:*(〃∇〃人)*:・

Book is about children/animals with issues and a Blue Dog that helps them cope (I cried a river while reading it + two lakes while painting the emotional parts)

And here are some finished illustrations + cover inset designs.






 That was lots of pictures :)

Truth be told - I think I levelled up two tiers in painting abilities because of this book. And I really enjoyed that experience.

A.

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Some time ago I was asked to create mock illustrations to a children's book. The story I've decided to illustrate was about a sad small puddle that was not enough for kids to play in but appeared to be just perfect for birds.

 I didn't get that job though :( Maybe next time!

A.

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It's been almost a year since I came to a conclusion that the way I use colours suck hard and I should do something about it. It was one of the best decisions of my twenties, really (the next best decision was getting to know human anatomy better).

The Color Palette Challenge I use is the one by FallenZephyr that I found on DeviantArt. But any kind of palettes' collection would work. It's more about using colours and colour combinations that you would not think of on your own.

Here are few of the first ones I did:

(you can almost feel the struggle coming off of them)

Here are some of the new ones:

I love the progress. It's so encouraging!!!!

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It was my sister's birthday on 31st. She's an annoying (even more of a) teenager now. I'm pretty sure I wasn't THAT annoying when I was her age :D

As a part of a birthday present I painted her because she's been whining about it for a while now. I wish I had more time to do it though (I had to be quick to finish when she was out! And she came back early!!).

She's got this picture set up as her computer wallpaper now :)

A.

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I'm 29.
One more year and I will feel even more old than I feel now (hello there, after-birthday blues).
But maybe a brand new list will make me feel better in a year's time! We'll see!

30 THINGS ON MY 3Oth BIRTHDAY

1. Create new blog design
2. Start Adelaida's digital shop
3. Be a part of a fanzine
4. Finish one comic project
5. Upgrade portfolio
6. Write 20 snail mails
7. Make crepes for Love
8. Make a mousepad for myself
9. Re-make old cat bag
10. Clean up Uni works
11. Make a mobile
12. Draw my sisters
13. Get a next tattoo
14. See 5 new places
15. Go to the sea
16. Make a felt brooch/keychain
17. Plant a flower
18. Learn to swim freestyle
19. Paint sneakers
20. Dragon Age allnighter!
21. Bake a cake
22. Make an animation
23. Help someone
24. Remember a star constellation
25. Read 5 books
26. Go abroad
27. Buy an apartment
28. Get a big letter A decoration
29. Paint with oils
30. 24h PJs day!

Nothing complicated this year, as you can see :) I'm slowly getting back to my previous form. Wish me luck though!

A.

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So I've called the last year super busy. Well... I had no idea what I was talking about :/

I had to drop my daily sketching because I felt too overwhelmed with all those projects I had to do. Daily sketches + all social media went on hiatus but I guess I can slowly come back to them again :)

I have like a ton of illustrations to make so I have kept my sketchbook busy. It's full of new ideas and inspirational drawings - I will show them to you next time.

Right now I have decided to make quick digital sketches as my warm up. It's quite unusual for me because I'm a line girl: I always use lines, I think in lines, I create in lines. When I paint something digitally I always start with lines and then fill them up with colour. However, I wanted to try something new + learn something new too, so in those digital sketches I'm using only flat colours and concentrate mostly on finding the right values, hues and presenting light. Let me tell you - without sketching it first and without helping myself with some lines it's freaking hard.

Here's the first batch of sketches. You can laugh now ;)

Drawing my desk got easier so now I'm moving to outside views. Don't tell it anyone but... I have no idea where on the colour wheel is the colour of.. grass 0_0 No idea. Really.

A.

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No "From my sketchbook" this weekend, sorry guys! The weather was too gloomy to take good photos of my sketchbook :/ But surely someday during this week there will be a pretty sun up on the sky and I will be able to take those photos! Absolutely for sure!

But you still have some pictures to see. Here are next 10 sketches from the Daily Sketch challenge. Some of them weren't shown on Instagram / Twitter / Tumblr - you are the first ones to take a glimpse. Enjoy!

That's all. Right now I'm on my 64th sketch and I'm doing some of them digitally to practice those skills too. Actually, I've created a list of things I want to practice so I won't feel uninspired and won't just waste my time on meaningless doodling.

There's something new in the sketching universe too. Check out @Sketch_Dailies on Twitter - they give daily topics to sketch + retweet best pictures throughout the day. If you're lacking ideas or want to be "forced" to try drawing something out of your comfort zone then come and join the fun :)

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My sketches keep on appearing in an enormous amount. Here are some selected pages from my January sketchbook with the cat character.

Yes, that's totally him!

Enough of the cat for now. Next week I will show you sketches of the cat's girl companion (which you might have already glimpsed in my Daily Sketch post).

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A new character I've created - a bird girl (no name for her yet, sorry!). You have already seen her in my 23rd daily sketch, that was the first time I drew her.

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I've done this sort of posts in the past and I thought it's good time to bring them back :) I have not blogged too much this past year, even though lots of things happened in my life. I've been busy all year long and here's a glimpse of that:

January

February


April


May



June




July

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This time my sketches has been completely taken over by a Cat and a Girl with long hair. Hope you don't mind - they are a rather cute couple :) I will make something different for the next 10 days, I promise.

 









That's it for this time. Now on to the next batch (I will post them on 30th or 31st January).

A.

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I needed to invent a fox family (or rather - one small fox girl + her family). As usual, I started with sketching foxes from photo references to get used to their "structure". That way it's easier to make them more characteristic but still looking like foxes.

Next time - my cat character.

A.

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As I've mentioned before I am taking part in Sketchbook Challenge 2014 - Victoria Ying's and Mike Yamada's idea for boosting artistic growth. And fighting free time - effectively! :)
It's all about filling an entire notebook with sketches in one month time. The notebook has to be A5 and 100 sheets of paper (200 single pages). I'm cheating a bit in that part - when I found out about the challenge on 6th January I went straight to my local art supply store but haven't found a proper notebook. It would take next couple of days to get one from some web store so I went with what I had - Moleskine sketchbook, which is A5 but has got only 103 single pages. But, well, better 103 pages of sketches than none, am I right? :)

(Anyway - I am right in the middle of illustrating a set of 6 books for kids so there's not that much time left actually!)

Here comes the first part of sketches. They were made for the 2nd children book I've just finished illustrating. It was about a pony so I had to practice drawing horses. No... sorry... I had to LEARN drawing horses. I have never ever drew them before, to be honest.

Next time - a fox family :)

A.

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A month of daily sketches! Yay! Now on to the next one :)

Here are next 10 sketches I did + a bit of description if needed (beware, this post is picture heavy!).

I started with splash art (I've described the process in my previous post) and more cat character and his companion. Here you can see all of the before and after splash daily sketches. Colour schemes were randomly chosen via ColorSchemeDesigner.

Here, on the 6th of January, I joined Sketchbook Challenge 2014 - Victoria Ying's and Mike Yamada's idea of pushing one's art further by massive daily sketching. The idea is to fill up a whole sketchbook (A5, 200 pages) in one month. And since I was already sketching everyday I've decided to join :) Why not. It's a win-win challenge, because even if you won't finish your sketchbook, you still make plenty of drawings.

For now on my daily sketches will come from my Moleskine sketchbook but I think I can still pull off some splash art there :) We'll see.





As previously, I post all my daily sketches + more on my Instagram, twitter and tumblr so don't forget to check up those to see and read more :)

Because of the massive amount of sketches I'm making lately, due to the Sketchbook Challenge 2014, I have decided to share some, or most, or all, with you, here :) They will be posted under "from my sketchbook" tag.

See you next time!

A.

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Here comes the next 10 sketches I did. I have started with two done on my phone and then I had a bit more time so I got back to watercolour ones. Because I adore watercolours :)

To move my brain even more than I do through daily practice, I've decided to do some quick splash art. "What's that?", you ask. Here comes an explanation. First I leave some watercolour marks, dots, splashes, strokes, whatever on paper and leave it to dry. Then I take the paper and rotate it in my hands to see if the shapes formed by splashes remind me of anything particular. It may be a thing (a tree) or just a feeling (sunny afternoon). Sometimes it's hard to see anything, sometimes it's really easy. Try it yourself, just for fun :)

To make things a bit more complicated I use colour schemes randomly selected by Color Scheme Designer - click "random -> randomize palette" on the top menu to see how it works. Some colours it selects are pretty wicked but they always go well together.

Enough of the talking, here are my sketches:

Those "splash sketches" vary pretty much from what I usually do. But, because of that, they are quite a relief to do - no one expects anything particular from them, not even me. Plus, it's really a lot of fun to force my brain and imagination to work harder and differently than usual.

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That was quite a big coincidence with this week's Illustration Friday's topic.
I paint my Daily Sketches each morning and since for some time I've been painting in a splash method* I don't really have much influence in what I will paint. And my Friday's, 27th Daily Sketch's, splashes reminded me of a lake :) So here it is - a peaceful reflection.

I will post next bunch of sketches (#21-30) tomorrow so you can see the rest of the splash art. Also, I think I will add photos of how the splashes looked before I got down to them :) It's quite interesting - everyone or anyone can see something entirely different in them.

If you can't wait for those photos you can check my Instagram, where I show them daily.

A.


* I splash some paint on paper and when it dries I try to find some sense in those strokes, dots and marks.

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Here's a next batch of daily sketches. I didn't have much time this week for watercolour ones so I had to sketch digitally while commuting to and from work. Which was really good - I never knew that you could make such nice pictures on your smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with a stylus + Autodesk SketchBook app).

Here's part   #1-10

As I've mentioned before, I post those sketches daily on my Instagram (I'm alexadelaida), Tumblr and Twitter :)

A.

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If you haven't already seen it on my Facebook profile, nor Facebook fanpage, nor Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr - then I have to announce I have started Daily Sketch again. It's my 3rd edition and I'm full of willpower to make this one longer than the previous ones :)

Here are my first ten days:











They all are quite small (two last ones are the biggest - postcard sized). I start making them every morning before I go to work then finish as soon as I get back home. It's about 0,5h for each.

A.

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I woke up today to a view of overwhelming whiteness outside. It was snowing only a bit yesterday so I guess that the night must have been pretty busy for the Snow Queen ;)

Anyway, this squirrel has been prepared for a situation like this for a long time. Warm hat and cute mittens hand sewn by his grandma just couldn't wait to be worn!

This little fellow is also my day #7 of the Daily Sketch III marathon. I will post the sketches/illustrations every 10 days so I hope to see you back in here in 3 days' time :)

A.

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When a cat meows to me I can not refrain from meowing back!

Now you know :)

A.

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Yesterday I received a fabulous package - even 2 packages! Both were presents I have bought for myself to celebrate finishing book illustrations and to celebrate a new career start. First was a brand new set of French watercolours + fancy watercolour paper (oh I love those); second was a brand new Wacom tablet. I've been using my sister's Wacom Bamboo for some time now and I thought it was high time to have my own professional piece of equipment. So I bought new Wacom Intuos Pro :) And it's great. I'm getting used to all those smarty-pants keys and thinking of the best way to place it on my desktop.

And creating! :)

A.

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This month I will start to teach art to kids :) I don't know if you know, but I'm a trained art teacher though I never really wanted to work at school. Art classes in Polish elementary/junior high schools tend to be treated, by both teachers and students/kids, like a prolonged break-time, where you can additionally mess with paint. There's nothing wrong in messing with paint, truly, but the attitude where art is thought as something unimportant has always taken me aback from the idea of finding a job at school.

However! Now I will be teaching art to kids who want to be taught - during after-school art classes. They will held at my sister's Drawing School and I can teach whatever I want. There are so many ideas and techniques that can be shown to kiddos that are just perfect but unsuitable for school's art classes.

I'm super excited!

Here's a poster image I did. It's all around town now and in all elementary schools.

And here's my sister's Drawing School "Kreska" (="line")
- Website
- Facebook page with lots of students' drawings!

Keep yours fingers crossed for me, please!

A.

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