#and please have patience while redbubble decides what to do with these things

[mysticsparklewings]

Akshaya‪

I really wasn't planning to have another mandala up this quickly, but I was feeling pretty unmotivated while trying to work on other projects, so since today is Saint Patrick's day and I'm trying to do more holiday/special day pieces this year, I decided I'd take the opportunity and bust out another one of these. They're a bit like the watercolor sunset/sky pieces I was into making a while ago; The end result looks really nice but there's a lot less work involved than other types of art I make, so it feels very rewarding to sit down for an hour or so and come out with a low effort art piece that doesn't necessarily look low effort. Anyway. I think it's fairly obvious the theme/inspiration I pulled from for this one: Luck/Shamrocks/Clovers. I picked out a few various shades of green gel pens, all of which you can see in the photo. Mostly various Gelly Rolls, but also one Inkjoy and one Pentel Sparkle Pop. Hopefully, you can see a little bit of the sparkle/shine from the glitter and metallic pens, too. I tried to use shapes that reminded me of the shamrock/cloverleaf shapes, and I also tried to work in 3's, since those plants typically have three leaves. Though you will notice the shape in the center is technically a four-leaf, and that was completely intentional.   Also, I used the less-than-stellar mixed media paper that I first used on Covered in All the Colored Lights, which despite not working well for markers, pencils, or watercolor thankfully works just fine with gel pens--almost too well, in fact, on account of how smooth it is. Normally, I scan things in unless it's for a WIP shot, but since I used the shiny gel pens I thought I'd try a photo instead, especially since I have a slightly better camera now (still a phone camera, but 12 mp is better than 8 mp regardless). And I figured I'd try making the photo a little more "aesthetically pleasing" with the gel pens and, surprise, real clovers! Freshly picked from my yard, where there is no shortage of them but I didn't have the patience to hunt down any four-leafed ones that might be there.   This brings me to the title, as it's the only thing I've yet to explain. "Akshaya," per Google, means "the never diminishing" in Sanskirt and is used as an omen of good luck. I picked a Sanskrit word since "mandala" is also Sanskirtish, and I think it's obvious why I picked a word tied to luck. Although, it's not just for today. It's also for the state of the world right now. I'm not going to get specific, because if you're anything like me you've been hearing the specifics more than enough and it's driving you crazy at this point, so it's very likely you can guess exactly what I'm talking about without me ever having to say specific words. Anyway. My point is I think the world over could use a little luck right about now. We could use a little never diminishing in the hope department. Wouldn't you agree? It isn't much, but this is my little beacon of hope and good faith I'm putting out into the world for those reasons. If nothing else, it looks nice. Perhaps we can just pause for a moment and acknowledge that, be distracted by the niceness for an instance. It's only an instant, but that's better than nothing and ceaseless despair, at least in my book. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[mysticsparklewings]

Stellaluna (+ Time Lapse!)

So I've had this done for like a week or two now, but I wanted to get my commissioned pieces up first and I was also going back and forth on whether or not I should even post the Timelapse I filmed...after I edited it, which was another reason for the posting delay. Link to Said Time Lapse: youtu.be/2Q3xuZY_Rvk But you know, I spent roughly four hours (two hours each night) of my life working on this with the camera rolling, bumping my hand into my faux-tripod setup while I was coloring...And then I spent a short while piecing it together and doing minimal editing...so why not?  I just wouldn't count on this being my big-break into Art-YouTube-ing or anything like that, since I didn't even have the patience to do/learn how to do all the editing I wanted to. Honestly, I don't really know what possessed me to, but somehow I got it in my head that I was going to do a drawing specifically to "test the waters" with a speed draw/timelapse...So I went on Pinterest and started looking around for ideas, as usual. I spotted a bat plushie and from there my mind went to "Stellaluna," this children's book that is about a little Fruit Bat finding out she is not, in fact, a bird. I remember I had the DVD, which had some crafts as part of the bonus features, and I was so eager that I used balled up tissues and notebook paper to recreate them to the best of my ability. Even now, probably my favorite place in Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World is the Kilimanjaro Safari Jungle Trek, which has a Fruit Bat house where can see some just hanging out. (Pun fully intended). If I knew how to take care of one and it wasn't probably illegal or dangerous, I think I'd have a bat as a pet!   So I buckled down and went to work. I filmed all the way from the starting sketch, which was actually pretty simple because of the chibi/simplistic style I went with, to transferring the sketch with my lightbox (in which I turned off the overhead light, hoping that would help things be more visible on camera but unfortunately it didn't really help that much), to the line art, and then it was like four in the morning and I thought it best to stop there for one night. The next night, before I started filming I picked out the colors I was going to use--and somewhere along the way, I had decided this would also be a good opportunity to try using the Faber Castell Polychromos again. This time, though, I also brought out my white Prismacolor to supplement, since I had already discovered that the Polychromos white is better for blending and not so much bright white highlights. Once I had everything picked out, I started recording and didn't stop until I was finished. Which probably wasn't a very good idea on my part--my hand was starting to ache a little from all the coloring without much of a true break. Yet it felt kind of good to really power through and see a piece to the end with minimal distraction/deviation, you know? Just, maybe next time one or two small breaks wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.  (Breaks are important for your artist eyes and hands!) I'm actually quite pleased with how the background came out because you can see with the first few layers, the way I chose to go about it, it was looking preeeetty scratchy. Luckily, as I kept adding layers, it smoothed out fairly nicely. Also, originally (and throughout most of the video) I was planning on the "proper" direction of this having Stellaluna right-side-up, and the darkest part of the sky was going to be behind her head. But after I got her colored, I think that's when it occurred to me that I could have her hanging upside if I just flipped the sky gradient. So I did! I wish I had thought of that from the beginning only because to see it the proper direction now you have to turn the sketchbook upside down...but hey! Could've been worse! I did notice this time that my white gel pen was really happy to do the stars but less happy to do the outline around the bat, mostly around her head. This kind of makes sense because I was using the white, wax-based Prismacolor as the base for the lighter area (after realizing that just putting the light blue down was not going to work) meanwhile I didn't use the white on the sky by the branch at all. Gel pens don't like the wax from colored pencils; it clogs the tip. Since the Polychromos are oil-based, they (evidently) don't seem to do that as badly. Also, the branch was kind of an interesting experiment. I didn't want to line it like Stellaluna, as I thought that would be drawing too much attention to it, so I went the route of doing some semi-realistic shading. I rather like how it turned out. Overall, I find it quite cute.   Again, not sure how into making videos I'll be in the future after this experience  I'm just not sure I'm ready to go through all the trouble of learning how to edit and then spending hours at a time doing so. Maybe some other day? And there's something oddly depressing to me about having spent roughly 4 hours on a piece and seeing it compressed into like two and a half minutes; anyone else?  I might try my hand at a couple more videos like this one though if the mood strikes me. P. S. I'm calling it a Time Lapse since I used the "time lapse" option on my phone to film instead of just taking a video and speeding it up later. ____ Artwork (c) me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own Stellaluna ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram