Do and Redo

I had told you folks before about how much I'm enjoying the Creative Bug website. For a low monthly fee you can access ALL of their classes, instead of buying each one individually. I have yet to find time to do the beginner watercolor class, but it's on my list. Mostly, so far I've been doing the 31-day drawing challenges, and Lisa Congdon's sketchbook and line drawing classes.

In one of the sketchbook exploration classes, you create a marker background and then draw over it. The package of brush markers I bought is the smaller one, though I wish I had splurged on the larger set (or had the patience to wait until my birthday) so I could have more pastel options. As such, my first background came out a little bit darker than I would have liked to make the drawing stand out, but I still like it:

The pink bits on the black flowers are done with a neon gel pen that lays on the ink instead of soaking into it. The ink is a bit creamier than the standard gel pen, and lays really well on black paper and dark ink. I wanted to try this again with a lighter background, so I went with three colors, and made a patchworky looking pattern.

Things do stand out much more with this one. But you want to know the one thing I don't like? I didn't mean to use the green gel pen. I meant to use an awesome neon orangey-red color, had a brain lapse, and didn't realize until too late. However, I do like the background much more. It looks kind of watercolory.

Then I decided to try a similar layout but with a white background, and one color of ink.

This one was done with a regular gel pen, a brush tip marker, and a green souffle pen. The greens don't really match up, and I made a placement error on the one leaf on the flower on the left, but otherwise this was kind of fun.

I'm not very good, but I am enjoying the process. I like the experimentation and seeing how different markers and pens react together, and how they behave on different kinds of paper. My eye is getting a little better at seeing how to balance things, and my hand feels more confident and steady. But even if they weren't, for a few dollars worth of paper and pens I'm finding something I can enjoy doing a few minutes out of the day when I don't feel like knitting, or making a big mess to sew something.

In case anyone is interested, here are the links to the things I'm using in my drawing misadventures. I'm giving Amazon links, but many things can be bought at your local craft store (with the benefit of coupons).

• Spiral-bound book
• Brush-tip markers (the larger pack is this one)
• Gel-tip pens (regular) and neon
• Black drawing pens
• Papermate pens (I'm including these because I've been using them, but just not in this post--I actually bought my set at Target)