Free November Clip Art (Art Every Day Month, Day 3)

Tap, click or right-click to download and use this image...

          

Hello there. Day two of the Art Every Day challenge was more personal for me.

Day three though, is above. I realised that I hadn't put up the usual "month illustration," freebie for a while, so here it is. Just click, tap or right-click depending upon your device, and its yours to use pretty freely (see my angel policy for details). 

Note that this illustration is only about 6 by 4 inches at 300 dpi. But that makes it smaller, and therefore better for web projects.

This is an original watercolour pen and wash illustration, using Faber Castell pens, metallic gel pens, and Inktense paint pans. 

Hope all's  really well with you-I'll be back soon with more images.

(Update on November 5th: I have had to withdraw from the Art Every Day Month challenge, having twisted my neck, which is causing pain and exhaustion. As you might expect, the main cure for this is rest, but I'll be back as soon as I can).

Art Every Day Month 2021 Begins...

November 1st is the start of Art Every Day Month. After a lot of pondering, the question I'll be asking myself each day is also my first day's offering...

If this image with resonates you, you have my absolute blessing to share it on social media in case it sparks some joy and/or ideas for someone else.

If you're one of the people who likes to know how things are created, this is a digi-art journaling piece, created stroke by stroke in the new beta version of Krita 5.

What next?

I'll be creating every day this month, but so as not to overload the blog (and you!) I'll be doing summary posts here. (If you're keen to see everything, I will be posting even more regularly on Instagram.)

And if you'd like to join the challenge itself, the ArtEveryDay group on Facebook is one of the friendliest communities I've ever been lucky enough to find and join.

Have a great week-and month!

More soon.

AEDM 29: "Crochet" Effect Mandala Pattern

It's Day 29 of Art Every Day Month, and today's design came about by accident.

Following a recommendation, I went to try out SumoPaint, an image editor that (at time of writing) seems to be free-to-use online. (And please note, I'm not being paid at all for saying anything about SumoPaint, I'm just a curious new user of it).

It looks fantastic, and would appear to have lots of tools included that are similar to Photoshop and other more expensive apps.

I ended up playing only with the symmetry painting tool in various sizes. And after some playing around (there's really no other phrase for it, it was great fun :-)) out popped these mandalas.

They've got something of the appearance of wool, so have likened them to crochet in naming them. But you might see something entirely different in them.

As a sidenote, for speed and familiarity, I created this quick actual pattern using the mandala motifs in Patternshop (an excellent free pattern-making program that I think have mentioned before).

But in fairness to SumoPaint, there may be a way to arrange motifs there that I simply haven't found yet. They do mention "Pattern fill" which, along with *lots* other features in the app, I have yet to explore.

All-in-all, SumoPaint looks like an interesting app to watch.

More tomorrow.

AEDM Day 26 & New Illustration: Orange Slice

For Day 26 of Art Every Day Month, here's a slice of orange on a work top, in Krita...I'm out of time for anything more fancy...

More tomorrow...

New Digital Watercolour Work-in-Progress (AEDM 19)

For Day 19 of  Art Every Day Month, I made myself practice what I preach. Have been saying for ages that it's important for people to realise that lots of paintings and graphics take more than a day to create.

But it feels really challenging to post something "unfinished£. Yet, unless I do, a) I won't be walking my talk, and b) I can't reasonably expect anyone to understand how long some tasks really take.

So here, for your delectation and delight (?!) is an unfinished work-in-progress, currently featuring the image that popped into my head and kick-started the process: a penguin in a red hat.

More tomorrow, when I'll be as interested as anyone to see where this goes.

Thinking of You Card & Repeat Pattern: AEDM 18

For today (AEDM 18) I've had a sudden unfortunate need to design and send a "Thinking of You" card with a co-ordinating pattern inside. (You may recognise this leaf motif (slightly modified) from day 14).

I'll probably put this on sale in due course, but right now, I just want to get this sent to the person who needs it.

More tomorrow.

Simple Mistletoe Watercolour (AEDM Day 16)

Day 16 of Art Every Day Month.

Just a little 2" by 1" watercolour miniature of some mistletoe for today-it's been unexpectedly busy today,.

More tomorrow.

Free Printable: "Election Bingo" Card (AEDM 15)

It's Friday, and time for a bit of fun...

Here in the UK, politicians have been released back into the wild for another election.

So, in order to make the tedium of watching it all a little more fun, I've designed this bingo card, that helps the user to spot all the various kinds of behaviour that politicians tend to exhibit, and which becomes exaggerated during election periods.

This card deliberately applies to politicians of all political persuasions (and probably in many countries outside the UK, too).

So, if you feel like printing this off for your amusement whenever there's an election where you are, please feel free.

There are no prizes for this, obviously-just the satisfaction or otherwise of a completed card.

And finally, there was no political intent behind these colours. It's hard to find a colour that someone somewhere hasn't used for political purposes. And it's cold here at the moment, so I went for warm colours.

More tomorrow.

An Autumn Leaf Watercolour Story...(AEDM 14)

Painting leaves in pen-and-wash is an autumn tradition for me now, as for lots of other people...Maybe even, almost a cliché, for some.

 And yet, I like how this turned out. (Particularly as I genuinely did paint it in the 20 minutes I had whilst hubby was in the shower...I'll be trying speed painting again! :-).

With this leaf though, there's also a story.

Now, don't get me wrong, I *love* autumn colours, and have always understood we're lucky to get them.

But this year, that's taken on a whole new dimension.

For, like many people, once the leaves had got into the, "blowing into the house, leaf piles in the street, "Will the pavement turn leaf-sludgy?,"" stage, I was getting tempted to moan along with everyone else, and to bemoan the onset of winter that fallen leaves herald.

Then, a chance remark by a Facebook friend changed everything.

She lives in a very different part of the world. So different in fact, that she had to go on a day-long hunt for any autumn colour at all, and (rightly!) celebrated that she found two gorgeous leaves in the process.

After reading that, I didn't even notice that it was freezing cold, drizzle-drenched and blowing a gale the next time I went outdoors. Instead, all I could see (and actually *see*, this time) were trees and streets cloaked and carpeted  in russet, burnt orange and gold...And all I could do was to marvel, as if for the first time, at how amazing that really was (and *is*).

And so, I painted one of the next leaves to blow through our door, out of 100% gratitude...

More tomorrow.

Update and PS: I've wonderful person and artist whose original comments inspired this piece supported it enthusiastically, so I'm more than delighted to be able to link to her own wonderful work as a thank you.

AEDM 13 Leaves Turned into a Kaleidoscope Design...

It's Art Every Day Month Day 13. And again, here's something entirely different.

Spoonflower's theme for their latest contest was "Kaleidoscope".

So I was aiming to simulate that "brightly-coloured-bits-of-glass-fractal," look of my childhood kaleidoscope (which used to fascinate me for hours).

Somehow, part of my (very bad) photo of some leaves outside ...went through 5 different digital programs, (Picture  to Painting converter, Gimp, Serif Craft Artist, Repper, Photoshop Elements and Gimp again...all with various settings and twiddles therein)


and turned into this...

More -and most probably something different again,  tomorrow.

AEDM Day 10-What I'm Learning About Art Challenges (and Life!)

It's Day 10 of Art Every Day Month, and as you can see, it's what yesterday's half-finished frame is becoming, though not necessarily what it will end up being in the end.

And yes, a busy time for me i happening to coincide with the stage of these month-long art challenges that naturally feels like a lull.

But what's more important right now is what I'm leaning from this challenge. That taking time to finish something is OK. That acknowledging that I can't do everything all at once is OK too.

And most importantly of all, that things take time to grow and emerge, and that the process of *becoming* simple cannot be rushed, whether you're a person, a plant, or a painting.

More tomorrow.

AEDM Day Nine: An Authentically Half-Finished Frame!

I thought long and hard before posting today's effort for the Art Every Day Month Challenge. Our Instagram-perfect culture has  made it feel bizarre to post anything that looks less than "perfect," or that looks "unfinished" (try posting a work in progress over there that is truly "in progress",  rather than "closer-to-finished-than-you-can believe," and you'll see what I mean).

But the fact of the matter is, sometimes the little thing called "life" *does* get in the way. Phones ring. Other things intrude.  And sometimes, that leaves less than no time for creating picture-perfect items.

With that said, here's my effort for Art Every Day Month Nine: half a doodled floral ink frame in Krita. I'd had high hopes for finishing this today. Adding lots of colour, even. But the fact is, I'm off out now, and definitely won't have time to complete any more of this today.

But the truth is, not everything can be finished in a day. And on some days, almost nothing can be started. For any of us...because we're all human. And that's OK.

                                                                                                                                                                      

Miniature Ink & Watercolour: Glittery Christmas Tree (AEDM 6)

For AEDM (Art Every Day Month) Day 6, here's something completely different-a 1" by  2" miniature, involving watercolour, ink pen, glittery gel pens, and a Posca pen for the white highlights.
(It glitters a lot more in real life!).

New Digital Painting: Happiness Quote (AEDM 5)

Day 5 of Art Every Day Month...More digi-Art journaling in Krita, with hand-lettering...and the necessary partner to the Day 4 drawing.

AEDM Day Two: You're a Star!

Day Two of Art Every Day Month, and this starfish emerged. With a message like that, he's practically *begging* to be turned into a greeting card (though I didn't set out to create one). But first things first-stay tuned for day three of the challenge tomorrow. (Image created entirely in Krita 4.2).

Yay-November Is Art Every Day Month!

Yay! This isn't just how I feel to turn to a new month, finally feeling vibrant after a yucky virus that gave me an October to forget.

Much more importantly, November is Art Every Day Month, and I'll be participating in the challenge this month.

It's a lovely chance to be creative every day, (and also to be kind to yourself if you skip a day or two).

This pic is my illustration for the first day-which I did letter and colour by hand, but via digital graphics pen and the Krita app.

If you'd like to take part as well, the sign-up page and all the details are here.

And let's all have a great November.