2020

It’s a new year and (yes I know I’m a few months late celebrating this), it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted any substantial updates to this site. For the half dozen of you that actually read this, I apologize for the massive gap in content. That said, I’m going to catch you up relatively quickly on what I’ve been doing in the time I’ve been away.

At the end of 2018 I suffered a bit of a setback and had to be in the hospital for a few days – I wouldn’t honestly recommend it. Although the staff was top notch, the bed was quite uncomfortable and having a roommate and an open door constantly while being forced to lay around in my undies was not terribly fun. However, for Christmas that year I still managed to paint a few quirky and odd looking creatures for my siblings and my parents.

In the early part of 2019 I started experimenting with combining resin, alcohol inks, and dried plants and flowers. pictured below is the first large piece that I did which I gave to my Mother. I created several more after that as well including some paperweights and coasters, but this one remains close to my heart as it was the first real success and I don’t want to overwhelm you with images.

I painted a few more watercolor pieces, tending to favor compositions with galaxies and sunset colors. I started experimenting with some images of nature slashed with human presence. Since we tend to like to take drives on the weekends I have a soft spot for images of roads. I like the juxtaposition of nature and human elements. Towards the end of the year I started trying to draw more detailed flowers in my paintings. Pictured below is an image of a skull (I believe I was referencing an elk) with lilac flowers behind it.

And that ends my catch-up post! I realize it was not a super exciting year for me artistically, which is something that I am aiming to change for 2020 with more goals set for creativity that I am helping to manage through a newly discovered love for aesthetic bullet journaling, which I will also post about soon!

One last thing I wanted to mention was the change of website name. I’m certain it comes as no surprise for anyone who has followed me for a while. Although Cuddlyclay.com was a great idea, I have discovered that I simply have too many different artistic loves to brand myself and my page with a single medium, so I decided to change it to a much more broad and simple website name and domain that won’t need to be changed due to my evolving taste in creative endeavors.

I hope everyone had a lovely 2019 and I hope the beginnings of 2020 for you are looking as hopeful and positive as my own.

Switching Domains

Hi all! I know this hasn’t been updated in a while, but things are coming.

Firstly though, I am switching the title and domain name of my site to something more appropriate for all of my art. Soon, you will be able to find the page at:

http://www.hannahjane.art

Thanks for checking on this page, and please come check me out at the new address as I have lots of things to share soon!

Catching Up

I haven’t just been doing nothing all this time, I promise!  Here are a few pieces that I have completed or worked on Since my last post in October (how are months flying by so fast?)

Two more versions of the “Halo” painting, in green and blue.  I have prints of Halo and Halo Green available in my Etsy store!  These are special prints, as I have detailed each with gold or silver paint so they will sparkle and shine.

I also finally used a sketch that I had set aside for quite a while to create a painting for my boyfriend’s father for Christmas.  This is likely a sketch I will use to create different versions in the future.

 

A few watercolor paintings that were gifts,  quite similar in style.

 

And finally, one adorable kawaii style fox.

You can find all of these images on my Traditional Art page, and some originals will soon become available in my Etsy shop!

 

 

Inktober: week two

So week two has actually come and gone.. almost a week ago.  I am super behind on getting this Inktober thing up to date!  I had a moment of despair last week where I thought I was too far behind to complete on time, and then I realized – who cares?  If I complete Inktober in November, at least I did it, and that’s what matters the most to me.

This week’s prompts started with “Crooked”, and originally I was going to do a shepherd on a hill with a bunch of sheep, and I even got so far as to sketch it out, but just wasn’t feeling it.  Instead, I decided to draw a crook, and take the word a little less literally.  You’ll notice a trend in the first five days of the week too..  circles. For some reason, circles everywhere.

Day 9’s prompt was “Screech”, so I drew a Northern Screech Owl.  Cute little buggers.  And of course he needed a moon behind him.  Circle 2.

The tenth day’s prompt was “Gigantic” and I fell in love with the idea of trying to convey the scale of a giant monster invading land.  What better monster to do this than Cthulhu?!  He’s also a pretty cute little bugger.  And I put him in a circle.

For circle four – I mean, prompt 11 – the word was “Run”.  Honestly, I wasn’t really feeling this one and I feel like I phoned it in a little bit.  I certainly wasn’t feeling inspired by the word, and I was feeling like I was wasting a lot of time, so I just drew some horses running in front of Mount Shasta.  Meh.  Not my favorite.

Prompt 12 was “Shattered”, and I’ve been wanting to draw a cow skull ever since I ate dinner at Longhorn.  Is that weird?  Anyway, it needed a gold circle, so it got one.

The 13th prompt was “Teeming” and I was feeling a lot like I did on day 11 for this one as well – completely uninspired.  I did the lamest thing and just looked up “teeming” as a google search and saw a picture of a bunch of bees.  I actually really like the way this one came out, and not just because it’s not a flipping circle but I think it has a lot of successes.  It was very hard to photograph without washing out one of the gold bees, so there you have it.

Prompt 14 was “Fierce”, and although this may be one of the subjects a ton of people probably went to with this prompt, I was determined to make it look decent.  I am actually not thrilled with this one just because I know the image I was looking at and I feel like some of the proportions of the tiger’s face just aren’t correct, but I think the style of the fur and the values were a success so it was kind of a mixed bag for me.

Will I be able to complete Inktober on time??  (almost certainly not)
Will I get distracted with the PC Destiny 2 release next Tuesday?? (almost certainly)
Tune in and see what happens next week!

Inktober: week one

It’s October, and to those of you involved in the art community online you’ll probably recognize that as a sign that it is the month of the very popular Inktober challenge!  For those of you not familiar with it, Inktober asks that you draw a picture every day in October.  You are encouraged to use ink and there is a list of prompts for every day of the month which you can use (but it’s not necessary).

This is my first year doing Inktober and I’ve been pretty happy with it so far.  I don’t generally draw using only ink and pens so it’s been really quite nice to push myself out of my comfort zone.  I’ve been using the prompt list because I fear that if I didn’t I would just draw the same stuff I usually do!  Inevitably I am going to draw some of the things that I generally like drawing, but I am using this month as a push to get me further outside of my comfort level and I am trying to draw some things I normally wouldn’t.

Here are my Inktober drawings for the first week.  I’ll be talking about them a little more individually below the gallery.  Click on the images in the gallery below to see them in greater detail.

The first day’s prompt was “swift”.  At first, I attempted to draw a swallow, but gave up on that quickly.  I wish I had followed through with it because I have seen some of my other attempts at doing something different and have been very happy with the results.  I should have pushed through that first day, but I didn’t. Oh well.  This also was the first day I had ever used Copic markers.  I got a set of greyscale Sketch markers for Inktober specifically so you’ll see me using them in every picture this week.

The second prompt was “divided” and I was simply attempting to “divide” the sun and the moon.  The Earth seemed like a good thing to put in between!

Day three was “poison” and I went very, very literal here.  I was excited about this prompt but just couldn’t come up with anything super original so I just drew a poison bottle.  I used some India Ink for the background, which is why it looks a little shiny.

Day four was “underwater” and I think it is my favorite so far.  I love the idea of a dark and scary ocean, and animals bigger than we can comprehend, and I was happy with how it turned out.

The fifth prompt was “long” and I really struggled with inspiration for this one as well.  I ended up deciding to draw a giraffe’s face and I’m quite pleased with how this one came out as well.  I started learning here that doing the tedious little details can really pay off in an ink drawing.

Day six was “sword” and I again went very literal, deciding to draw the sword in the stone.  I spent a lot of time on the trees around the sides of the picture and I’m glad I did, I think they look decent.  The background is again India ink so it’s a bit shiny.

The seventh prompt was “shy”.  At first, I attempted to draw a shying horse but I didn’t like how it was coming out, so I decided that I wanted to draw a woman’s face (comfort zone!) but that she would be covering it up with a sweater.  I decided to go all out and give her a winter hat as well, so I suppose she might look more cold than shy.  Oh well.  Again I tried to concentrate on the details of the hat and how the knitting might look.  It’s not my favorite but I’m still happy with how it looks.

And that is the first seven days of Inktober!  I will post another update in a week with my second week of prompts.