1000 Drawings Cape Town

My sis Jodie and I spotted one of my doodles! 

Drawings, drawings everywhere!

Draw anything with anything on anything. 1000 drawings is an empowerment project that culminates in a one-night-only, massive inner-city art sale to raise funds for a deserving cause. Daz and I participated in a few doodle Sessions and it was so amazing to finally see this huge event come together at last. 

It's so interesting to see what people draw when given the chance haha, everyone could participate from a famous artist to a small child. It was a real visual feast.

Managed to spot a few of me and Daz's doodles too before they were snatched up! :) The way it worked was at the door you were given an envelope with two stickers ( both had the same number on them ) you would then walk around browsing till you found something you liked- BUT you could only tag the one you wanted with a sticker at 7pm. So there were alot of people hovering over drawings but no cat fights... as far as I saw anyways haha. Then at 8:30 you could collect your drawing and put it in an envelope. You also had the option of buying more if you wanted.

It was really enjoyable and I dont doubt alot of money was raised well done Shani and

 team ! :)

For more photos please visit my facebook album:

Click here for 1000 Drawings Facebook album

Colored Paper doodles

Artists what do you do to get out of a rut? 

- I was in one recently, staring at a blank page is no fun. What usually works to snap me out of it is a visit to my local art store. I try to buy paper or medium that I either havnt used before or havnt touched in a while. This time I bought a bunch of colored paper and pastel pencils. Changing things up can really work to get creative juices flowing 

Lines beautiful lines...

Working on some Character linework....

Free Comic Book Day - Cape Town

Free Comic Book Day is an annual worldwide festive event where some 2000 shops all over the world participate to give away more than 2 million comics to fans for free in order to promote the comics medium as a form of art, literature, education and entertainment.

This was my first time at the FCBD in Cape Town. Was so impressed by the scale of it! I also met alot of amazing artists, not to mention really learn about the South African comic book Industry! Check it out next year!

Head over to my fb page to check out the rest of the gallery:

http://tinyurl.com/kd4gyyb

365 Challenge Done!

Yeay! I am happy to announce my 365 Challenge ( creating a piece of art a day for 365 days ) is now finally completed! It's 

Unreal that a year has passed already. 

It followed me through Norway, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa and I really loved the amount of experimentation it got me doing. It's now time to move onto some new challenges. 

I've heard this is a bit of a global thing. If anyone has completed a 365 challenge. Would love to hear from you. How did you find it?

Crocs!

Another slow gouache, sanguine ink and Polychromos pencil illustration, this time of Crocs! These creatures have such awesome shapes. Wish they were this cute in real life. :)

Repap Stone Paper Review

So a quick review on the REPAP STONE PAPER from Italy:

It's extremely smooth and all media slides over it nicely but a few things I have noticed:

- Pencil - It is very very hard to erase any type of pencil on this paper. Be especially car

eful when using a clutch pencil as when you push too hard it makes an indentation.

- Marker - These surprisingly do bleed into the paper a millimeter or two so if you want to use a really thin marker pen be aware of that.

- Artist Pen - This was my favorite to use on this paper. You just have to be careful to let it dry a couple seconds or you will smear your art.

- Normal Ball Point pen - Slides super smoothly over the paper but also most likely leave indentations if you press too hard.

- Water just sits on top of it. I left a few drops sitting there for a couple of minutes and then just wiped them off no problem. They left no marks.

- Paper thickness - The paper is slightly transparent so if you press too hard or use alot of marker color it will show on the reverse side.

My final thoughts: 

Beginners who like to use pencil and erase alot will not like this paper as it's more suited to confident penwork. I'm not really impressed by how transparent it is as this leaves the reverse side unusable. It's a pleasure to draw on though because of its smoothness....and hey if you spill your tea on it you just have to wipe it off!

This was just an initial test on one page. I'm going to start using the rest of the sketchbook and post more thoughts once I've been sketching in it for a while.

If anyone else experiments with Repap please let me know what you think!

Repap Stone Paper!

Just bought something interesting yesterday. A sketchbook with paper made from... Stone! The paper is 100% tree free, it is instead made up of 80% calcium carbonate and 20% non toxic resins. All recycled materials which is waterproof and the 'stone paper' called 'repap' is in itself recyclable. 

I shall have a go at it and post my thoughts in the near future. 

If anyone out there has used this, would love to hear what you think.

And here's a quick fishy illo i threw out over the wend! Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

Cheetah!

There's something about the feel of traditional media. Here's a slow gouache, sanguine ink and Polychromos pencil illustration of one of the most beautiful creatures in Africa. 

Had the privilege of spending time with a few cheetah over Christmas in Namibia. Their aerodynamic bodies are just beautiful to draw. They're also alot bigger than you think !!! 

1000 Drawings - Doodle Session for a cause 02

Another great drawing session last night for 1000 Drawing Initiative. Only managed to do two doodles this time. There is such a social atmosphere and so many other great artists, you end up walking around to see what everyone is up to! The Deckle Edge sponsored all the great art supplies. Thanks Deckle edge!

SA Creatives Showcase Interview

One more interview! This time for SA Creatives Showcase! :) To check it out head to:

SA CREATIVE SHOWCASE INTERVIEW

Aaaaaaand some random scientist sketches below. :)

Featured on Between 10 and 5

An interview I did for  'Between 10 and 5's  Day Job Series

- I really recommend reading some of the other submissions too. So many people doing wonderful creative things in SA! :)

To check it out head to:

Between 10 and 5 Interview

1000 Drawings - Doodle Session for a cause

Had a lot of fun last night. My hubby and I went to a 1000 Drawings doodle session. 1000 Drawings is an empowerment project that culminates in a one-night-only, massive inner-city art sale to raise funds for a deserving cause. Ramping up to the big art sale are a bunch of doodle sessions. Basically you draw anything you want on an A5 piece of paper and it is sold at R100 . The money goes towards charity.

I can say the only problem I had...and not sure if any other artists found this....but so much freedom means that you don't know where to start haha! I decided on llamas, motivational sayings and Crocodiles with tophats! Why not.

To learn more about this great cause head over to:

http://www.1000drawings.co.za/

Half way through 365 !

Woohoo I'm officially over half way through my 365 challenge. (Drawing a sketch/illustration a day for 365 days!) 

It 'has' been a challenge as this is drawing on top of drawing for work and other projects, but loving the amount of experimentation its forcing me to do.

Has anyone else out there taken a 365 challenge? How did it go?

Ink and gouache

Morning all! Some ink and gouache characters to start off the week! 

"HUH!"

A styrofoam cup was sitting on my desk and I couldnt resist drawing on it...had so much fun I grabbed a couple more. The whole 'Huh!' theme just sort of materialized. Daz (my hubby) said I should do a series of them for fun....and so it starts. Expect to see alot more "Huh!" mugs from me in the future. :)

Do you have any suggestions for what characters or animals you think would look cool on a "Huh!" mug?

Facebook Page Up!

Hi all, finally got off my butt and opened a facebook page! Really looking forwards to interacting more with people through it! :)

If you'd like to head on over and take a peek the link is below:

https://www.facebook.com/lorraine.alvarez.posen.art

Cheers!

Enjoying the beach!

Even big girls can enjoy the beach. Sooooo many women (some of my friends and family included) are incredibly self critical. Wearing a costume is their biggest fear so they will not swim in a pool with other people or enjoy the beach.  What they don't realize is other people are probably too busy focusing on themselves! Life's too short ladies! Buy a cossie that makes you feel great in your own skin and enjoy yourselves! :)

Note: Just added a whole bunch of awesome artist links to the side bar!

Lemurs!

These guys were drawn traditionally then colored in Photoshop. It was more an experiment and I quite liked how they turned out at the end.

If you havnt heard of the Animation World Network ( which few people havnt :)  ) check out the link below. Great resource for everything newsy in the world of animation and VFX:

http://www.awn.com/

Also just joined the South African Illustrators group. SA has some really talented folk!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/zwele2/603478879710112/?notif_t=group_activity

Something from the Archives! - 02

More fun with Pen! :)