Life happens and then stuff takes longer. This was the first weekend in a long time I was able to concentrate on the chipin camapign from the time I left work on friday until I went to bed on Sunday. It was pretty great to spend a full weekend doing art and art related things. I was in the zone.

An interesting observation of the Chipin Campaign is that my life seemed to do anythign it could to derail me. Couldn't get the weekend off that I wanted, then I was sick, then death. Its interesting how life seems to fight the good and then when you are ready for it, it comes at you in waves.

Anyway, I wanted to show some of the process of the art. Before I get to the good paper with my fine point pens I do some studiesw and practice pieces. These are quick studies done with whatever I have at hand on whatever sketchbook I have around. This weekend I was working in a Piccadily journal that I'd written in and then scraped ink across its pages. Honestly I'm loving the look of that as a background and many use it in the future for more art. So much texture, and it's definately back to my art journaling roots.

So before I even touch those fine point pens, I do a bunch of warm upsketches, larger than the final piece and usually in Sharpie or some other marker. I work fast and loose, moving my hand quickly from one side of the page to the pother, mapping out the lines and features of the face.

After I map out the darks I add in the lights, sometimes with white paint pen more often with white china marker.

Only after I've done a bunch of these do I move onto finer point pens and good paper.