Pink Clouds (Marathon - Day23)

It's been a while since I used watercolours but it's great to hug them again and have a nice conversation :3

The piece I did today has it's little story behind but not of what is on the picture (you can clearly see that) but of how was it made. You see, I've been preparing my portfolio for a while and I've even written down the things, certain themes or ideas, that just have to be there - the images that may give me job because they can be easily connected with popular themes or their style can be adapted to other illustrations without any problems. So on my list are few typical children's book illustrations; designs of adult characters with specific jobs, like a fireman or a cook; there is an illustration with a birthday cake; with a little town and it's inhabitants. Also one of the works-to-do on my list is a piece similar to something I've already done but better. The piece I'm talking about is 'Party Goddess' which shows a nice idea but the way it's done leaves me with a not-that-broad smile.

Therefore, I decided to cross this image out from my to-do-list today. Half of the idea was done - a very slim lady in a big dress.

For another half of the idea I checked my 100 Themes Challenge and read all those themes that are still undone. It's a good way to complete ideas that are floating in your mind, almost ready to be created on paper but there is still something lacking in them. I decided to use the 'Lock and Key' theme and I at once had the idea of the lady's dress changing into a river and a boat with a fishing man with a key on his rod. I had no idea where to put the doors (I knew there will be some doors somewhere) but ideas never stop coming to me so I knew this one will come sooner or later :3

So I started sketching with a pencil (no doors here), adding details with a pencil (still no doors), inking the outline (doors will come soon for sure), colouring with watercolours - first layer, second one, third... And when I finished I realized I have totally forgotten about this key and those doors :D It's a bit of shame since it would look lovely but it looks nice anyway - theme spared for another time ;)

So now we have something like... let's see... Mother Earth?

Checked the themes once again in pursuit of something fitting to this image but, I think, Mother Earth will stay :3

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Red flowers (Marathon - Day22)

As I've said - five is enough. So here is the last fashion illustration I made and there will be no more of them for now :)

This dress is a bit Gothic in my opinion, not that you can see it but I just feel like it :3 I like those gloves, I was wondering where can I put them in all those designs I've already done but they did not fit anywhere perfectly and here they are just fine. It would look too sexy too be true if it was a real dress <3

I should use softer pencils for drawings because those hard ones I'm using are too grey and then I have difficulty in making them look dark when scanned and not darkening the colours in the same time. Bye-bye H pencil *waves goodbye*

Here you have a not coloured version and the coloured one, which one is better?



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Fashion stuff again (Marathon - Day20 and 21)

I think it's enough of fashion for now. I did four pieces... hmm.. four. That's a bad number, maybe I will do another one to get five :D

OK! So here you can see 2 pieces from the rainy Days collection. I really like these >o<



Sorry for not writing more about them but they are just exactly what sits in my wicked mind, I can not possibly say anything more :3

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Fashion stuff (Marathon - Day13, 15 and 18)

I'm not in a obvious mood of creating now so I decided I'll write about the marathon, since the last day I wrote about it was the 12th one and now is the 20th...

I have so many fashion projects/designs in my head at the moment that I don't know where to start, what to do first. And that's a shame because I have to make them quickly and maybe, MAYBE, they will be in a book about fashion illustrations :D But I will say no more now :3

What I like the best in this type of illustration is that I can do whatever I want. And however I want. There is no need to draw realistic looking girl, the clothes can be impossible to sew but it doesn't matter - the moment of drawing them is important, the first impression of the colours used, of the idea hiding behind the whole concept. It's like setting free a part of your inner self that have always been in captivity. It's a great feeling :)

The image from Day13 is a little pack of designs based on Eastern culture - its traditions and actual times. I like the colours of it, they look so royal and make the clothes look calm and a bit romantic when not mixed but after mixing those greens and violets we get an incredible dose of energy.


Another one, from Day15, is also connected with Asian culture but this time oriented more on Japan. I think there would be no problem in meeting a person dressed like this while walking around Shibuya or other fancy parts of Tokyo. These pinks look neat :D I love them!! <3


Day18 is a beginning of a new idea - Rainy Day. As I have described it on DA: "By 'Rainy Days' I mean designs in grey and dirty colours but with happy orange or yellow accents and details that make the whole outfits interesting.". In those designs it's not all about the colours - they are gloomy and make you feel sad and unhealthy - it's all about the way of making those clothes. Details, mixes, accents, jewellery, bags, embroider - they all together make a grand design.

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Morrigan (Marathon - Day12)

Now, this one took me sooo long. I started it at about 11:30 and finished at 22:30. You have to add few brakes, a little journey to change my working space and starting again from the beginning about 4 times (!) but there still will be about 8 hours left! That's long!

Yesterday, when I came back from the country side (where I was picking strawberries all day long with my <3) and after I did the 'Fryderyk' pixel art I had no energy to do anything else except laying flat on my belly and reading about gods and goddesses from Celtic times. I have a book about Celtic and Nordic beliefs and it always inspires me so much. Even now I have at least 3 ideas of pictures with the heroes, gods or myths presented in it. Coming back to the main story - I was reading the book and I found a description and stories about Morrigan, a goddess which took part in wars and helped her allies with magic and after a battle she collected heads of dead warriors, what she called her 'acorns' (freely translated from the book). She was symbolized by crows and ravens which could be seen above a battlefield. I was too tired to, at least, sketch my idea so today I had those problems ;]

All these mythologies and legends are inspiring... I should buy more books about them *nods*

I was reading this book to get ideas for the 'Scottish Myths and Legends' contest held by AddictiveHobby.com. I already had one idea and I've even made a design sheet of the characters (haven't shown it anywhere) and sketches of the composition but I know that I won't be able to do it at one sitting so it takes more time for me to sit dawn to it at all ;P On the other hand, I was too inspired by the character of Morrigan to not create this picture. And, although I also thought it would take more than a day, I wanted to start it and, what a surprise, I finished! :3

I've said I'll show a more complex step by step so here we go! Let's start from the very beginning:

1. My first idea: Morrigan going away from a battlefield with heads in her hand. There is a burning city in the background and some dead bodies and pieces of armour.

2. I've started blocking colours and I've found out that I am unable to do a background like that without outlines and I'm too lazy to make them. So I've decided to change my idea (it was a 2nd change, I have not saved previous version).

3. Another sketch. It looks quite the same but there is no specific background, only red ribbons from her dress and her big hair here and there.

4. Background's beginning. I wanted it to be a bit grey with the mood of a finished battle and nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Some kind of emptiness.

5. Made the background a bit more warm (only in colours, not in mood). I've started her dress and made her face. I could not make her in the way I usually create - from the whole to the detail. Don't know why, I just had to make details as soon as I've started a certain part.

6. I've decided that her dress will be drenched in blood. It's a bit gruesome but looks nice :D

7. Worked on the heads she's holding and made the ribbons. I like how the disappear in the background. Also I've made her feet dirty with blood she was walking through on the battlefield.

8. Hair! They are very important since they help to create the mood. Firstly, I had bigger hair on mind but after making these I've understood that more hair would make only more mess, not a more pretty picture ;)

9. Ravens and crows in the air. I've used photos <3 found for me through google but I did not copy and paste them - I wanted to be sure that those birds look as they should, not like hens or flying cats (and you must know that without checking them before creating, they would look really really bad ;P).

10. Here's a finished image :) I've adjusted the colours a bit (again, I was creating on laptop not Calliope - my sisters are playing The Sims 3 all the time on her) and, as for me, they look more creepy now :3

When I looked at her, Morrigan, now I found her similar to a girl from my class at university. She has almost as big hair as Morrigan :D

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Fryderyk (Marathon - Day11)

Actually, I have no idea how to make pixel art :D I've just read somewhere that it can be made in MS Paint or Photoshop or any other software of this type. And that's all I know.

I had no problems with Fryderyk till the moment I saved the image and I checked the colours on a different screen. It was sooooo small! So tiny I could hardly see it. Have I overdone it a bit? :3 I was wondering if there is a well known to all pixel-art-makers resolution of canvas on which great works with colourful squares can be made. With the bigger works it about 3000x4000px and 300DPI, so how is it with pixel art?

You may already know my and my sister's hamster, Fryderyk. We bought him when he was so small you couldn't say if he's a boy or a girl and he was sleeping all the time. Now he still sleeps all the time but you have no problem in seeing that he's a HE because his testicles are big enough to see with closed eyes. What always makes me smile is the way Fryderyk sits - he sits on his little butt and takes his great balls in font of him and then, with his tail behind, you are unable to overturn him :D Oh! And when he sits on the upper level of his cage he inserts his testicles between the rods of the floor. Sometimes it looks as if he was broken or just in the process of multiplying by budding... Silly little hamster :3

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Daylight (Marathon - Day9)

As I've said on DA in the description to this image - I had the idea in my mind since the very first moment I saw the topic of the Children's Illustrator's Club monthly theme 'Hidden Garden'. I like those secretive themes, they always make my imagination go wild.

So let's see the process of making 'Daylight':

1. I did the sketchy sketch (lighter one) and then added the, let's say, final sketch of the girl. The idea of the background was flowers and a hedgehog just to not make the r4eal background :3

2. I quickly changed my idea as you can see ;P Here I made a background with some plains and a little fence - there will be flowers near this fence later on *nods*

3. Now, I told you there will be flowers! :D I also made the fence look more 3d. At this point I decided to use greens, yellows and reds to colour the girl. And, although I firstly thought there will be different kinds of flowers on this meadow, I decided to make only poppies. It's a simple image so too much colours would make it look unnecessarily complicated.

4. Base colours of the little girl. I like how it looks here - a bit of contour but not that we are all aware it's it ;P

5. Look! More poppies! :3 I did the grass and the flowers at the very end. And I found out that the shadow on the girl is in the opposite direction than the one on the fence ;P *then went a little fixing*

6. Here I just adjusted the colours since I was making it on a laptop and the colours on Calliope (my PC) looked a bit plain and too pastel. I have no idea how they look on your screens :P

Hope you liked this process. If you want I can make more steps next time but this one was a simple work so there was nothing more to show, I think ;)

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Crazy Faeries - they are everywhere! (Marathon - Day8)

s you may already know traditional printing is one of my favourite artistic activities at school and, therefore, I'm making my Master of Arts in this workshop (short explanation - in our university we have to choose between traditional printing/painting/photography/design/digital something and others and make something, what we decide on our own, in a technique connected with those workshops. Also you have to write a project which can be connected with your work but it's not a must). I have a lot of problems with my general idea and how should the single works look like. For example now, I'm thinking about changing this illustrative style of my works into more modern one by adding to them colourful objects and making compositions out of them. So it won't be a single picture but a big sheet of paper with a composition made of 2-3 pictures in the style I have now and few additional ones looking like made with a coloured pencil... I should give it a try and find out what comes out of it.

On Wednesday we had an exam on our traditional printing classes so before that day I wanted to push my works further in their accomplishment and even start another one to make it look as if I have been working hard ;] I've spend almost whole Tuesday at school making prints and throwing those matrices into an acid every now and then. I was at home after 9 p.m.! >o<

The work with a bathtub is the first I've started (not on Wednesday, earlier you silly ;3) and I've been re-doing it so many times to make it fit the picture I have in my mind that my teachers have started to complain about the slow progress. But I think it's better to make it slow and have a nice effect in the end without any mysterious additions which came no one knows where than make it quick, have a similar effect but also some elements not finished or be not convinced to the result.


Another work is the one with a bus and a bus-stop outside. I really like this one because there are so many characters there: me, faceless faeries, the Queen of Green, fellows with no paces from some of my other works, the big faceless angel (she's faeries friend) and someone with a tentacle - boy, that's a very happy party :D It's a finished work.


This one, though, it's not finished and I'm wondering how to manage it... It's a sunny place presented so I can't just make it black or dark with the lines. However, it can be good to use as the first in me new idea of works - it doesn't have a closed composition so I can easily add something here and there. Hmmm... I should make a project... Going back to the image - I love the idea :) it makes me smile every time I look at it. Those faceless faeries are funny creatures ^^


I've started another work but I've forgotten to take a photo of it. I'm thinking about working on those pictures during the holidays (which I already have) so I will probably show you the progress as soon as I make some :3

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Faceless Faerie Cats' Book (Marathon - Day7)

I could have posted it yesterday but it would be too many works for you to see on one day. So many pleasures at once - I had to divide them a bit :D

When it was still May we, my friends from school, had to organize something interactive and interesting to do with the participants of the May Festival held in the Museum of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. As usual it was badly organized but, what surprised me, we had fun there :) We were making prints on T-shirts, monotypes with little children and there was a sculpting in clay point (and beer+bonfire ;P).


There was also an exhibition and I loved two works there: the first one with cats - it was a printout of an enormous size and looked so fantastic I could steal it and run away if it wasn't so far away from home ;P The second one was a group of paintings of one artist and what I liked the most in it was it's faeriness :3 I have never seen works like this on exhibitions of well-known artists. I always thought they, those well-known artists, underestimate illustrations and fairytale-styled works but maybe I was wrong. Time will tell :3



When we were getting ready to go home I made a little faceless (and wingless) faerie. Unexpectedly she survived the journey (after falling dawn several times, being sqashed and kicked and after loosing it's hand - I had to glue it later on) and has been drying next to Calliope till Monday. I've noticed her yesterday, decided to colour and do even more...

I'm lame in making lamps ;)

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Wave (Marathon - Day6)

Almost a week of the marathon is over! :) I knew I would last that long without any problems but wait and see what happens next ;P

This is a fashion illustration I had to make and there are more to come as I found out this morning. In the next illustrations I'll try to use different mediums and find out which ones suit me the best when this type of pictures is considered.

Gosh, that's a simple picture :) the wave makes it look more difficult and complicated but, actually, the wave was easiest to make! Oh, and look at her ring - it's lovely :3

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Miś (Marathon - Day5 + The Drawing Day 2009)

When we came back from Cracov in the morning and slept for another 6 hours (you need some sleep after a whole night of jumping and those tiresome journeys via PKP) I was ready to work again! :) But! The Sims 3 had a première on Friday and I got a pre-order exclusive pack from my parents on Children's Day therefore we went to the shop to get the box with all that stuff. There were some problems but, after all, We installed them on my Calliope (PC) and gave it a try till the end of the day. Oh that was fun :D It ended with my <3 playing a sim-him and me drawing. Because it was a DRAWING DAY 2009!

I think it's a great event, this drawing all together on the whole planet, but I would change some things. For example I would not make it on Saturday because, although some people have free time then, some were travelling, visiting family or had other various things on their minds. I think that during the working part of the week it is easier to sit down to drawing. OR it can be as it was claimed on Sunday when I visited the DRAWING DAY 2009 page - the whole weekend is the drawing day. That was better than only Saturday :)

On Friday I found out about this tragedy http://million-dandelions.deviantart.com/journal/23567443/ and the project connected with it. After crying my eyes out I decided that I'll draw a bear on the DRAWING DAY 2009 which will be my part of the bear's book.

I know some people are horrible and there are crimes of all kinds committed from time to time but it always shock me when I read that it happened to somebody personally. I don't know this girl, nor I didn't know her husband, but when I see their photos on DA, always with smiling faces - it just hurts to look :/ I can feel my humanity bleed in the shame that some units of my kind have predispositions and are willing to do such a dreadful thing.

To make me smile again I made my bear a quasi-fairy :) everyone wants to ba a faerie, you know? ;P

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Forest Maker (Marathon - Day4)

I thought I would not have time to create anything on Friday because we were going on a Selector Festival with my <3 but there was a longer unexpected brake during classes at university so I did the outline to my work. An outline is a good start ^^

When we finished our classes we were going on the railway station almost at once. There would be no fun with no stress so the bus was late and then late again and we were close to not catching our train but, fortunately, it was late too :D Ridiculous ;P

When in Cracov, we ate our favourite ice-creams and went on foot to the place where the festival took place. It was a bad idea, I can say it now, since after all those walking, jumping, standing, jumping and walking back my feet fainted and I felt not-that-great ;] But my face wore a broad smile all the time C:

The stage with Franz Ferdinand on playing :) They gave an amazing show <3

I did not have much sleep lately, all because of the Sims 3, but I still create! And I have finally finished this one :3 Lovely, isn't it?

It's some kind of a Forest Spirit, the one that makes trees. Firstly, I thought it will be a ghost but I've ended up with a colourful thing that looks like an enormous worm.
Nice =:3

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Drawers in our minds (Day3)

Another day of the marathon!

It was hard today because I wanted (not needed but wanted) to study to get the best final mark in one of the subjects at my university. I'll let you know if it was worth spending my time on this additional learning.

Still, I have an image to show you. This work was made also for the contest announced by some Warsaw's MDK (how can I translate this "MDK" thingy? A Municipal House of Culture? It's a place, there are few of them in every town, where active people meet and share their passions - there are dancing classes there, painting ones, people collecting and playing CCG meet there too and children can go there and have their activities organized in a very productive way when they have too much free time to spend. It's something like this :3). The theme was to illustrate a poem dedicated to children. The prize in this contest is the possibility of using your illustration in the published version of the story which includes that poem.

The story is about of what the insides of our head are made - lots and lots of drawers. There are big ones and small ones and even those tiniest ones and in each and every one of them something is hidden. In one of them is a hamster who eats a lot and I've decided to use it as a main hero of my drawing :) Why? Because I have a hamster of my own, his name is Fryderyk, and he likes to eat a lot too :D So this is him on the picture.


I'm not sure if my work will win anything. I think it's too colourful :/ And unfortunately I have only a quite bad photo of it since my scanner decided he is broken and he won't scan anything (and *oh just go away and leave me alone so I can make those weird noises*) so I have to take a photo. I hate taking photos when the sun is almost down and the light has a odd colour and then everything looks awful and it's always impossible to fix it in photoshop. Damn...


But maybe they will have a scanner who does not have a bad day and they will make it look neat :D

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Adapt - Illustration Friday (Marathon - Day2)

Day 2 of the Creating Marathon :)

Since Friday is approaching I've decided to make something for the Illustration Friday before the theme changes. This week's theme, "adapt", appeared to be very fun to illustrate ^^

But I have to do the image twice because the first version didn't feel like it...


However the final work is just right :D I have not been creating anything without outlines for a long time so it took me a while to finish it.


While I was doing the second version my sister came and asked why I am painting her :D It was not her, nor anyone specific, but she seemed similar enough to name the girl from the picture Zuu. They both ruin their clothes in the same way ;P When it was decided that this picture shows my sister I've decided to change my first concept of the pictures on the wall and use pictures made by my sister (using my tablet Alice). I just have to adjust the colours a bit since she likes to use the most vivid, vibrant and eye catching ones ;P

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The Marathon (Day1)

I've started a Creating Marathon in which I have to make one piece of art, drawing, painting or sth digital every day. Wonder how long will I last in this resolution :)

I think it's a good thing to do something like this once in a while to mobilize oneself, to keep one's mind open and reach to the parts of one's creativity not known before. There are so many ideas floating around in our minds all the time but - until we really want to - we won't reach them. Also, what is a more practical point of view, there are plenty of unfinished works waiting for their time, monthly and weekly themes to use as an inspiration or contest we can enter, we just have to sit down and create.

Apparently lack of ideas will not be my weak point in this challenge. My laziness will be :D But that's an obvious thing ;)

Wish me luck =:3


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This is my first day entry. Hermione Granger form Harry Potter's series - my beloved bookworm and know-all-and-how girl. What I like in her the most is her stubbornness in gaining knowledge and her believes that wisdom is good and you can not put everything on luck. She is worth everything :3

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