Sunday Surprise: Baby Theavy Sketch

Good afternoon y'all!

My husband and I are on our reading date again at Local Coffee, so I figured I should do a quick post while I have the chance!

Today's Sunday Surprise will feature a sketch I did while in drawing class back at Pacific Lutheran University. In that class we had a sketch book that we had to draw in with pen everyday; each page should look like we spent at least 20 minutes on it. The point was to keep your drawing skills flowing and by using pen, you have to be intentional about every stroke. If you messed up, you would just have to work with it.

This one is a sketch of my cousin Soktheavy. She's a bit older now, but this was her in 2010!

What do you think about this exercise of drawing in ink? It sure does have a risk element in it, but it forces you to commit to every stroke. I hope you like this sketch for Sunday Surprise!

Have a swell Sunday, and see you later!

<3 Kara

Sunday Surprise: Making Sundaes!`

Happy Veterans day everyone!

I married a veteran, have a couple in my family and know plenty of them personally, so I'd like to say thank you to all our veterans and troops for working to keep us safe!

On another note, I missed Sunday Surprise yesterday. My computer has not been very nice to me, so I haven't been able to do much. But today I was able to edit this video that was meant for yesterday. So, enjoy your Sundae Surprise!



<3 Kara

Sunday Surprise: Speed painting of Ruby

Good evening y'all!

It's Sunday night, so I have a bit of time to do a quick Sunday Surprise. However, this isn't that big of a surprise to some of you because I uploaded this video a couple days ago and couldn't resist sharing before today's post! hehe

But anyway, the surprise is a speed painting video of me painting Ruby from Once Upon a Time. I did this in preparation for a Tutorial Tuesday. Enjoy!


The song in this video is called "Bind Me to the Brinks" by Sublunary, who is a friend of mine. Please show him some love and check out his site: http://sublunary.bandcamp.com. The song is available on his website for a "you name it" price, and I encourage you to at least give it a chance :)

Share and like if you please! Until next time,

<3 Kara

Sunday Surprise: Dragonfly Mosaic

Happy Sunday evening!

The day is almost over and I realized I forgot all about Sunday Surprise, and I am so sorry! So here it is, a bit late.

Today I am sharing with you all a mosaic I did a long while ago back in IB art. During that time, I experimented a lot with different mediums, and at one point I did spend a lot of time in the glass room. I learned to cut glass, and put them together, how stained glass is made and how to use tile grout. Although I enjoyed it very much, as I experimented with many more mediums, I drifted away from glass and never came back, not because I didn't want to but it just never happened.

Anyway, this one is made with glass, filled with toned tile grout on thick panel of wood and 1 inch thick. Then I bordered the whole thing with a wooden frame, which I painted a maroon-brown color to compliment the warm sky.

So here is my Dragonfly mosaic. I hope you like it, and happy Sunday Surprise!

<3 Kara

Sunday Surprise: Red Riding Hood Costume!

Happy Sunday afternoon everyone!

I'm sorry that today's Sunday Surprise is coming to you so late, but I have been working vigorously all weekend to finish my red hooded cloak for my costume to show you, and I have just finished this afternoon!

 

While I was in Seattle, I saw this super cute dress at TJMax that I had to have because it reminded me of Red Riding Hood for some reason. So I decided to buy it and use it for Halloween, but this dress is so cute I've been wearing it casually :)

After that dress, my quest for an awesome red hooded cloak began. I have a very specific idea of what the cloak should look like. The cloak should be legit, long and with a big over-sized hood. I didn't want the half length cloak made of thin costume material. I wanted this to be semi-heavy, covers all of me if I wanted and flow well, like Red's cloak from Once Upon A Time or Amanda Seyfried's in the 2011 Red Riding Hood film.

I searched online and there are some good and not so good tutorials out there for cloaks. Most of them weren't what I was looking for specifically. And I looked on Etsy, and the cloak that I wanted went for $200 - no way. So on my search I finally found a site that referred me to the Simplicity pattern #5794 that I bought from Joann's for $1. Finally, a pattern that I liked. I chose to make cloak C (which is the green cloak in the bottom right of the Simplicity image). The body turned out great but the hood just was not what I was looking for. So my quest continued, until I found this video on Youtube on how to make a cloak (click on the link if you'd like to see it). The instructions were kind of hard to follow but the little bit that I did understand, I used that to improvise and voila! Although the tutorial was for a knee-length cloak, the hood was exactly what I was looking for: over-sized and slouchy hood :) So I went for it and it turned out fantastically!

The image on the left is the cloak with the original hood from the pattern. I really disliked it, so I took it off and went for the other hood I found at the youtube tutorial I linked above. The image on the right is the complete cloak with the second hood. Although you can't see the new hood on that image, the image below shows the cloak with the second and final hood.

I had so much fun making this! It was a great first major project from scratch on my new sewing machine. I made so many mistakes on this project but I survived and I am so glad I stuck it out. If you have any specific questions about how I made this cloak, leave a comment and I'll be sure to get back to you! Also, since you know that I will be Red for Halloween, I would love it if you shared what you were thinking for your costume :)

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. See you on Tutorial Tuesday when I take you through the next step in canvas-making. Take care!

<3 Kara

"Sundae" Surprise! ... on Sunday!

Good evening Lured Ones!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
As you can see, I am implementing a new feature to this blog called Sunday Surprise! This means that every Sunday I will post on something of my choice. Sometimes it will be about a finished piece or project that I am currently working on and sometimes it will be something not related to my works at all. Since it is supposed to be a surprise, I won't elaborate too much on what Sunday Surprises will feature; you will just have to wait and see!

This Sunday, there are two surprises to kick off the start of this series. The first Sunday Surprise is a sundae! This piece on the left is called "Her Sundae Best" by artist Jacqui Faye. Although she paints contemporary portraits she is best known for her figurative works called the Red Shoe Dailies. In these "red shoe stories," anonymous subjects are portrayed from the shoulders, waist, or knees down and always with red shoes to "paint a story often interpreted by viewers who relate to the artwork through anonymity." To learn more about Jacqui Faye, please visit her site at http://jacquifaye.blogspot.com/

But wait! There's more! Moar!!!!! The second surprise this Sunday is that there are more surprises. In addition to Sunday Surprise, there will also be other days scheduled for posts so that the blog gets a consistent flow of content. Are you ready? Drum roll please.... There will be Tutorial Tuesdays, and also Factual Fridays.

For Tutorial Tuesdays I will take pictures or record a video of myself performing a technique or tutorial from a book, magazine or website for you all to see! So that way we are both learning something new together every week. I'm actually really excited about this because not only is it a forcing mechanism for consistent flow of content, but also it's challenging me to learn something new each week. Yay!

Since we have a day dedicated to techniques I thought a day set aside for learning about art would be appropriate. For Factual Fridays (hehe F to the third), it will be less about techniques and more about art facts. Although the day is called Factual Fridays, I will not post solely short random art facts but rather information regarding art in various categories such facts, art history, current events, notable artists, museums and other research.

I am super excited about Tutorial Tuesdays, Factual Fridays and Sunday Surprises! I hope you are too. I can't wait for Tuesday's post. What tutorial shall I do, I wonder? You'll have to check back and see! Until next time,

<3 Kara