Category: Blog Posts

Ang’s 2018 Summary of Art

The end of the year and the beginning of a new year is always an introspective time for me.  It’s that time where I look back and take stock of where I’ve gone and look forward to where I’m going!  I wanted to take you all on a tour of this year’s greatest hits.  It’s been a pretty prolific year for me, artistically!

JANUARY – Anko’s Determination

 

Anko, my Warlock Tiefling who loves to bake, came onto the scene a few years ago for my husband’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign and I’ve loved watching her grow from meek young girl to a strong capable mage.  This image represented a pivotal moment in her development where she and the party faced off with an enemy that had no regard for innocent lives.  Anko learned to fight for what she thought was right and that she was more capable than she realized!  The resulting drawing of this moment flowed out of my pencil without much effort and remains my favorite drawing of Anko.

FEBRUARY – Lady of October Thumbnail Sketches

The next few months were consumed with research and study for the Lady of October, starting with her thumbnail sketches. This Lady was a bit different from her sisters in that she was much more mystical.  I agonized for a long time making a composition that was different enough from Lady of November, who also had a similar holiday theme in the Day of the Dead, while this Lady is more Samhain.

MARCH – Lady of October Fashion Design

More Lady of October! She was a unique challenge with her billowing sheer outfit and I deliberated a long time trying to nail down her look.

APRIL – Lady of October

The Lady of October finally arrived!  I experimented with gray inks for the first time with this piece trying to find a way to create mist and subtlety with pen and ink.  She also marked the completion of the Ladies of the Months main series of paintings, one of my major accomplishments for this year!

MAY – Ladies of the Months Headers

May was a prolific month!  I Kickstarted the Ladies of the Months coloring book while feverishly creating all twelve header images to boost the campaign.  It felt good to take the completed designs for the Ladies that I had agonized over for years and just have good fun with them!  Lady of December’s header was my favorite from the bunch, but you can see all twelve here.

JUNE – The Lady of Slaughter

Created for a Patreon request, this sketch allowed me to draw on an old love for Egyptian mythology that I had never really expressed in art before.  It felt good to return to these beloved stories from my childhood and indulge in that old love!  

JULY – The One Who is Above

The Egyptian sketch requests from my Patreon Patron continued resulting in some of my unexpected favorites from this year!  You can see the whole triptych of Egyptian gods here.

AUGUST – The Rose Seelie

This month saw the creation of the Rose Faeries, my pair of cards for the Olde Fae card game based on Old Maid.  It also marked a glorious return to creating more fantastical images, which I had been sorely missing!

SEPTEMBER – Fury of the River Goddess

Sometimes those quick sketches just work out!  This request for a Patreon Patron’s river goddess made me realize this is the kind of thing I want more of in my RPG/Game portfolio and also showed me what strong shapes and contrast can do in a composition.  The rest of this month was spent converting the Ladies headers from the previous month into line art for the coloring books extra pages.

OCTOBER – The Little Ladies of the Months

October was another flurry of productivity creating extra art for the coloring book!  Lady of September here was my favorite of the bunch as I felt had the best balance of a dynamic pose and filling up the space of the medallion in an interesting way.  You can see the whole set of twelve Little Ladies I created during this month here.

NOVEMBER – Anko’s Determination (Colored)

I realized during this month that I had fallen into a slump.  I was really burnt out after working on so much material for the book and it had been a very long  stressful year with my husband’s cancer diagnosis in August and hospitalization for heart problems in February.  Whenever my morale is low, I turn to games and original characters who always lift my mood.  After spending several months ignored, Anko finally got her first ever colored portrait!

DECEMBER – Exalted Secret Santa

The burnout slump continued and I’ve been trying to take it easy this month to enjoy life and family!  Doing the Exalted Secret Santa every year has been such a fun way to connect with one of my favorite fan communities and cool tabletop universes. It’s always exciting to see how my partner interprets my characters, as well!  You can see what my Secret Santa partner did for me here.

Finally, here we have a montage of nearly all the art I created in 2018!

 

What’s Next?

It’s funny that while I was very productive this year, I still feel like I didn’t do enough!  There were a lot of days spent forcing myself past those mental slumps feeling like everything was a disaster because it was supposed to be easier or finished long before it was or I wasn’t ‘strong’ enough to work past my mental blocks and tiredness to make more than I did. 

I have to remind myself that I am not a machine and that sometimes life is going to get you down.  It’s ok to spend your time with loved ones instead or work on a personal piece to make yourself feel better.  In the end, well-being is more precious!  A hard lesson for this workaholic who was always taught that my self-worth lies in my productivity levels.

Next year, I’m very much looking forward to exploring the more conceptual paintings I have planned for the Ladies and diving deep into that fantastical element I’ve been hankering for in my work!  I also want to get back to studying more, as I feel I’ve really let my fundamental skills languish.

I have a lot of exciting art goals for 2019, but I’m going to save those for a New Years post!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of this year’s work!  What was your favorite piece of mine this year?  Did you create any favorite pieces of your own?  Let me know in comments!

Much love and inspiration!

– Ang

[VIDEO] Studio Hangout OCT 2017 – Kickstart Art Review, Inktober, and My Favorite Author

Check out my latest wrap-up video for October. I fear with every video I share, the more of a dork I reveal myself to be!

Featuring the following things:

– My thoughts on the Kickstart Art seminar with Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and what revelations I had from it.

– An epic level geek out about Kushiel’s Dart which I was nearly hesitant to share online, but it’s on the internet now.  Oh well!

– Pumpkin Spice shenanigans.

– Plus aaaaart!

Various Art Nouveau artist of lesser acclaim.

Did You Know? Unknown Nouveau

If you’ve been enjoying my Ladies of the Months series thus far, you might also enjoy the series of articles I’ve been writing here on Patreon called Unknown Nouveau.

While Mucha is one of my strongest influences on this series, there are so many wonderful artists who emerged from the Art Nouveau movement during its prime between the 1880s and 1890’s.

The Unknown Nouveau articles focus on artists from the movement you might not have heard of, many who are also female artists who simply did not get the same attention as their male counterparts. I wanted to feature some of these lesser-known artists, as well as inspire and educate myself along the way.

You can start browsing my current Unknown Nouveau articles here.

Enjoy and let me know if you’ve heard of an unknown Art Nouveau artist who you think I should feature OR if you discover someone new from the articles who you think is amazing!

MINI TUTORIAL: Art Nouveau Hair

I did a panel on how to draw Art Nouveau style hair at JordanCon this past and thought I’d share the info and results of what I drew there live!  

DISCLAIMER:  This is by no means the definitive guide of Art Nouveau hair, but my own interpretation!

Inspiration Sources

If you want some gorgeous hair to get your creative juices flowing, check out the art of Alphonse Mucha and any number of the artists I’ve mentioned in the Unknown Nouveau article series.  I also have several favorite study sources up at my Art Nouveau resource page.

Before You Begin…

Think about your concept.  Art Nouveau isn’t all pretty ladies and flowy lines. Much of it has deep symbolic roots.  What visual elements or symbols could you tie into your piece?

Art Nouveau at its visual core is about flowing lines, graceful curves, and aesthetic design, in addition to the spiritual and symbolic roots of the movement.

Source: I used an image from this evocative set of stock art by ArtReferenceSource  as a base for the figure in this tutorial.  Check out the rest of his gallery for even more amazing poses for use by artists!

The Bad Example

I made this bad example by randomly drawing lines (and even then, it was really hard to make that beautiful base pose look bad!).  I consider this an ineffective use of the Art Nouveau style because it is directionless, does not serve the compositional flow, and generally just looks a mess! 

A Good Example

Now this is better!  You don’t necessarily have to have the hair of a figure flowing out everywhere in your composition.  This approach shows that you could have a more subtle stylized and graphic take on the hair where it has become more of a decorative shape than a realistic object.  

Perhaps she is a river goddess and her hair has become the flowing waters?  Perhaps she is a volcano goddess and her hair has become lava flowing down the mountain?  Weaving the hair into your background elements is one way you could bring in interesting visual elements and symbols!

Another Good Example

Here we have a more traditional take on Art Nouveau hair where the lines of the hair all curve back into the face, the heart of the piece, in this case.  Nearly every line in the image is smooth, curving, and gentle.

I’ve also abstracted the ends of the hair into curly decorative strands, which is another very specific quirk of the Art Nouveau style that you’ll see Mucha and his students use a lot.  These curly ends add a decorative touch to the hair that’s a bit more interesting than just ending the hair.

I’m sure I could write more about this topic, but I’m ending this tutorial here before it becomes a book!  I hope it gives you some basic ideas of what to do with your Art Nouveau style hair.

Do you have any favorite examples of Art Nouveau style hair? Share in the comments area, as I’d love to see them! 

Unknown Nouveau: Jane Atché

Featuring another unsung artist of the Art Nouveau movement, French artist Jane Atché .  I couldn’t find much about Atché, other than that she was a pupil of Mucha, Jean-Paul Laurens and other artists while studying at the Julian Academy of art in Paris.

The influence of Mucha definitely shines through with her decorative and compositional flare.  Atché brings her own sense of fashion and elegance to her figures.  I only wish I could find a broader collection of her work!

See more artists in this article series here .

Unknown Nouveau: Amelia Bauerle

This week’s unsung artist of the Art Nouveau movement is Amelia Bauerle.  Originally from London, Amelia worked as an illustrator and artist.  Like many artists of the movement, she also submitted works to the The Yellow Book magazine, a collection of works of poetry, art, and other creative work of the era.

Bauerle’s work shows such delicacy of emotion and handling of line that makes her work shine, even if the majority of her work was created in black and white.

Her mermaids are a fortuitous inspiration for Mermay this month as well!

—
Read more of my Unknown Unknown series here .

Unknown Nouveau: Alexandre de Riquer

Today’s unsung artist from the Art Nouveau movement is Alexandre de Riquer , another artist from Spain where he was one of the prominent figures of the Modernism movement.   He was born to an aristocratic family and studied in France.  

It was in France and London where he fell in love with the graphic design of the lithographic posters of the Art Nouveau movement, a relatively new form of advertising at the time.

His prolific body of work spans everything from posters to magazines to book covers!  Saying that, I wish I could find a broader collection of his work.  There are so few I could dig up!  I suspect I will have to dig through collections in Barcelona to find more of his beautiful work.

I love the way Riquer’s art shows more of the Japanese influence on Art Nouveau with his simplified lines and relatively flat colors.

See more articles in this series here.

Unknown Nouveau: Gaspar Camps

While I’m busy grinding away braincells on Lady of July ‘s many flower buds, I wanted to introduce you to another Art Nouveau artist I had never heard of!  Gaspar Champs hailed from Spain and spent a large part of his career in France.  He was very heavily influenced by Mucha, so much so that he became known as the ‘Catalan Mucha’.

Like my previous feature of Élisabeth Sonrel , I love how Camps brought his own unique flair to Alphonse Mucha’s line style.  At times, Camps’ work feels more abstract with his figures melting into the details of his images.

I also love the sense of light bouncing in his more painterly work.  What a joy it was to discover him!

If you want to see more of these art features, view them all at once here .

UNKNOWN NOUVEAU: Élisabeth Sonrel

While I’m busy working on Lady of July, enjoy a look at this stunning work by female Art Nouveau artist, Élisabeth Sonrel!  While she was active at the same time as other artists of the movement, I had never heard of her until recently. 

She reminds so very much of Mucha with her line work, but has a sense of decorative layout that feels more detailed and layered at times.  Definitely check her out for a lovely array of painterly and graphical work!

If you want to see more of these art features, view them all at once here. 

PS.

I plan to start doing these little ‘Unknown Nouveau‘ entries, so I have something to share during those slow times when I’m busy working and don’t have much to show yet!  The art keeps me inspired and is something I love sharing with you all. What do you think?  

Also, do you know any other Art Nouveau artists I might not have heard of?  Let me know in comments!

Find Me at JordanCon 2017!

 
If you’re going to JordanCon this weekend, here’s my schedule and where you can find my work!
Hope to see you there!  It’ll be my first convention in awhile and I’m excited to be back in the scene.
 
– Find my Fantasy Art on dice bags and playmats in the Print Shop (in the Art Show area)
– Find my Art Nouveau birthstone series on prints in the Print shop, as well as matted and signed prints in the Art Show.
– Find my birthstone themed masks on display next to the matted prints in the Art Show.
 

My Panels at JordanCon:

FRIDAY, 4-21, 2:30-3:30 pm, Monroe.
 
Painting an Art Nouveau Lady
 

I’ll be showing a video, talking briefly about Art Nouveau, and giving a demo on drawing Art Nouveau style hair!

SUNDAY, 4-23, 1-2 pm, Washington.
 
Selling Your Art Online
 
I’ll be on a panel with multiple artists discussing everything related to selling art online, from Patreon and beyond!