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Let's Get Your Creative Juices Flowing!!!
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Travel back in time with me and learn to draw and color 69 fabulous and authentic Art Deco style projects! Sharing my Quadrant Method secrets for the first time in print, Karen leads you through each project with crystal clear step-by-step instructions so you know exactly what to draw and how to blend, shade and color to perfection. Watch your drawing skills soar and see fashion figures, jewelry, clothing, faces and features come to LIFE!! And now you can see the entire book!! ENJOY the sneak peek!
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If you've been following my journey, you know I've been obsessed with teaching people how to draw!!! There's just something so magical about having an idea in your head and then making it come to life on your paper! It's also such a great distraction during these very difficult times. It's been hard having three kids home for so many months and I find myself wracked with a lot of emotions. I am worried about my children, growing up in an age of a Pandemic, wearing faces masks and not shaking hands or seeing their friends. I get anxious when I think about this as being the new "normal" when there's nothing but fear and worry when we leave the house. We left the house for the first time in four months this week, for just three nights. We went to a small cabin, close to our house, that was on a lake. My kids and I didn't leave the water all day I don't think!!! Just getting OUTDOORS for an extended period of time was heaven. Being out of the same four walls, also heaven.  I find that drawing, for me, offers me a similar feeling of peace. When I'm in the lake, I'm fully absorbed by the water, staying afloat, watching my kids to be sure they're safe, totally immersed in the beauty of nature. When I'm drawing I am so totally absorbed in my lines, in the gorgeous reference picture I may be using, in my drawing tools and if they're behaving and moving in the ways that my brain is envisioning. And in both instances I'm leaving all outside thoughts and anxieties behind to focus on the task at hand. I also did a drawing while we were at the lake! It's supposed to be of a video game characters my kids play although they informed me afterwards that it looks nothing like her. Nice. Thanks boys.  I also love drawing so much because it takes very little in the way of supplies! You can create so much using so few tools! Unlike mixed media (my other true love) which usually takes everything and the kitchen sink to make the same effect! lol! Oh well, I still love them both equally. I also love to come up with systems for things, to make art easier for people. I know a lot of my students just want to get to their happy place, and start creating, but that's really hard if you don't know how to do it!! In the past I've come up with a fun system for creating successful mixed media projects. I call it my "Hamburger" system. People LOVE IT!!! Well I also know how hard it is for people to draw PEOPLE and so I've come up with a cool, fun and easy method for drawing people as well!! Although in reality, you can use this exact system to draw really ANYTHING. It's a little bit tricky to explain but it's similar to the Grid Method. Although instead of drawing an exact grid on your reference and then using the same grid lines to draw the object on your own paper, you draw Quadrants instead. The beauty of this Quadrant Method is that there is no limit to how many Quadrants you can draw to help you out if you need more reference lines!! You can see in this photo how the Quadrants look on both the reference image (left) and my own drawing (right).  It's a little bit easier to explain in person that on paper (although in my new Art Deco book I take quite a lot of time and project and pages to explain it as best as I can!!) so I made a video that shows exactly what this entails. If you're skeptical if this system can work for you, don't take my word for it!! I've been teaching this to my students who are in the Fun Fab Drawing Club (at AwesomeArtSchool.com) and the results have been OUTSTANDING!!! Even beginner drawings have had HUGE success with this!! Here's just one example of many...  So if you're looking for a way to break down difficult subjects into easy ones, I highly suggest to give this a shot!! You can also check out my brand new book, Learn to Draw Art Deco Style Vol. 1 (available on Amazon's worldwide and soon-to-be in my Etsy Shop) where I teach you, step by step, this exact Quadrant method to draw amazing fashion figures of the 1920's and 30's. SOOOOOO fun!!!  I also included videos for many of the projects in the book as well!!! All of these are completely free and are on BOTH of my YouTube channels. Just follow the links inside and you can get another whole spin on each project!! One of my favorite projects in the book (and favorite videos to boot!) is making SMOLDERING eyes from the 1920's!! This era was a BIG DEAL to women because it marked the first time in history that women got to where make-up, OTHER than stage performers and streetwalkers that is!!! Also, these make-up techniques are SUPER fun to draw!! Want to see? Of course you do!!! You can watch (and hopefully draw) along with me right here!! Just press play and away we go! Subscribe to my YouTube channel while you're there so you never miss the new videos when they are posted weekly! Have a great week and I'll be popping back over to the blog soon for more fun news and videos for you!!
Today is Friday which means NEW FREE YouTube lesson!! This project was particularly satisfying for sooooo many reasons! Well, I'll just list them off so you know what they are! First all, I got to paint with my fountain pen inks. They are soooooo vibrant and juicy and satisfying (due to their vibrancy and juiciness) that I cannot even compare them to any other medium I love them so much! This is the one I use for skin color. It's DIVINE!  I can now draw hands after publishing a book on them! I can finally dive into any project that involves them and has truly opened up a whole new world of faces and characters now that I'm no longer afraid to tackle any drawing!  I spill 3 oz. of permanent ink all over my studio floor. There's nothing quite like an explosion of ink to liven things up in the old art room!  Glasses. Having the guts and courage to draw OVER and ON TOP OF a completely painted girl, is, well, TERRIFYING! But then the level of proud you feel when you actually pull it off is the BEST FEELING EVER!! So while it's scary, it's worth it!!! So my advice to you is to simply GO FOR IT.  The references I used today are so super cute!! The original reference photo was taken from Vogue Japan and I just fell in love with it when I saw it!!! Another reason today's project was so fun was because of my little feline side-kick!! Oh Tippie!!! So after the spill and the cat play and the juicy brushes filled with ink I was just delighted at the final outcome. Click on the video here to watch how YOU can learn how to paint glasses on YOUR mixed media girls!! My YouTube community has been LOVIN' all the fun and free series lately and I hope you are taking advantage of all this free, content rich, well, content!! In the winter it was the Mixed Media "Hamburger" Series which, in 9 episodes covered my ENTIRE Mixed Media process I use to create 99% of my mixed media projects! Have no idea WHAT I'm talking about in regards to Hamburgers and art?! You can get started by watching the first video in the series here! Then earlier this year I did a 4 part Art Journaling Series and that was soooo fun too!! While the Mixed Media series armed everyone with the technical art skills that enabled them successfully layers up on layers of supplies, the Art Journaling Series got people over their fear of starting, their fear of the blank page and on to the super-having-fun part!! I've seen soooooo many fun projects come to fruition as a result of that series, I cannot get over it! If you need a kick in the pants because you're too nervous to get started, that series is a must for you too! Working hard on my new drawing book today and in it's many many pages are the steps you can take to draw a beautiful big ol' braid!! Itching to see just what that looks like? Just so happens I recorded the whole process to share with you!!  I know how much drawing hair intimidates so many, so I've taken it upon myself to break it down, step by step!  It's weird how easy something can be once you take it slow. Want to learn? Enjoy the video, it's free for you on YouTube! Wishing there was a slower version of this? I know. YouTube is so awesome because it's so free and fast and FUN! But I know for a lot of my students it's just too darn fast.
If you'd like to take this entire drawing (including step-by-step, real time, how to draw this face...everything from eyelashes, nose, mouth, hair...from SCRATCH) I've included that in my drawing club. Wanna try it out and see if it's a good fit? You can! It's free for 30 days and just $12 little dollars a month after that. That gives you instant access to my Introductory Course, Drawing Daze, for beginners, plus dozens and dozens of additional face and figure drawing lessons. Click here for your free trial and start your journey to become a better artist today by becoming a member of the Fun, Fab Drawing Club!!!! Hope to see you there! I have been having an absolute BLAST mixing and matching certain mythical references and combining them in new and exciting ways to produce new, unique works of art. I think what's even more fun is that I'm not even playing this fun game by myself, no sireee. My Friend, Artist Jenny Manno and I, have enlisted the help and fun of our respective Facebook Groups to play along with us and the results are sooooooo so much fun! Here are the references this week! The first one is my the amazingly talented folks over at thepicsees.com. If you don't know them you ought to!! They are amazing!!
The second reference (both chosen by Jenny this week, is this sweet bird sketch she found on Pinterest.  Personally, I needed a bit more to kick start my creativity so I added two additional references...and here are my results!  I blame my Daniel Smith Watercolors for her success, along with my giant 15" x 22" watercolor pad of Strathmore Paper. Who ever said bigger is better was RIGHT! If you'd like to see what other references I used and watch the entire process unfold I made a sweet video of the process, voiceover and timelapsed for your enjoyment (and so that it doesn't take up too much of your precious time). I hope you enjoy! I had so much fun running the #100funfabfaces challenge that ran for 20 weeks in the winter of this year that I'm coming back for more! I'm so happy to announce that MONDAY/MYTHICAL/MAGICAL/MASHUP has begun! This is a Fantasy Art Collab between California based artist, Jenny Manno and myself . Here's the skinny: We give you two references and we all have to mash them together to create a new Fantasy Masterpiece!!! To help you along, Jenny and I will also be filming our process so you can get different ideas of what to do or how to do it! I had to bring in a third reference to help me mash these all together and here's what I came up with! Here's what week 1 looked like!  I had so much fun I made a video so you could see the process unfold! I also made this a full length lesson in my Fun Fab Drawing Club if you want to learn how to make this while literally drawing along with me in real time! Click here to join and get access free for 30 days! And here is Jenny's!!! Isn't she insanely talented?!  HOW FUN IS THIS?!?!?!So then last Wednesday I spent completing a NEW drawing for Magical ~ Mythical ~ Mystical Mashup! This week we start with this cute little Hedgehog...  And this adorable fairy from thepicsees.com. If you haven't checked out their page you must! There art is off the charts!!!  And this ridiculous thing is what I came up with!!!  Wait, why are you laughing so hard?? Is it the bandage bra??!? My 12 year old was editing the video for it, I was desperate to cover up her you-know-whats!!!! And here I was thinking I was all clever, having it match her head wrap and all, sheesh. Here's the video if you wanna watch (and laugh along with me!) Wanna see Jenny's??!?! IT IS SO COOL!  Her drawing skills are OFF THE CHARTS!!! What do you say, are you going to give this exercise a try? Is it hard, um...YES! BUT IT IS ALSO SOOOOO SO FUN!
You'd be amazed at the fun things that people are coming up with every week!! Hope to see you in the www.facebook.com/groups/awesomeartschoolFacebook Group soon! If you don't feel like participating, that is totally cool!!! You are always welcome to simply scroll through the art - it will be sure to put a smile on your face!!! Tag me while you're there and say hello! |
Karen CampbellMonFounder of Awesome Art School. Mixed Media Artist. Author of 9 Instructional Art Books!    
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