After 12 hours and 16 minutes, I finished this A4 sized drawing called Dandelions.
First, I shaped then, and then I starting adding the shades. The bigger dandelion is pointing at the sky, while another one’s shapes are already separating because of the wind. That one was supposed to belong to the stalk on the right of the small dandelion. There’s one on the left who’s looking for the smaller. On the background, you can see the night sky, the shadow of a tree, and shapes resembling a cloud.
Hello everyone, Milyusia here, and today we are going to talk about my drawing called hidden flower.
Art supplies: Graphite pencils on canson bristol paper. Time: 11 hours. Size: A4 (29,7 x 21 cm)
This has to be one of my favorite works ever (I made it a few months ago)! This scene happens on night time. You can see the moon on the middle left side. Still on the left, there is a fully bloomed flower. On the right side, there is a flower yet to bloom. That, is the hidden flower (title of the drawing). On the middle, there is a shadow on the clouds. That shadow, is the right flower, once it blooms. Everything but the moon, clouds and the flowers is dark. On the left down corner, you can see my signature.
Speed drawing:
Also one of my best youtube videos, this is one of the very few cases where I can still make something good, without the pressure of a camera. When I’m recording a drawing, I feel like I have to be drawing all the time, and to be paying attention to the camera all the time.
While I was drawing, I was listening to documentaries about Picasso and Van Gogh, to keep my ears entertained while my hands were almost hurt and sweating, because at one time, I drew for almost 5 hours non stop. I don’t do this anymore. If you want my advice, make a break every 1 hour, even if it is just 3 minutes to walk around. Thanks for reading. Good drawings!
Hello everyone. Today, I am going to talk about my graphite art supplies.
Let’s start with the basic…The paper I use the most is the canson bristol paper. It has 180gr and it’s really smooth, which is my personal preference for graphite works. The one I’m using for water soluble graphite is the moulin du Roy hot pressed paper.
Eclipse – On Moulin du Roy
Following the sun – On canson bristol paper
PENCILS
The ones I have are the Derwent graphic H set, Staedtler mars lumograph and Faber castell 9000 soft set. I also have a 4H from grafwood Caran d’Ache, and the reason I only have this one is that the art store I go to no longer sells them. I can’t find them anywhere in Portugal now. My favourite are the faber castell, and my least favourite are the derwent. They are not too heavy for me to use, but everything else is fine for me. You can guess from the image that the mars lumograph were the ones I bought first.
KNEADED ERASER
If you work with graphite, you probably know what this is. It is used to remove a bit of graphite from the paper, and you can mold it very well, so you can have a very fine tip! This one is faber-castell. I bought a set of two but I gave one to a friend of mine. I’m always playing with it.
SOLUBLE GRAPHITE
On the first image, you can see my stuff from viarco. I already made a post about this brand, so if you want to see what I said about it click here.
On the other image, I have my faber castell soluble graphite pencils set (+ brush) which is my favourite art material for soluble graphite drawings! Next, you can see the 8B Graphitone, from Derwent. Next, you can see my other brushes (I need more…) The first one is the DaVinci red sable fur series 1520, and I use if for small details. Next, the Raphael petit gris pur 838 series (my favourite). The other one, is the raphael kaerell 8204 series – The one I use less. The 3 waterbrushes on the left are from derwent – I love using them on the go!
GRAPHITE STICKS
I acidentally cut the image a bit too much to the right, but on my small derwent pencil holder, I have a woodless pencil from faber – castell 9B. On the middle, you can see my small derwent graphite stick (I don’t like it) and my bit graphite stick from Caran d’ Ache grafcube 9B. I use these for bigger areas. That’s it for the graphite supplies everyone!
OTHER STUFF
X-ato knives, scissors, duck tape…you know, useful things! Thanks for reading. My art supply video will be on my youtube channel on the end of the month!
When I was 6, and everything we did on class was drawing, I couldn’t even draw stick figures right. I’d give them giant hands and heads… I wanted to draw well, but I couldn’t. And one of my classmates was always drawing sharks! He was amazing, and I wanted to be just as good as him!
On the first day of school (Or was it the second? I forgot.) we were asked to draw something. I knew I couldn’t draw good stick figures, so I just made a drawing with curvy pink lines and yellow circles. I think I also added some blue. This was the first time I realized that there was a different way to draw.
It wasn’t until 3rd grade, on a different school, that I actually started developing my style. On the middle of the year, the teacher asked us to write the first 1000 roman numbers, so I would bring my book and a pencil to lunch time and do it. On the day I finished (and I was the first!) I didn’t have anything to do, so I decided to draw on the napkin with the graphite pencil. I used to make some lines, and connect each other. I’d do this on black pen or pencil for the next 2 years. I wish I still had those drawings.
On 5th grade, after the other school, I drew even more, because I was always alone and I always had some pencils and sheets of paper with me. I used to draw on the back side of writing assessments, and always with a pencil. This was also the time people started asking what I was drawing. I always answered “I don’t know”. It was just a few weeks later that I used the word abstract. “(What is that?)” I didn’t like visual education classes because we had to do stuff like the teacher said He once told me I couldn’t draw a blue santa claus. I kept on drawing blue santa claus.
6th grade was probably one of the worsts years I had on school. I was 11, and there was a 16 year old and a 15 on my class, who used to beat me while I was drawing, but they eventually stopped because I always kept the same face and never cared. Still had problems, but at least my drawings were fine. At the end of the year, I made a decision that I would regret to this day. I threw everything I had from 6th grade away, including about 50 drawings (actually I don’t know how many they were, but they were many).
The school I was on 5th and 6th grade ended up closing (good thing), and I didn’t draw anything during 7th grade. Never felt like it. There wasn’t anyplace on the school where I would feel comfortable drawing, where people wouldn’t look. I was really sad, but at the end of the year, I’d draw a little on class.
I changed schools again on 8th grade and I started drawing again. I was worst than what I was on 6th grade, and I’d still draw on the back of writing assessments, and used really cheap stuff, but my style developed very well that year. I had the first good visual education teacher, an the best I’ve ever seen. She was always saying “don’t be scared” while we were drawing, and surprisingly, it helped me a lot., specially when we learned the “degrade” technique, which is the thing I use the most on my drawings (light to dark, one shade to another, softly). This was when I started sharing my drawings on the internet, and created my youtube art channel. The good comments on DeviantArt motivated me a lot!
On 9th grade, my style developed even more, because before, I only used 1 pencil, but now, I used 2 (A big development for me), a HB and a 2b. At the end of the year, I bought soluble graphite pencils, and I started using these more often. I was still terrible at choosing materials, so I regret buying a lot of stuff.
On the summer vacations after 9th grade, I started searching about graphite materials and seeing reviews on the internet about materials, and my style changed so much! Materials don’t make the artist but they sure help, and they helped me a lot, specially with shadows and contrasts.
On 10th grade, I started bringing a bag with all my art materials to school, which made it much easier for me to draw anytime, even tough I wasn’t on arts (wasn’t able to go to arts because of the transport). In October, I went to Amsterdam, visited Van Gogh museum, and that somehow changed my style a lot again. I don’t know how, because it’s a very different style from mine, but I bought a moleskine sketchbook there (didn’t like it much, not for me) and in 2 months, it was finished! When I was getting back to Portugal, still waiting for the plane, some people were watching me drawing, and one of them said something. I didn’t understand, and my mom told me to stop with my red face. I think he was chinese. He looked at me and laughed in a good way saying something. I don’t know what he said but I took it as a compliment. This was the drawing I was doing: Eye spirit. And it was also the first thing I drew on the molenkine. I started filling every part of the paper, no blank spaces allowed.
Now, on the middle of the 10th grade, I decided what I wanted to do with my abstract drawings – A world. I called it Mia, and I’m creating (drawing) creatures, plants, landscapes… For example, this is Dono:
Dono takes care of the fire on Mia. Made with Artgraf soluble graphite.
You can see more details about this world on my other posts, or to watch my youtube videos. I already created creatures that take care of the water, earth, fire, and air – Fale, Tera, Dono, and Adin. And this is going to be a life long project.
Now, there are many things I still want to do, and here they are:
Use soluble graphite more often.
Do bigger drawings (A3 or bigger)
Do smaller drawings (A7)
Start selling drawings.
Grow an audience.
Make a living out of art
Don’t starve
But I’m way young yet so I’ll just develop my style even more now. Thanks for reading.
This is Tera, the creature that takes care of the earth on my world. She is strong, can bend earth to create mountains, and is just as big as Dono. Her tail is made of minerals, and the rest of her body is made of rocks. Terra means earth on my language, so I just removed a letter and decided that was a good name for her.
The drawing is made with graphite pencils (derwent, faber, staedtler) and soluble graphite (viarco, faber pencils) on canson bristol paper. I wanted it to have a “desert” look, but I failed the sky by trying to add more and more soluble graphite.
Materials: Artgraf soluble graphite and black carbon
This is Dono, the owner of the fire on Mia (The new name I gave to the world). He lives on the top of the mountains and spends most of the time sleeping. When it’s sunny on winter, he wakes up and distributes warm where it is needed. During summer, he rests on its nest, on the top of the biggest mountain.
The past few months, I’ve been wondering what do I want do do with my art. Do I want to express something? Or just make lines out of the nowhere? Then I started thinking about each individual drawing. How every one of them had something in common with another. All are in black and white. 99% are made with graphite. So I decided that they all belonged to the same world. I would create creatures, spaces, portals, trees, flowers… and repeat some on other drawings. But I still wondered what I wanted to show the world with it. To the world where people live, this one. Then I started thinking so much on the world I had created, that it hit me. I wanted to create another world. And now I start wondering how I want it to work. What is its name? What should I name the creatures? How do they live, what do they do?How do they survive? One of the creatures I created on my drawings was the Nymph. A girl who wanders on “the world”… She is the creator of everything there, and by creating, I mean drawing. She is me. She is my life form on that world, as I am the one who draws.
Milyusia
Another one, are the Watchers. Somewhat eye shaped creatures, that grow everywhere. Their duty is to watch everything, as if the “art” is not seen, it is dead. Everything that grows should be seen once. This is why Watchers grow everywhere, with everything. And then nothing dies.
Despite the fact that most of it is based on the nature, there are some urban places, and by urban, 2 or 3 big houses, where my friends and my future friends’s life form on this world, some creatures, and I will live.
Now I need to think deeper. Next I’ll draw the planet where they live. I know it has a black sun and two white moons
. I’ll create creatures called Fale, who will distribute the water. The “birds” called Adin are the ones responsible for the air, as they create wind as they fly. I’ll draw creatures that will take care of the earth and fire, weather, but there will be few living things. The world is big. And most of it is just white, blank spaces: the drawings I’ll do in the future. But now…I have spent the past few minutes talking about my imaginary world… that it doesn’t have a name yet… But I’ll call it Lua, my real mane, which means moon.
And this is what I want to do.To create an imaginary world.
I started this with normal graphite pencils but then I thought, if this drawing was based on the sea, wouldn’t it make more sense to use my favourite water soluble medium, soluble graphite?
Seahorse, rocks, a “eye pearl” and a ship… that I’ve used before:
Lua Eva Blue 
