AerynK

11 January, 2023

Colouring Book: Christmas Cats - Pink Cosy Cat

I wanted this picture to be done before the holidays, but it just didn't pan out. We had a lot going on, with my dog, Sirius, becoming very ill and nearly passing, I just didn't make anything but his care and comfort a priority. Thankfully he pulled through and is possibly okay, so I'm trying to find my colouring groove again.

For this picture I wanted to focus on the more wintery feels instead of the holiday feels. I'm awful at pastel colouring so it was hard for me to try and keep the colours light. I used my Holbein pastel colours as well as white, which I never use to blend but it definitely helped. I bought a surprising amount of holiday themed books considering I only managed to finish these two pictures.

14 August, 2022

Colouring Book: Year of Witches - Uuskiuuu

I want it to be autumn, or winter, there. I said it. I hate the heat, I hate how people act in the heat. I hate the sun. I hate summer full stop. The only good thing about it is my birthday and that's well over. I figure, hey, let's start Halloween early and maybe, MAYBE the weather will follow suit.

Technically this book is a book about witches, but in actuality this picture has 0 witchy things in it. That's fine. I just wanted to colour something cosy. I looked up a palette suggestion for pastel autumn, which sounds wrong, but it actually worked out. I knew I'd need a guide cos there were so many elements to this and I'd just have kept picking up random colours for everything. Since I only had a few to choose from it gave the page a cohesive look, despite having many small details. I do admit I got a little.... lazy. But if you can't pick it out, then I think it's okay. Sometimes I just wanna be less fussy, that's been happening a lot this year. I do still have an over the top, saturated style as my default, but like.. exactly how much fur colours *does* the cat need? He can just be orange. It's fine.

10 August, 2022

OOAK Doll Custom: Rainbow Jr High Jade Hunter

My latest doll custom is known simply as Hunter now. She's in jr high and she's in her intense goth phase, which is NOT A PHASE, MOM!!! The moment I got her I knew I wanted to do such a repaint, because of the beautiful hair and the little bandaid, I felt this was the way to go vs the decora direction I'd gone in with Sunny.

Since I know nothing about the goth lifestyle or dress style, I did some googling. It's been saving me a lot on makeup designs, because again, I know NOTHING about makeup. It's never interested me before. I found a beautiful woman with this exact eye makeup going on, with a few more decorations on her cheeks and forehead, but I decided to do some editing. I wanted a look that would be over the top, but simple to achieve, as this doll is meant to be about 9-14, not quite sure, middle school is weird in the US and different in other countries. I figured personality-wise, she'd be an over-achiever. She'd want to make a statement, but she wouldn't know how to edit so she'd be over the top with her look. BUT, being a child, she'd also need to choose something easy to replicate from a tutorial she'd probably find on youtube. Thus, this look was born after many hours of waiting for Mr. Super Clear to dry and an hour of actual colouring with my albrecht durer pencils and a tiny bit of paint for her black eyeliner. Thankfully I have tiny tiny brush.

For reference, here's what Hunter looked like before customizing, with Saffron, who is awaiting her own customizing.

07 August, 2022

Colouring Book: Fanciful Dogs in Secret Places

In an attempt to focus on colouring and get my enjoyment back I decided to run an experiment. I wanted to colour a page entirely in pencil. After watching Colouring with Alena on youtube, she'd mentioned using polychromos to burnish her prismacolour work, and I figured I'd try it out. I usually use markers (water or alcohol based) or watercolour pencils with a blender to get rid of the white spaces of the paper for a cleaner, more cohesive look, but I thought I'd try it out.

I worked on just the pug's face at first and it went okay, so I just kept going. Honestly, I like how the page came out, but in truth it was really painful to make. For those that don't know, I have nerve and tendon damage related to the antibiotics I've had to take over years (sometimes one month on/one month off cycles) due to my cystic fibrosis. I was even involved, and compensated, in a class action lawsuit against the makers of ciprofloxin (it was like... $70, there was a lot of us in it) because of these issues. The point is, my hands are kinda fragile. My joints are even worse because of arthritis, so to say that I'm going to do multiple hours of detailed colouring in JUST a hard-to-use medium like pencils is rough. While I don't colour hard, because I'm physically unable to add pressure at all to the page, the repetitive nature of the colouring was hard on me. It sounds dumb, because it is. Disabilities suck; I think most of us with them can attest to that it'd be nicer to not have to deal with them.

That being said, I might still incorporate more just pencil colouring when the mood strikes me. It required me to be very slow in colouring, to the point of skipping entire days to allow my hands to recover from the pain, but it also gave me time to reflect on what I was doing, and refine the direction of the page, which is what I've been looking for. Worrying about completion time to line up with the livestreams has been a huge pressure on me mentally, but also in regards to what I'm "allowing" myself to colour and the time I'm giving myself. It's stupid, and I'm trying to break my habit. This method, as frustrating as it can be when I want to colour but cannot, alleviated that issue. There was physically no way to rush, so I didn't rush.

01 August, 2022

July 2022 Finished Colouring

I'm not focusing on quantity as much as I have in previous years, but I am happy to be averaging 4 pages, especially when I'm including complicated ones as well as some books I haven't touched in a while. That's def a good goal to keep in mind when there's so much coming out new all the time.

If you'd like to watch the video about these pages you can see it here or on my Youtube channel.

28 July, 2022

Colouring Book: Disney Summer Fun - Hachette Heroes

This page went through a lot to complete. For one, I tried colouring with my copics on the regular book pages. I did my best to make my way through the dolphin and honestly? I hated it. The way it was coming together was just not up to my standards and I decided that I couldn't enjoy the process if it was gonna look so crappy. So I printed out the scanned image, because I was smart enough to scan it just in case.

Once I coloured the whole image on copic paper I decided it was time for the background. I wanted a very vibrant, colourblocked look since this page has so much energy. So I picked out some bright paint colours and... it was AWFUL! I hate Americana paint in general, since it's so cheap and streaky and bothersome it rarely works for me and the applications I need it to. But never has it ruined my day as badly as with this picture. I did 7-10 layers on ONE colour and I couldn't get it to be anything but a gloopy mess that never came together in a flat colour. Since I started with the smaller part I honestly didn't want to bother to go through the trouble for the three other colours I picked and the larger areas.

Since paint is usually my last ditch effort to salvage a background, the only thing left was to cut it out and mount it on some paper. I found an energetic yellow and, you know, it turned out pretty good tbh.

24 July, 2022

OOAK Doll Custom: LOL Tweens Repaint

I really like the size of these LOL Surprise Tweens, but honestly... the eyes on the LOL dolls bother me. They're so big, they're so ROUND, and the eyelashes and makeup are not my cup of tea. There's nothing wrong at all if you like their original look, or dislike my repaints, I just happen to want to apply my own tastes to my own dolls.

I used my albrecht durer and museum pencils to redraw the faces on these girls after using the Dremel tool I got for my birthday to smooth down the eye sockets and a bit of the face on the dolls. I redrew the eyes in more of a chibi style, similar to what people are familiar with in Animal Crossing, or anime drawings. I wanted a simple style I could recreate.

Tifa (left) and Inez the Patchwork Princess (right), were the result. Inez was the first one I did, and her darker skin made the accidental gouges from the Dremel more obvious. Since it was the first time I'd done such a thing, I had a few oopies, and I found that the paint and pattern covered those issues as well as gave her so much personality. Tifa had an easier time of it, since I'd practised some more, and I just blended in the new style with her original clothing as I'd done with Inez.

And for those that don't want to look up the dolls, this is what they looked like freshly unboxed.

22 July, 2022

Colouring Book: Mythographic Wild Winter - Joseph Catimbang

Did you notice that it's extra hot this summer? Yeah, me too. Thank the angel, I have air conditioning here, but going outside to let the dogs potty is a nightmare. So I've been dreaming of a bit cooler things, even things I can't eat, like ice pops (oh the calories...). That's when I remembered this page in the winter Mythographic book and thought I'd make a colourful summer page out of it.

I'm not going to repost it, cos it's not my work, but there's an image floating around google and pinterest of how to make rainbow ice pops, and I used that as a reference for this page. I picked the pop I wanted, and then added a sunset in the background. Then I turned on Jurassic World Dominion on an infinite loop, and got to colouring. 17 showings of the movie later (that's about 34 hours), I was done.

I went with chocolate for the random liquid floating around this page because sometimes people dip fruit in chocolate. You know, like those fountain things? Husband's office had a house party that had one of those and while I did try it, I'm not really a fan of pineapple dipped in chocolate. It was definitely eaten though. Me? I ate piles of chocolatey marshmallows and strawberries. And I don't even LIKE chocolate, I just like sugar haha.

15 July, 2022

Colouring Book: Horizon Zero Dawn - Titan Comics

I was contacted by the pr person from Titan Comics about colouring this new Horizon Zero Dawn colouring book. For full transparency, I was sent this book for free in return for an honest review. I'm so appreciative to be trusted with such a thing, though I'm not sure it turned out as well as he'd hoped because, well, I did find things that I didn't like about the book. You can see that in the video.

For this finished page I decided to try a technique that I see is common in comics and black and white colouring, which is crosshatching. I wanted to use the technique to keep the colours kinda separate because I have no idea how to cell shade, which is also common in comics.

This is the image I started on stream, and I used to promote the actual release date of the book.

I also shared the book with my mini-me doll because, well, I really like that doll haha.

You can watch the livestream here, or click through to my youtube channel.