My Favorite Fonts

Having been on Pinterest for a little while, I've collected quite a few pictures and links to inspire my artistic endeavors. Sometimes I go through my boards to gain some motivation, and I chuckle when I notice what styles I was drawn to for that day or week. There are blocks of watercolor pins, flyer design pins, brand identity pins, the list can go on and on. But I want to focus on one particular subject, as you can probably already tell by the title of this post.

Designophile that I am, I love to collect fonts and font combinations. Especially when I'm designing a flyer or doing a typographic representation of a quote, I like to browse dafont and find the perfect font. Of course, I hardly ever know what I'm looking for until I find it. But I wanted to share some of my favorite default fonts. These are the ones that are the "base" of my graphic designs. Do I need a nice looking serif font that looks official? I'll go to Garamond or Didot. And of course, Helvetica is on my list. Granted some of these fonts are already well-used, if not over-used, but that doesn't change the fact that I love to use them.

1. Helvetica is hands-down the safest, most ubiquitous, and slightly over-used font. It's aesthetically pleasing, it's simple, it's sans serif, it's modern, what can't this font do? I especially love using Helvetica for body texts, but it works for a big bold headline as well.

2. I find Garamond to be a superior serif font, especially above Times New Roman. It's great for a classical look.

3. For a more modern serif font, I usually go with Didot. It has harsher serifs and it looks more deliberate.

4. Champagne and Limousines is a recent favorite, and honestly, it's my absolute favorite font. It's modern. It's Helvetica-esque, but it's different enough to have its own mood. I love the roundness of the letters; it makes this thin font look bold, even in its regular form.

5. I'm noticing a trend of modern sans serif fonts. Geosans Light is favorite mostly because of its similarity to Champagne and Limousines. For some reason, I see it as more professional and not as whimsical as C&L. I'm not sure why though...

6. To me, Bebas Neue seems to have randomly appeared, and then all of a sudden, everyone was using it. It's big, bold, and all-caps. It's condensed characteristics make it a great heading font since it saves space but doesn't shirk on boldness. It demands your attention, and I love it.

7. Lastly, Minimal. I don't use it too often, but I love the whimsical nature of this font. Of course, it's modern, and true to its name, uses minimal strokes for each character. I'd characterize it as a more fun version of Champagne and Limousines.

And there you have it, my favorite fonts. Most of them stem from Champagne and Limousines I've noticed. Hopefully they give you some inspiration of fonts to use for future designs.

Draw. Paint. Design.

A Little Practice Goes a Long Way

As an artist, your art is never perfect. I found this little gem on Pinterest, and I think it captures the struggle of artists of any kind anywhere.

http://themetapicture.com/how-artists-see-their-work/

And sometimes, even when you finish your artwork, it's still not finished. I still look at some of the pieces I've done in the past and mentally make a list of all the things that could make it better. I'm afraid of overworking a piece, but I'm also afraid of underworking it; I can never really find that happy medium, so it sometimes feels like I end up stopping in the middle. 

So I figured that I should focus on (for now) practicing. I haven't really done a formal large piece in a while, so my fine arts skills have gotten rather rusty. I've been doing a lot of graphic design, and I love it. But there's still something special about holding a brush or pen in your hand and creating something beautiful. Therefore, I'll practice as much as I can (plus, I need to use all of my mini-canvases). I won't sell these since these are on par with sketches and they're also pretty small, about the size of a business card. But they'll be nice for me to see my progress this summer.

I'll also add to this post as I continue with practicing.

Painting a background to get rid of the horrible plain white canvas

"Finished" paintings of snowberries and poppies

A Dream No Longer Deferred

What better way to showcase my art than by selling it? This is a dream I've had for a while and that has manifested itself in many different ways. When I was little, I "created" a business called Kira's Krafts. I wanted to make little crafts like beaded keychains or felted crafts and then sell it. I even drew myself behind a table with a banner that said "Kira's Krafts" with the K's drawn as paintbrushes and pencils. Since I was in elementary school, I didn't have a bunch of resources besides my imagination, so that never really went through.

Fast forward to late middle school, early high school, I started StreetArt. I only did commissions and half-heartedly sold art that I had already done. I was much too attached to my artwork, and I couldn't handle the thought that I would have to part with it. So I practiced some and mostly did free portraits of people. I only had one large commission where I drew two portraits and was paid a relatively large sum of money. But I never seriously gave selling my art a thought. 

Fast forward to college. I guess you could say I'm a bit more mature (-ish) and that I know more about business related things (-ish). So I created Draw. Paint. Design. It started off as a professional portfolio for furthering my career. I figured having a link to all my artwork and designs would be attractive to potential employers. It was meant to be a more formal portfolio than this blog. Then I asked myself, why not make it a business? I could design a logo for it, some business cards, a Facebook page and I'd be in business. I could showcase and sell the artwork on my portfolio and then sell it on my Etsy shop.

And that's just what I did.

To God be the glory, I've been more proactive in trying to sell my artwork and in getting people to know about me. I've handed out my business cards, shared posts on Facebook, and updated my portfolio as much as I could. I have a fiverr account where I do small design or crochet tasks that don't take too long. And I think I'm gaining ground. I just need to work on the marketing bit; I'm quite averse to being the annoying-person-on-Facebook-who-doesn't-know-when-to-stop-sharing-links. I don't like to clog up others' newsfeeds because I hate it when my newsfeed is clogged. But oh well. I'll do my best to advertise (I've already bought some ad space on Etsy) and keep sharing photos and new artwork that I'm selling. And hopefully this summer, I'll have some new projects to sell.

So here's to a dream that's no longer deferred, one that I've been trying to accomplish for a long time.

Wisteria and Orange flowers

Watercolors are amazing, I'll just say that. The color are beautiful and it has this fresh quality that few other media can duplicate. Just this weekend, I did some painting over a friend's house, then came back and did some more painting since my work was pretty much done.

Wisteria are one my favorite flowers, especially since they are in my favorite color

Drawings and Paintings

I guess it's been almost a month since I last posted. This was mostly because of artist's block (of course) and the fact that I was out of the country for the last week and a half. It was a cruise with my family to various tropical islands. I took many pictures and I'm sure some of them will become inspirations for future paintings/drawings.

Anyway, I did draw/paint quite a bit before my trip. I've rekindled my love for drawing. As you can see from my previous posts, I've been experimenting a lot with watercolor, and unfortunately, I've been neglecting practicing my drawing skills. So here are a few paintings, sketches and drawings that I've done so far.

Almond blossom sketch

Pumpkins for a little fall project of mine, but I might not continue it

The above paintings were done using a plastic wrap effect. After painting some washes on the paper, I arranged plastic wrap on top and let the whole thing dry. After the paint dries, out comes this awesome crinkly effect.

This one and the three previous ones are all of koi

Watercolor sketches

I found the reference photo for this one on Pinterest

Summer Projects!

I'm really starting to get the hang of painting with watercolors. Or at the very least I'm becoming more comfortable with them. So much so that I'm starting a few projects (and I'm bored, it's summer vacation).

My first project will be for a friend. She's given me her name in Chinese characters and one of them stands for "orchid". Seeing as how I love to paint flowers, I'm going to paint a branch of orchids and then write her name in characters on the painting. I've yet to figure out the composition but here are some preliminary sketches.

I like the second one better since it gives me more space to write her name. And I like to leave some of the paper blank instead of filling the whole thing with color.

My next project has to do with poetry. See, I love short poems. I admire those who can write a meaningful, or even cryptic, poem in just a few words or lines. William Carlos Williams is one of the poets that I admire for that. I painted his poem, "This is Just to Say"; the title of the poem is also the title of the painting. I'll be selling it hopefully, once I figure out a price anyways.

WIP

Final piece

I was so happy when I saw that watercolor works just fine on Bristol Vellum. I was kind of scared that the paper wouldn't be strong enough. But I'm so glad that it held and that the colors went on smoothly.

More Watercolor Flowers

Again with the flowers. Seriously, I don't think I can stop. They're just so much fun to paint. Maybe I should branch out to birds or trees or other plants or people. Or at least acrylic paint.

Daisies

Maybe next time I'll try a different subject. Maybe....

A Flower Garden

Free time + love for watercolors + near infinite amounts of paper and flower pictures = watercolor flower extravaganza.

I've been looking through Jean Haines' book Atmospheric Watercolors (which I highly recommend) and in looking through her work and techniques, I've found inspiration for paintings. That book has inspired the several watercolor flower sketches that you've seen in previous posts as well as those in this post. I'm obviously having tons of fun (and finally using my sketchbooks) experimenting with watercolors. It's been an exercise of patience though; waiting for the previous layer to dry before adding another layer can be difficult. But here are some sketches and one actual painting on Blick's Aquabord of flowers.

These I call Summer Flowers. I've decided to only post details of the whole sketch because I didn't like how the whole thing looked together. This was just more experimenting with watercolor and ink.

This sketch is White Flowers. My first hand at painting the negative space to allow the flowers to come through. I also experimented with making the paint drip by painting with the sketchbook held up. If I could break this apart, I'd have the two flowers on the right be their own painting.

My favorite sketch so far. These are just yellow flowers in a bunch. I like the sketch as a whole but I really love the above detail. That's a painting all on its own.

More yellow flowers. This one is on the Aquabord, but it's not my favorite. I want to work on it more but I'm afraid I'll overwork it. At least from this one, I know what works and what doesn't.

These flowers are called Aubretia. They're white but I liked how the sketch looked with them being a light bluish purple. 

And there's my little flower garden so far. Most likely, I'll be painting more flowers in the future.

Pages from an Artist's Journal Part 3

I really seem to like drawing/painting flowers for some reason. Maybe because they can be so easily abstracted? And painted really quickly?

But anyways, here's a painting of a magnolia. They are one of my favorite flowers, and I actually didn't know they grew in Boston until recently. The pink trees that blossom with the full flowers every spring are magnolias! I thought they only grew in Georgia. I both love and hate how transient they are. Since spring is such a short season in Boston, the magnolia blossoms don't stay out for very long, like a month or two. Sometimes, they stay for an even shorter time if it rains and the petals fall off (read: much, much sadness for me).

Following are a few watercolor and ink sketches. I wanted to see how I could mix two of my favorite media together. The watercolor paint adds color to a black and white ink drawing, and I like how they look together. I do a watercolor wash first to get the color down, then I draw in pen and ink over it. It's like it combines loose color with tight drawings. And the dripping paint is my favorite part.

These flowers are almost fantastical aren't they?

Not my favorite painting of a bird, but I was just getting the hang of doing a wash first then a drawing over it.

These are watercolor paintings of cherry blossoms. This is the wash I did before drawing over it with pen and ink.

Detail of wash

Detail

Detail

I really like the first detail, the one focusing on the actual cherry blossoms. I might be doing more of these kinds of paintings, they're fun.

Also, be sure to vote on the poll on the sidebar! It's basically just asking what type of artwork you'd like to see more of.

The End, The Beginning

After looking through an old planner that I used during my senior year of high school, I found this little gem. It's basically a poem about leaving high school and going to college, how it's both a beginning and an end. To capture that concept, I made the poem a palindrome. The punctuation is different of course but the lines are in the same order, just reversed. Originally, I just wrote the first part and the reverse reading was understood for me. But I figured it'd be much easier to read if both the original and the reversal were written out with the correct punctuation. 

For the most part, the different readings have a different tone (not sure if I succeeded in that or not, I was mostly making sure that the poem made sense in both directions). I revised it a bit from what was written in my planner, the wording was a bit off at times and needed to be simplified.

And don't worry, I am enjoying the college experience.

The End, The Beginning

The end.
I never thought it'd be
here so fast.
College came
with stress.
Trying to remember everything,
collecting my life story, I'm always
remembering every test, every success, every grade. It's 
so impossible, 
can I leave my comfort? It's
who I am. But
with college, I'm not
the old. I'm new.
Now is
college, and high school
is done. Here comes 
the beginning

The beginning
is done. Here comes
college, and high school
now is
the old. I'm new.
With college, I'm not
who I am. But
can I leave my comfort? It's
so impossible.
Remembering every test, every success, every grade - it's
collecting my life story. I'm always
trying to remember everything.
With stress
college came
here so fast.
I never thought it'd be
the end.

Pages from an Artist's Journal Part 2

Watercolors are such a wonderful paint. I know I say this for just about everything I work with but it's true, watercolors are wonderful. They're quick and easy - many small sketches can be done with them - and they make painting anything so much fun. By abstracting the subject matter, I can play with how I move the brush over the paper or with how the paint moves on the paper.

I call this small sketch "A Trio of Lilies". I see these flowers mostly in people's yards. They're very pretty and very orange; they also stand out from their typical green background. I splattered a burnt sienna/ultramarine mixture to mirror the spots that are usually on lilies. I could probably stand to learn to control where the paint goes.

This is "Hibiscus". It's another watercolor sketch, and I used a reference photo (found here). This one was also fun to do. I was a little more patient with this one since I painted in layers; I waited for the paint to dry and then painted another layer on it. This might end up being a sketch for a final painting at some point.

Pages from an Artist's Journal

What better way to be inspired and be creative than to start an artist's journal? To be honest, I've been thinking of starting one for a very. Long. Time. I've bought a ton of sketchbooks and sketch pads just to start an artist's journal because I knew that once I did, I could actually see my creative process and practice some techniques. Usually, I'm averse to creating unfinished artwork or doing technical drawings. If I'm going to practice, I'm going to practice for a finished piece of artwork, not in sketchbook. I mean yes I do draw occasional sketches but it's usually with a finished piece in mind, rarely with the intention to just sketch and practice.

So now you can see my process as I experiment with different kinds of media, different kinds of techniques, and different kinds of subject matter. These are all done with something under it first, an underpainting of sorts. I hate looking at a blank, white piece of paper. I need some kind of ground to give me ideas. So for each one, I either painted over a sketch or painted a light wash first before doing something on the paper. Not all of these are going to be awesome (I'm actually not too fond of the first one) but they'll all help me see what works and what doesn't.

Scary isn't it? It's an orange lily that I did with acrylic paint. You can see the original sketch underneath; it was a portrait that I wasn't too fond of. So I painted over it.

My favorite one so far. I'm not exactly sure why, I just like working in charcoal maybe. But in case you were wondering I did accidentally-on-purpose single out the eye. The circle around the eye is the only one not painted on with water. This was done over another less-than-satisfactory sketch that I did in ink.

I was basically just experimenting with watercolor and pen. I wanted to see how I would do lettering with it. I concluded that the black outline wasn't the best. It would have looked cooler in my opinion had I just done it with watercolor. But I had fun painting it!

So expect more art journal postings later. Maybe I'll do a series or something so I can have a definite idea of what I'm going to do.