This week I have been prepping for inktober! I have been gathering all my martirials and cleaning off my work table so I am all ready to paint each day. This year I am going to use Dr. Ph. Martins watercolors again, but I think I will use color well as black, but not all at once. I want to still work with a single color for each painting to continue to work on my tones and values. I have made a list of what I am going to paint each day and gathered reference materials from my local library and online as well, this is (I hope!) going to keep me organized and to help on those days when creative fatigue starts to set in. 

This year I want to paint a young ballet dancer doing a different step or pose everyday. I chose ballet dancers as my theme because I love ballet and have danced my whole life, but also I think the different poses will strengthen my character development and drawing anatomy, as well as working on different body types, genders, and ethnicities in my characters. 

I am a little nervous, last year inktober was a lot of work and I remember I was very tired after day 31, but I felt like I gained so much from it! I am super excited to see all the ballerinas at the end of the month!

I will be posting each painting everyday on my instagram and each Sunday I will post that weeks paintings here on my blog.

I hope you follow along and good luck to all those artists out there doing inktober!!!

xo Anna

You can read about my first Inktober experience here.  

Over the weekend I went to the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center in downtown Kodiak, where they have a great exhibit on bears, salmon, birds, and their habitats. 

The Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1941 but President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it protects 1.9 million acres of the Kodiak archipelago and the animals and plants that live here. 

I went specifically to focus on their bird exhibit, drawing birds and their odd features is something I sometimes have a hard time with, and at the visitors center they have beautiful life-like models of a few of the 247 species of birds that live on Kodiak like the Black Oystercatcher, Rock Sandpipers, Harlequin Ducks, Golden-Crowned Sparrows, Rock Ptarmigans, Long-Billed Dowitcher, and Bald Eagles.   

 You can read more about the Kodiak Wildlife Refuge here.

xo Anna

I love art supplies! I guess this is not really a huge surprise considering I’m an illustrator, but I really could spend an entire day wondering around an art supply store feeling all the paper. (Yes I am that person, I have to touch all the paper!) 

Here are 5 art supplies I am loving! 

COPIC Sketch Markers: I am not really a marker person, but I have been seeing these being loved by other illustrators, and I have been curious to try them out for myself. And I’m obsessed they are gorgeous! Highly pigmented, they apply smoothly, and blend beautifully with no streaks! 

Fluid 100 Cold Press 140lb. 100% Cotton Watercolor Paper: This paper is amazing! I am in love with it! It has a very smooth texture, almost no tooth, witch is what I am always looking for in a thick watercolor paper. It also takes paint very well without absorbing too fast. I have the 6”x 6” block, witch can take some time to remove the individual sheets from the glued sides, but its worth it! 

Tombow MONO HB Pencil: This is my new favorite pencil! It has a very nice dark grey graphite that is not to soft, and doesn’t break off easily when sharpening.

General’s Factis Extra Soft White Vinyl Eraser: I have actually been using this eraser since college, and I am still loving it! It picks up pencil lines really well and is soft enough that it doesn’t tear the paper.

Princeton Watercolor Brushes: I have been using these brushes for a few years now and they are still my favorite! I have few brushes in their Lauren, Select, and Snap! series. All three hold a lot of paint, the bristles keep their shape well and last a long time.

Tell me what art supplies are you loving at the moment?

xo Anna