Faber Castell

2018 Christmas Card

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

My Christmas Cards are mailed.  Enough time has passed that most of the cards should have reached their destinations.  Now, I can share the cards on my blog.

This year I drew ornaments on 3.5″ square tiles.  I selected the high quality tiles, because I wanted to color on the tiles.  I keep the color to a minimum because I wanted the ornaments to look delicate like glass Christmas ornaments.  Below are a few of the tiles.  All of the tiles are located on Drawing page.

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I designed the card in CorelDraw.  I converted the picture below to an outline drawing to use as a background on the card.

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I created an area on the card to put the tile.   I have been placing the same symbol with my name on all the back of all my cards since 2004.

2018 Christmas Card Outside

Outside

2018 Christmas Card Inside

Inside

The folded card measures 5.25″ square.  I embossed several stems on the front of the card, and attached the tiles to the cards with photo corners.  I wanted the recipient to be able to remove the tile without damaging the tile.   Below is one of the finished cards.

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Art of Concentration: Day 8

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

I must be crazy for drawing so many lines on a page and than coloring them.  And, on top of it all, doing two drawings.  I must be crazy.  However, they were so much fun.

That is probably another rule of Art of Concentration – have fun.  Enjoy what you are doing.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

The first drawing was a small drawing.  It has a simple flower in the middle with a bunch of lines going through it.

AofC flower x-treme

There are some many colors that could be added to this line drawing.  The first example started out as a simple black and white, but I could not leave it as that.  The gray background the flower jump off the page.

flower x-treme color 1

The colored version is very busy, it draws your eye all around the drawing.  It reminds me of a out country kitchen pattern.

flower x-treme color 2

Below is the hand drawing of the x-treme flower.  It was done on a Studio Series Artist tile with Faber Castell Pitt Pens and Crayola markers.

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Boxed Flower

Even though this Mandala started out as a sketch, I thought I could not do it justice on paper, so I put it in Corel Draw, increase the size to 8.5″ squared, and drew circles to the extreme.

AofC Mandala

From the center, a beautiful flower appeared.  There are so many way this could be colored, so many possibilities.  After creating a bitmap and using Microsoft Paint to color it, below is the results at my first attempt to color the Mandala.  The black background made the color more vibrant.

AofC Mandala color 1

AofC Mandala

PDF versions of the today’s line drawings are available on the Coloring Page for downloading.  Starting with today, I will put the newest drawings at the top of the page.

Art of Concentration: Day 6

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

The ability to create something beautiful is a wonderful experience.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

What started out as a page with a mess of lines, can turn into something beautiful.  Here is the line drawing from today.  If you look closely, you will see some circles.

AofC circle mess

First, the line drawing was colored using just black.

circle mess color 1

Next, I colored the line drawing using four colors.  Remember the rule, the same color can not touch each other.  If the colors were placed differently, it could had a completely different look.  See how different it looks from the black and white version.

circle mess color 2

Here is the hand drawn version:

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Circle Mess

Sometimes, when the black lines gets close, you will need to assume the blank space between the lines, e.g. lower right corner.

Click here for to download a PDF version of the line drawing.  PDF copies of the line drawings are available on the Coloring Page.