Bear-napped

("Bear-napped" 2013 acrylic and ink)

Why does everything I love get carried away by demons? This is why I can't have nice things!

The struggle is real.

If you've looked through a few of my previous posts by now, you've probably noticed that most of the illustrations I post are done in Photoshop. This is due to several reasons. My laptop is portable and so I can work on Photoshop anywhere at anytime. There is no mess or clean up with Photoshop, and it allows me to highlight and change colors and settings faster than with traditional painting. However, despite my appreciation for Photoshop, there is something about traditional painting that I find very enjoyable. I love the amount of control I have with the brush, and the random blends and textures that I get by mixing and applying paint directly can't be imitated using photoshop. Before I had digital programs, I did all my illustrations with acrylic or water color, then did the outlines and details with ink. Now, when I do traditional paintings like this, I go over the paint with ink and copic markers. If you enjoy illustration they are a great tool to look into, though they are expensive.

Painting with acrylic is something I enjoy doing once in a while, and once I get the paints, brushes, water, easel, etc, set up, it can be very relaxing. In fact, I am planning on doing a speed-painting video (like this one) for this blog soon. I'm going to start filming it next week. Hopefully I can get the painting finished in one afternoon and have the video edited in time to post it the same day!