Goddess of the harvest. I struggled with this one, not a ton of steampunk farmer reference or ideas out there… go figure. I’m definitely going to revisit this one, but I like the overall feel of the sketch. I’ve got a few ideas to make it more steampunk feeling… like I said will work on it more.
Category: Uncategorized
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Update! Here’s my sketch of Boreas, I’m rubbish at drawing men… I need to practice more. I looked a lot to JC Lyndecker for some reference in drawing men well I need to add some more steampunk elements, but this is where this is at right now.
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I’m going to update this one later with my sketch- I have it partly done- last night I got hit with a lot of stuff I had to do, so I didn’t finish it. I could post what I have, but it is more of a scribble right now!! lol
So for you who don’t know Boreas is one of the greek gods of wind, he is the north wind.
This is not my art- because I haven’t had time to finish something like this lol
but here is someone else’s depiction of him 😀If you’re curious about my sketch- stop by later- I work in a different style, and it will be an unfinished sketch because of my time constraints lately lol
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Like I said yesterday, these are going to be sketches… hopefully on Sundays I’ll be able to at least finish them up to be line art we will see if I end up having time.
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So these characters are all going to be steampunkish characters inspired by Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Nordic dieties. Aphrodite seemed a good place to start. You can start to see the steampunk elements in this sketch- Though I realize it is hard to tell right now. Also, I understand that everyone has a different view of beauty- and that is wonderful! This is just my interpretation. -
I know I’m not the only one out there who has had a particularly unpredictable year!! I actually wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to do the A to Z Blog Challenge- which is why I’ve not done a theme reveal yet. With all 3 kidlets at home and needing School from Home help my time has barely been my own. After 2 weeks of this though we’re getting some routines going. SO I’m going to officially do my theme reveal!!My Theme for the A to Z Blog Challenge is:Gods and Goddesses Steampunk Style!!I know… not *super* original, but it is what I’m going with!! My original theme was much more fun, BUT as I don’t have the time to do full illustrations I switched to something a little more manageable. These more likely than not will be in a sketch stage *possibly* a little farther (that stage between sketch and line art)Along with this I’m going to try to live stream drawing at least 2 times a week. I’ve not decided if I’m going to live stream the A to Z challenge specifically or other illustrations that I need to get done (I have QUITE a backlog right now of work to do lol)If you are just here for the A to Z thing- then you can stop reading here, unless you’d like to learn more about me.So I have to say this Covid19 thing is CRAZY. I admit I’m a little jealous of the people who are on facebook like ‘look at all this free time I have’. I cannot relate to that at all!! Not only did all my normal life stay the same (making meals, keeping up the house, caring for kids, and my freelance stuff) I got a WHOLE bunch of new responsibilities on top of that. That and my workload around the house has at least doubled, possibly more than that. And before you suggest it- yes my kids do chores; they are actually REALLY good at doing chores. There is still more to do because everyone’s home. It is just how it goes.Anyway- we’re safe, we’re happy. The more I learn about the Covid19 virus the more I wonder if that weird flu/pneumonia thing that we got over winter holiday was in fact the virus everyone is scared of now… we at least had a viral pneumonia with identical symptoms… So if we haven’t had it I sure don’t want it again. If we have though… it’d be nice to know.ANYWAYI don’t know how all of this is going to affect the rest of my year. I’m a little worried about the Convention that I’m signed up for at the end of May- I have a feeling that it isn’t going to be canceled- but I’m not sure if I’ll have the inventory to sell thanks to all this craziness. We’ll see- hopefully I can get a lot of good work done over the next month. Crossing my fingers.Thank You for Stopping by!Keep being creative!Alicia
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I know it’s a month an a half into the year, but this is literally the first moment I’ve had to sit down and write a post. The bullet point recap is pretty simple- my family started off the year sick as could be, about mid January we were healthy people again. Basically since then I’ve spent a lot of time getting caught up on housework.
So 2020 is going to be a good year for my art. At least that is the expectation, we’ll see what reality holds. Here is what the year holds for me:
Blog/Website– I’m going to be migrating this blog from Blogger to my website (aliciahawksart.com) at some point this year- my goal is to have it all moved over by the end of March. Along with that I’m going to be updating and making my site a little more posh- basically I’m giving myself 45 days to do this. However I’ve got other things I have to do in that time as well- so we’ll see.
Social Media– This includes Facebook, Instagram and YouTube primarily. I’m working on branching out to other sites (thinking of doing some TikTok art videos, but that’ll probably be later in the year). I’ve struggled for awhile to post consistently, so I’m currently working out a plan to get more art up more frequently. The only goal I have here right now is ‘do it more’ so right now my first quarter goal for this is to figure out exactly what art I want to post where, and which Social Media sites I want to keep.
Patreon- I’ve not touched this yet- I DO want to create an account and start doing monthly things for it- but I’ve not exactly figured out what. My long term goal is to have *something* going on here by the end of the year, my short term (first quarter) goal is to figure out what that is lol.
that_dm_chick: About a year ago I started working on branding for a place to put up my Dungeons and Dragons/RPG/Fantasy art. So far I’ve got it up on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/that_dm_chick/ I’m trying to decide exactly what kind of web presence I wan to have with it. I’ve thought of doing YouTube ‘story time’ type videos about campaigns and whatnot- honestly I’m not sure if I have enough stories- maybe video game reviews as well lol. In anycase- this is something that I’m going to work on developing over the next year. Right now I have 10 posts up on IG and plan to put up more, but not sure when.
Conventions/Public Appearances: Yes, this is on the list this year. I’m jumping WAY out of my comfort zone and I’m going to try 2 conventions this year. Both are in my home state Utah. The first is Pop Culture Con in Provo on May 29-30. The other one is FanX in Salt Lake City on September 17-19th. I’m beyond nervous- especially since the first of the 2 is only a little over 100 days away. (there is a very loud voice screaming at me ‘what have you done!!!’) but these are happening!! So hopefully they go well.
The other appearance this year will be a Gallery Show I’ve unintentionally been putting off. I do not have a set date yet- but the plan is late September or Early October. More details on that as I get things nailed down.Monthly Art/Writing Challenges:
February: partial participation in Faeriefeb
March: casual participation in March of Robots
April: Blog AtoZ Challenge (I’ll announce my Theme for this in March)
May: partial participation in Mer-May but mostly getting last minute stuff together for Pop Culture Con
June: no challenge, going to be working on gallery show a lot here
July: I really WANT to participate in Art Fight, but not sure if I’ll have time. (See June)
August: casual participation in Smaugust and again- see June
September: no challenge, just getting things together for FanX and my Gallery
October: Inktober- for real this year
November: Going to attempt Nanowrimo this year- I don’t know if I’m going to do it ‘officially’ or just on my own.
December: no challenge, just going to survive the holidays and hang out with my family.I know there is a D&D/RPG type challenge out there somewhere- I cannot for the life of me remember what it is called, but if I can track it down I will be at least partially participating in that.
Those are the things I’m looking ahead to this year- hopefully I can stick to it. I know not many people read blogs these days but I am going to try to write once a week if you want to drop by.
Alicia
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Figure it has been about 3 months I should check in again.
I’m having such a hard time balancing my life right now. Though after today it’ll be a little easier.
So for some reason that escapes me at the moment I made a whole bunch of art related commitments around the end of July. I think I must’ve forgotten that I just moved, am still unpacking at that school was starting so my time was going to be more stretched then it all ready was.
Most of the commitments were ‘soft’ commitments; as I was the only person involved in the transaction.
Social Media
I’m trying to build up my portfolio and be more active on social media, all while trying to get everything else done. Of course- facebook, instagram and youtube are all making pretty big changes in the next couple of months- so I don’t know how much longer having a social media presence is going go be a thing that freelancers should pursue. This is why I’ve said for years now that people should build a social media presence but still have some sort of blog and a website that you maintain and update regularly. I’m great at the advice and watching the markets- really bad at incorporating that advice myself. With a lot of the changes I’ve been learning and reading about… I think I might have to rethink and relearn my approach to social media. We’ll see how it goes. More on this below.SkillShare
I also have been working on a class for skillshare- this has been an ongoing process for years- I finally forced myself to actually write an outline and script and film the whole thing. It is officially published!! So if you want to check it out use this link: https://skl.sh/2mXgqyq Check out my class- and sign up for SkillShare if you haven’t.Inktober
I will be participating in Inktober this year. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks gathering every 2019 list I can find. As of this moment I haven’t decided if I’m going to follow the Jake Parker official inktober list, one of the other lists OR just create my own. I will decide in the next couple of days though- as October first is only 6 days away.
Gallery/BFA/RPG Terrain
This has to to have been the biggest source of guilt these last few months, and probably some of the other art commitment I made should not have been made because of this. I HAVE been working on it- albeit in the background. Part of the reason I’ve allowed myself to focus on other art things, including the SkillShare class is because I can sit down and work on them for 10 or 15 minutes at a time and if I get interrupted it isn’t a big deal. The big Terrain project though… I need like an hour at a time to work on it, minimum. I have finally gotten to the point where I can in fact carve out that time- so there will be more updates on this.
Schedule and Plan for the next few monthssocial media:
YouTube: I’m going to be publishing a video at least every two weeks hopefully every week to my YouTube account. For now I think they are just going to be sped up painting/drawing videos that are just of various little sketchbook and hopefully portfolio pieces.
Instagram: My current goal is to post 3 times a week- I’d like to post daily- but until I get the house unpacked and put away- that isn’t happening.
Facebook: for now it’ll probably continue to reflect my Instagram account.
Other: I’m looking into other video hosts and social media platforms- but for now I’ll continue to focus on the big 3.
Twitter: I just… don’t twitter… I go there to check things- but I find I just do not like the atmosphere of that platform.projects:
SkillShare: I do have plans to do more skillshare classes- but not until next year. I need to focus on some other things first. Plus after listening to my class again (post publishing) I need to get a better mic and probably even re-record the audio for what I’ve published thus far…
Inktober: This WILL be a daily thing in October. That overly ambitious voice in my head wants me to record all of the drawings and put up little IGTV videos daily. As much as I like the idea… I just don’t think I have time for that. I’ll be happy just to get the drawings done and published.
Gallery: my goal is to put in at least 4 hours a day on this- I want to do more like 8, but I have to accept once again what I constantly have had to accept while going through school… I am a mom- and that means my time to work on this is less than that of an average student.
Now to clarify- I know I sound like I must be SO far away from being done- I feel like that to an extent- but the truth is I’m about 85% done with the digital part of the project (which includes creating all of the models and putting textures on them and exporting them out to workable paper model templates) So I’m not doing that badly. I know it is going to be hard to build these in the real world- both in terms of cost of materials and time. That is the part that has me a little panicked. It’ll all come together though. This is absolutely my main focus from this point on.Webtoons: I had promised a few people that the comic ‘The Sisterhood of the Seven Stars’ would be up by now. Most people don’t even know about this one- only a select few who saw the concept art last March and were excited about it. It’s been pushed back for now- the script needs to be written- it isn’t much more than an outline at the moment. All the concept art needs to be redone. SO I still intend to put this up- but it might be September of 2020- I don’t know right now.
Writing in general: I have started poking around in my old scripts and stories- I’ve decided I am going to start writing again- I miss it terribly. However it is low priority right now. I’ll be happy if I can just get 20 minutes a day in on this one.
Blog: Starting today I’m going to be making weekly entries onto the blog- the plan is to upload something every Tuesday- I know that at the moment people don’t really read any more so this probably doesn’t matter as much as other things- but I am going to start doing it. Also as soon as I can figure out a fast way to do it I’ll do a Vlog as well. It’ll basically be me doing some sort of sped up drawing or other art while reading pretty much word for word my blog entry for the week. So it would go up on Tuesday as well. I don’t think there is any problem doing it this way- some people just watch video some people only read- some people to a combo of both.
Anyway- this isn’t the best written post; more than anything it is a stream of consciousness post more than anything. Future posts should be better written. At least that is the plan.
Thanks for reading!!
Alicia -
I’m struggling to write an introduction to this. My thoughts are disorganized and chaotic. I haven’t had time to just sit and think let alone construct a coherent post. So bear with me; this won’t be my most eloquent entry… but hopefully it’ll at least make some semblance of sense. I’m going to basically bullet point my life hopefully you’ll be able to follow it.
So this ended up being very long; so just skim through and read the topics that interest you; I even made the headers for each one stand out 😀
A to Z blogging Challenge
I participated in this challenge this year… because I LOVE having to much to do in my life… I guess? The challenge itself has a day in May where you’re supposed to blog about your experience, I obviously missed that. I just didn’t end up having time.
So the rules of the challenge are this: blog everyday except for Sundays in April. The first day of the month the subject is the letter A, then B and so on through the whole alphabet. People participate in this challenge and do everything from crafts to writing to even technical information and this year I found a blog about accounting. You can post about any subject, as long as it relates somehow to the letter of the day.
My original plan for the day was to use it as a way to get better at fast digital paintings, I set a time limit and found a reference that had to do with the day and quickly painted it. The hope was that I’d be able to improve my painting quality and speed. This is something you do in figure drawing all the time, figured it’d work with digital painting.
This lasted until the letter E I believe… and then after that I had to switch what I was doing and I just posted old art that related to the letter.
What I learned: look at your whole life before participating in challenges like this. I was just thinking 15-20 minutes a day; that wasn’t a big commitment. I was to busy to find those minutes though.
Next year: I really want to participate in the challenge again; because it is a good way to force myself to post every day. I think though I might pick a subject now and work on the art throughout the year So I can just enjoy the challenge and have more time to look at other blogs. I won’t have the same crazy schedule in life so that should help a lot.Graduation
This is a thing I did. Well kinda. I’m like 95% graduated. I walked, I did my best to look adorable, I smiled from ear to ear. I got my diploma holder and all of that. It was honestly a great experience.
I’d just gotten a new small camera and was playing with it in the hall before we marched in. So all of my little selfie pictures are blurry. Thankfully the pictures taken with my real camera and the professional ones look great. Unfortunately these are the only ones I have right now that I can share.
It was almost overwhelming how happy I was that day. I’ve been working for this degree for so very long, it felt like I was never ever going to get it. But I did. Well like said, at least 95%.
It is still an awesome feeling to have walked.BFA Project
This should be a post by itself… but the short version of it is this: I haven’t had my show yet, this is why I’m only 95% graduated… I have probably a month, maybe 2 months worth of finishing on this project that I need to do.
This little outhouse has been my learning piece. Each time I need to learn something new in blender I come back to this and work it out on this smaller piece before I do it on my bigger sets. This one has been completed to the point where I printed it out and we (my youngest sister and I) have been figuring out how to build it. We’ve learned a ton in this final phase and need to go back and adjust some thing on the digital model to make the paper model work better, but it is coming along.
I could go on, but this blog post is already super long.Moving
Yea, we moved. Not only did we move we bought our first house!!!
isn’t it cute? This is a huge step for us, and we’re so happy we were finally able to buy a home. This move has made it so I’ve barely lifted a pencil, digital or otherwise. Moving is such a huge job and we’re not even remotely done moving in yet…
My Studio
I’ve not really had one for years. Where we lived before I had a wall in our bedroom, it is just the way life worked out; but I did my best to make the space work.
you can see my mattress in the lower left there.. kids had spilled some orange soda on it earlier that day. Why did they have orange soda on my bed? Yea, see if they’d ever answer that one. Now I have a whole room to myself. Not only that it is a big room. This is pretty amazing for me as my studio/office has always shared space with something else, storage, laundry, living room, a baby room. BUT NOW I have my own room!!! That I share with the girls, because they needed a place to do crafts, but still; it’s pretty awesome. It is also a mess and no where near set up.
I’m getting there, but honestly other rooms in the house have had to take priority (like the kitchen and the kids play spaces and all of the bedrooms… ok pretty much the whole house). It’s part of running a family; if the rest of the home is pleasant and functioning, then my private space stays private lol.
Other Things
These just don’t fit well other places, but 2 other things that have contributed to my crazy schedule have been the trade show at my college I participated in:
And a really cool commission project that I completed at the beginning of the year. (below are 2 out of 30 illustrations I did) more on this project later.
It should be obvious but the two drawings in the white frame are mine; not the amazing painting behind them. This commission project was displayed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Pretty awesome huh? Ok; yea there where there at the museum, but they were a part of a wedding. The project was so cool; they named their tables after famous women in history and wanted illustrations of the women to have around the room and at the tables. They even made a little book with info about the women. Honestly it was a super cool idea; looked like it was pulled off pretty well. I wish I could’ve seen the wedding decor with my little pictures in person. The photos I got were pretty awesome.
Oh yea I also took a business class about running a small business.
Family
Actually not going to post much here about this; because I don’t like broadcasting publicly family stuff; but boy have we been busy with the kids school and stuff like that!!
My point:
The past couple of months, really the whole year have been PACKED. So I’ve not been great at posting anything online.
What’s next?
Good question I have several projects on the horizon; but for the next twoish months I’m going to be doing nothing but BFA stuff and unpacking. I hesitate to announce anything else on my list until those two things are done. I’m going to *try* to at least post a drawing or a progress shot from my show and update this blog maybe once a week? Maybe bimonthly it depends.
Anyway- that is the update. Sorry it is so long!!
Alicia
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I love Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, a major theme in that book is of yearning; so many of the characters wish for things they cannot get while at the same time they do very little to get the things the yearn for. Alice is the only one who really moves through the story- and the things she yearns for at first are conflicted; she wants to explore and discover- but she also very much wants to go home through much of it. This was a drawing I did while figuring out the character design. I also had an art subscription box at the time and used it for the monthly challenge- you use only the supplies in the box and create some sort of art with it.
Alicia Hawks