Dipping My Toe into the World of Digital Art

So I was very grateful to receive money from my family for my birthday this year, with this money and my savings I was able to finally purchase an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil! I've wanted to get these since I first saw them released and did some research to see how well it works for creating artwork. After checking out all the information I could find, I came to the conclusion that this would be a cheaper and more versatile option for me over the Wacom Cintiq, a drawing tablet that I've been lusting over for as long as I knew about Wacom as a company! I'm now three months into my iPad Pro art journey and I don't think I will go back to my old graphics tablet to draw ever again! My two favourite art apps are Procreate, an amazing art app that's incredibly versatile; and AstroPad, an app that turns the iPad into a graphics tablet so you can use it with your computer programs like Adobe Photoshop! Drawing in Procreate is so fluid and feels so natural that it makes Photoshop feel clunky to me! Although it costs about £4.49 to purchase, I have never regretted doing so as this app has helped me so much to develop as an artist and illustrator.

So do you fancy seeing some of the pieces I've made with my new tools? You've probably already seen them if you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, but I'm actually very proud of how these have come out, so I hope you like them!

Available as a print here! 

Available as a print here!

Available as a print here!

Available as a print here!

Be sure to use the coupon code "MYFAIRPIXELBLOG" to get 15% OFF in my Etsy shop!

I've also uploaded the sketching and painting process of "SEER" to my YouTube channel so be sure to watch that too!

I hope you like the work I'm creating now! I feel like I can be more experimental now so I'm having a lot of fun with it!

June Art Goals

Welp, it's been a while since I set some monthly art goals, wanna know why? Well my last set of goals made me into a complete mess!! I set goals that I just could not keep up with, which made me feel really crappy about myself & my work, and ultimately burnt me out. So why am I back making more goals? Am I daft?! Maybe.. but I really do believe that goal setting is vital for self-improvement, so I have three new goals for this month. I've also purposefully made the goals quite easy to accomplish just so I can ease myself back into this process.. and not go through what happened last time!! So here are the three things I'm going to be focusing on this month!

1 )  DRAW AT LEAST ONE ILLUSTRATION A WEEK! The most foolproof way get better at something, is just to keep doing it! If I wanna get better at illustrating then I need to make more illustrations! Since I'm doing my #100days project at the moment I have been barely drawing anything else as it's been keeping me quite busy, I think I can manage to get one separate illustration completed each week though!

2 )  PRACTICE DRAWING MORE PLANTS & INSECTS! I adore looking at plants & insects, and I really enjoy drawing them too! My illustrations have featured a number of beetles and moths in the past but I would love to expand my repertoire and get even more creepy-crawlies involved. Plants too, I love drawing different types of leaves but I really struggle with flowers, so getting some practice in will be super helpful!

3 )  EXPERIMENT MORE WITH INK! Pretty much all of my artwork is done in black indian ink right now and I really love the medium, but I'm not really playing around with it and seeing what it can do. I know that ink is incredibly versatile, I just haven't been versatile with it yet. This is the month where I will change that and hopefully develop some new techniques for my work!

As I said they're easy goals, but it's also very easy to fail at any goal so I think these are a good restart point for me. If I don't manage all of them then I'm going to try to not beat myself up about it, I can't afford to hit another art block like the last one!

​Let me know what you think of the goals I've set and if you have any goals for this month!

100 Days of Inked Astronomy - Week Four

We're four weeks into the project now, am I allowed to call it a month yet?! I'm excited because, as I keep saying, I've never kept up with a challenge so well and for so long! One half of me is just waiting for me to slip up and stop participating, while the other half just laughs and says "nah, we're here for the whole thing!" Even though I am super pleased with how well this project is going, there is one thing that I feel I really need to work on.. my participation & interaction with others & their work within the challenge. On a typical day, I'll sort out my illustration then post it to Instagram, then I won't think about it again throughout the rest of the day. That sucks, and I've begun to realise that a lot of the joy from this challenge comes from interacting with the other artists and following their journey too! I'm going to make it a daily goal now, to go through #THE100DAYPROJECT tag at least once, then I can catch up with everyone and feel more part of the growing community.

Do you have any favourite projects in the challenge? Link me and share the love!