Baking Art 1: Dragon Cake Fail

Dragon Cake

Material: Cake XD

Time: A day

Date: March 2018

I MADE A DRAGON CAKE (kinda)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Full story below the timelapse video:

Sooooo where to even begin...

I have a list of life goals - not a physical list - just a list of things that I really want to do. Most of them are pretty crazy but none of them are particularly impossible. All most of them take is for me to turnaround and say "why haven't I done that yet?" and if there's no good reason then to grit down and DO IT! SO I MADE A DRAGON CAKE.

I remember I think it was back in high school that I came across this beautiful white dragon wedding cake from the butter end bakery and was absolutely in love. That was when I said: someday I'm going to make a dragon cake as beautiful as that and thus the life goal was born.

I've had a cake decorating kit for a long time but the problem is....... I've just never been that excited about decorating cakes/cookies/etc. My goal was always to make something delicious and to spend most of my time baking so after making a cake for example even if I'd planned on decorating I'd typically just.... not because I never really saw very much worth in spending a bunch of time decorating something when frosting was my least favorite part of cake anyways..... But at the same time I love seeing beautifully decorated cakes/cookies and now that I have a bit more time and a bit more space I think I'm going to dive into decorating a bit more especially since my dragon cake was a bit of a fail so I definitely need to improve!

Anyways... even though I had no special event to make a cake for I finally just went for it! and I'm glad I did because now I know both that 1) I can do it and 2) I still have a little ways to go until I can make a cake I'd be proud enough of to serve to a party.

Anyways I talk a lot about the many failures of my dragon cake in the video but the main things were that it started falling apart and also I wasn't happy with how the scales/face/actual dragon details looked. But overall I'm super happy that I did this and proud of what I've created with extremely little planning and extremely little prior cake decorating experience!

And now - of course - pictures!

My original design:

More pics of the cake:

Digital Art 2: Sheep Castle

Sheep Castle

Medium: Digital

Time: A Month

Date: January 2018

So here's the second digital art picture I did right after the previous sheepdog one! [Which as you may notice they have pretty similar subject matter XD ]

Full timelapse video below and more details underneath!:

So - wow - this work really was something. Summary: I wanted to force myself to draw pretty much all of things I was afraid of drawing digitally: grass, rocks, rocks, more grass, and more rocks.

This drawing took literally forever but I was determined to finish it. Once I finished the castle I started getting super excited because it was finally looking decent but before that it was a bit of a drag to force myself to keep working on it. But hey - I did it! I finished it and I love it. I mean I wish it had a little bit more of a magical/stylistic element to it but overall I'm super proud of it... but I also don't plan on doing another digital picture like this any time soon - they're exhausting.

In general I relied on the techniques I knew from painting and tried to translate them to digital mainly because I have actually painted grass before and it came out okay; and rocks and they came out okay... but I feel like digital really leaves you with no wiggle room! Real materials naturally already have a bit of organic detail to them and I never realized how much I used that as a crutch. Digital painting is HARD. And I didn't even end up doing anything realistic.

So basically I still have a long way to go but I'm really proud of both the final product and the fact that I stuck with it and finished.

I was particularly happy with how the castle and the clouds turned out. The grass I didn't like very much but at the same time I didn't really mind it. The sheep and sheepdog were cute but I probably could've made them a little more realistic but that's okay. And that cliff in the front... let's just not even mention that.... as well as the wall - though I'm relatively happy with how it ended up turning out I think I discovered how not to digitally paint a wall rather than how to.

Anyways the video is kinda long so I rambled enough in that already ;)

My next post will likely be about the crazy thing I baked today so look forward to that ;)

Thanks!

Digital Art 1: Sheepdog

Sheepdog

Medium: Digital

Time: A couple hours

Date: January 2018

And.... after a long hiatus I'm back with a whole bunch of new (and some old) art! starting off with this cute and quick sheepdog! And even more exciting is that I now have the ability to make time lapses and videos of my art!:

[full story below the video]

Soooooo :) - wow where do I even begin? I've always wanted to be able to make digital art. For years I've wanted a drawing pad and I've tried to play around with digital drawing tools on my phone and kindle but I always thought I wasn't a good enough of an artist to fully utilize fancy digital drawing software/hardware... until more recently when I stopped caring so much and just wanted to have fun drawing what I love and just going for it! A couple years ago now I got my Surface Pro which has allowed me to draw right on my computer and it's literally the best thing ever! I love it! 

Over the last couple years I slowly became acquainted with the different drawing software and now screen recording/video making software. I'll shortly be posting some of the other digital drawings I have made over the last couple years that slipped through the cracks.

Now I'm absolutely in love with making art both digitally and with real materials and I have plenty of projects planned so hopefully I'll be posting often ;)

Anyways about that sheepdog!

I'm not sure where exactly the idea for this picture came from but the best way that I can explain it is: you know how everyone has a bit of a fantasy 'escape'? Like when people joke that they'll just leave everything behind and live on a tropical island somewhere or in a shack on a mountain? Me: I've always wanted to be a shepherd in Wales.

So in a sense this is my dreamscape: castle, hills, dragons (cause they're real in Wales), sheep, and to top it all off a cute fluffy sheepdog. :) and really this picture is as simple as that :)

I talk more in the video about how I wanted to challenge myself with this picture because I still view myself as being really bad at drawing line-art cartoony pictures and I don't really have a developed artistic style. But I was really proud of how this picture came out! especially since I drew it super quickly because it was my first time using the screen recording software and it was making me a tad nervous so I was rushing like mad.

I wanted to try to draw something soft and cute and it was the dead of winter when I did this so it became a pastel(ish) snow scene. I absolutely love how it turned out! (except it makes me a bit nervous because I'm still not confident that I'll be able to keep creating and growing as an artist but at the same time every drawing I do I keep surprising myself and I'm starting to think that as long as I'm drawing something I like and just having fun then maybe my pictures will keep turning out okay :) )

Well that's it for now! I had a ton of fun making this picture and the time lapse and I can't wait to do more!