It seemed like the longest project EVER! My hand hurts...

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I had this idea stuck in my head for about a month until I finally decided to draw it! I wasn't sure what other media I was going to use to create it besides watercolor, but I decided that I might as well just go for whatever would work best for me. I ended up using like 7 different things to make this! I didn't expect it to be so large either, but I was so happy with the result that the millennium it seemed to take to make this piece was absolutely nothing compared to how excited I was to finish it. x) Mehhh I have no life ... its all spent on drawing pictures that are too detailed and time-draining for my day. >_>

Why did I call it "Cosmos" and not something along the lines of "Mother nature" ? I feel as if all of the things were expanding and coming from inside of her head, such as the creation of the universe, and giving it a more "cosmic" title would make the viewers look a bit closer into it. ;)

 Big sketch, took about 2 hours.

 Watercolor, colored pencil, and markers.

I drew this in my school binder reminder because: This was my face when I was getting to the point where I almost said "screw it" and was planning on leaving it unfinished.

 I got over it, and continued working on it.

 

Annnnddddd... it is done! So so SO happy! :)

See the full version of it: http://elvis882.deviantart.com/art/Cosmos-280163726

Thanks for viewing!

~Callie

The creation of "Freckles"

 Callie Fink aka Elvis882 on deviantART - my online art profile/gallery

 This drawing was at the height of my art when I was 15. I worked over 5 months on it from February through June of 2010 just to complete it and I was slowly going crazy. I never thought I would actually finish it at the point I had gotten to after the 5 month mark had passed. It measures 19 inches on each side, completely hand drawn with a multitude of sticks of graphite of varying hardness and size. Many a pencil had given their lives to facilitate the creation of this piece, and let me just say their deaths are not in vain. I used a reference from the deviantART user Malvina-Frolova and when I saw her photo, it instantly stuck in my head that I just had to draw it.

This was also the reason I had to start taking more and more photographs of my work to prove that I had actually drawn it. Literally hundreds of people had accused me of tracing and even Photoshopping a photograph and that it wasn't a true drawing. It got to the point where I had to take pictures of myself holding the drawing to prove that it even existed, and that it was, in fact, drawn by hand. It's kind of impossible to trace a picture on a thick-ass board that's over a foot and a half long, so its obvious the skeptics' common sense was greatly lacking. Then I ended up taking a video of myself adding pencil onto the picture because still, people thought I had "Photoshopped the WIP stages to make it look like a drawing but it is not" and to that I say... COOL STORY BRUH. NOW, GO DO BETTER AND MORE PRODUCTIVE THINGS WITH YOUR MEAGER LIVES~

tl;dr you may take a look at how the drawing progressed. Shmanks. ^_^ Please excuse the odious quality of my camera; my phone was indeed, how you may say, "ghetto".

 

Finished drawing: http://elvis882.deviantart.com/art/Freckles-166969379

Thhhhhhhhhhhhanksssss! I shall see you peeeeeplez later! :)
~Callie

"Enigma" process shots

 Callie Fink aka Elvis882 on deviantART - my online art profile/gallery

"Enigma" was a piece I had an idea for in my head for a while, and I was trying to figure out the perfect mediums to manifest such an idea onto actual paper. I started with watercolor and I chose random colors to blend together, and I was really diggin that color combination so I started adding more and more on top of it. What really got me though was whether or not i wanted to go for adding details on the face - but I took the risk with my black pen and i went straight for it, adding more and more shapes upon shapes and the end result was a clusterfudge of a loose imagination on crack, mixed in with some LSD in a big melting pot of psychedelic-ness - but there was something about it that i couldn't quite put my finger on, something that made the piece all fit together. Maybe I will never know, but who really cares? It all works out, and flows together. I wasn't big on using references, and my in-depth Google search yielded one grainy picture that I couldn't get shet off of, so I just had to wing it from there. It was a learning experience though - both for my hand and mind.

I ended up using watercolors, tempra paints, Copic markers, Copic multiliners/brushes, colored pencil, and various colors of ink on it. It's a fun combination of medias to experiment with that can produce a variety of results. It is good to always be able to be versatile with your materials. This specific piece actually ended up getting a Daily Deviation on deviantART and featured on Fine Art America and many other places, not to mention spread around Tumblr some thousand times. You could say I was ecstatic about people seeing my stuff, lawl.

This piece you can derive your own meaning from. I decided not to say TOO much about it, because what is the point of doing art when you can't have an open opinion of it? The only words I used to describe it: "we aren't afraid of the dark, we're afraid of the unknown." and in my opinion it's true. What lies outside our comfort zone we are afraid of - and darkness entails the unknown and things our brains cannot yet comprehend. The imagination is a scary place sometimes. It's a wonderful world of mystery, and enigmas.

 Yes, my pretty sparkly lanyard for my school ID... Oh yeah and there's my drawing too lol.

 I decided to be a risk-taker.

 ...And kinda went overboard.

 And then the crack-LSD combo came into play.

 Pretty pretty shiney shiney!

 Aghhhhhh my eyes

 Bad or good hair day?

 Now it starts to take form - but I needed to fix the forehead a bit.

 Added white ink.

 Close-up

 Yarg.

 Details, details

 The hands! They are alive!

 

There was only a bit left to finish this one! You don't know how excited I was to finish this thing! I worked like 8 hours a day on this bish but it was soooo fulfilling!

 

VVV It's finished! See the full view of the drawing VVV

http://elvis882.deviantart.com/art/Enigma-257725997

Thank you for viewing! More to come soon!

~Callie Fink

Katy Perry graphite drawing process

 Callie Fink aka Elvis882 on deviantART - my online art profile/gallery

My first blog entry! Woooo exciting! :p

I did this drawing of Katy Perry(Yes I know her eyes are a bit creeper-ish... but that's not the point!) during summer because I wanted to practice drawing detailed skin! It was quite the challenge - my pencil kept on smudging the pores of the skin and I ended up having to redo it like a million times in the end to make it look "alive"... I probably went over the entire face with a kleenex, eraser and more graphite more times than I can count on both hands. Honestly though, the effort was worth it in the end, the high technicality and challenge that this drawing offered me was a chance I am glad I took, and the results came out pretty good in my opinion. There is always room for more improvement - and I took a big step here trying to accomplish an extremely detailed piece. I hope you enjoy the drawing process shots of it, many people were asking if I could post the sequence of the pictures and how i drew it, so here you are.

 

SKETCHYTIME! -.- It took super long to do it, but you have to make it perfect because its the backbone of your entire artwork. Its so time consuming but so beneficial in the end to get a good, proportional sketch! Taking that extra few hours really makes such a difference; patience is key.

 I started in a rough shading with my pencil. I used HB lead for the majority of this drawing. The face was completely HB pencil lead. I just started blocking in the shading really roughly and would go on to smooth it out later. I guess I use a combination of crosshatching and just mindless scribbling.

 SO i started on the eye a bit earlier than I would have liked, but then again I love drawing eyes first so I couldn't resist. Dem big fluffy eyelashes!

 And now a farther view of the rough-ness of the face.

 And another close up, I finished the eyelashes here; they are not perfect and I would go back later to fix them up and refine them a bit more. Oh joy... I used a dark layer of HB and then on top of it I put some 6B here for the eyelashes.

 I darkened a bit of the face. Still haven't really blended any at all with tissues. That's the next step.

 1 layer of blended graphite on the face.

 Details added to the eye, eyebrow, and the wrinkles of the skin underneath. I dont go in and add white pores/shine on the skin until after it is all blocked out with the graphite.

 Starting to shade and repeatedly blend more layers of shadowing.

 Added a bit more to the left eye.

 Almost done with the eye, and the shading is getting gradually darker for the face. Sooooo many layers...

 Smoothed out more and it is slowly starting to achieve a more realistic look.

 Shaded in the lips and took my Faber Castell Perfection(Cut eraser pencil) and started adding in the individual skin pores.

 Starting the bangs. Many people ask how I draw hair... I start with the most basic lines in the darkest parts and build up on top of those. It's really a simple, yet time consuming method - but it works very well for the end effect.

 Adding more hairs on top of what I originally drew, only on the darkest parts though.

 The face is basically done, the shading completed and the lips darkened. You can see the individual skin pores here. It took so much time. @___@

 Working on the hair. Has not been blended yet.

 Time to add some good 'ol 6B pencil to the hair. I start just drawing super super dark and pressing really hard on the pencil to get it this dark. Its all a matter of layering. It's a very easy but time consuming part even if you are experienced with drawing hair simply for the fact that there is just so much of it and it goes in many different directions - its just all a flowing mess of individual strands trying to make sense of itself on your paper.

 Darkening the hair.

 ...And more.

 Hair almost done.

 Finished hair, now to add the tiny details on the dress. I used my Faber Castell Perfection to add the individual strands on the black hair. SO MUCH WORK! -.-

 

Close up of how the shirt was drawn. Lots of little tiny details but it makes the picture come to life!

 

VVV See the finished drawing here close up! VVV

http://elvis882.deviantart.com/art/Katy-Perry-255584006

And the drawing is finished! As you can see I added a bit of white ink(Dr. Ph Martin's) to the skin, eyes, and face to make it "shine" and I really liked the effect it conveyed - I highly recommend adding that as a finishing touch after everything else is done because it adds a little "push" to the picture to make it truly seem real. 

Thanks for viewing! More to come soon.
~Callie Fink