Doodling in Pen

Hello All :)

Excuse the late post, I'm at Uni!

Obviously that's no excuse to put my art career at a halt but unfortunately that is what's happened. The closest thing to Art I've actually done is doodled during a one hour session at the Illustration Society.

Most of my inspiration for art comes from things I love, things I dream or specific artists or art movements. This particular "Doodle" came from my imagination. I sort of started out wanting to draw an alien but thought it looked more like skulls and i just started building up my little character using random ideas that popped into my head and just going with it. Here is the result :P

Etsy: Creating my unique shop name

Finally, the time has come to propel my art career forward. After researching many different art selling websites (I'll give you a comparison in a later blog post), I decided Etsy was the best option for me.

It took me a while to decide what exactly I wanted to sell, being a person full of ideas and ambition, I wanted to make and sell everything. In the end I decided to sell prints, which means I can sell multiple copies of an original piece, gaining more money and spending less.

I narrowed down all my ideas to what I was good at, surreal drawings and paintings and cartoon illustrations.
I read through a lot of blog posts on how to start up on Etsy, because I really wanted to do this right the first time. (help on this is coming soon)

After reading several articles, I found that an important feature that your shop needs to be successful is a brand. And that that brand should be everywhere. Branding starts with your shop name. Although this seems minor, it's actually a major part of selling success. I started out by writing out a bunch of names which I thought could work, brainstorming any idea which would work. I read that mainly shop names containing my name and/or what I'm selling e.g: the words surreal, paintings, prints were the better names. After all, a shop called Bead Fashions selling a vintage oil painting just wouldn't make sense. After I brainstormed, I then researched other shop names in Etsy within the category that I was selling in.

The shop names I initially came up with were....

ArtByMarwa
P&DArt
P&Dprints
MarwaCreations
SurrealPrints
MarwaPrints
BohemianArt
BohemianStudios
BohemianPrints
SurPri
StudioPrints
PrintStudios
ArtObsession
MRartStudio
PrintPallete
PaintingPrint

Then I searched again through Etsy's shop names and found many shop names with ArtBy(insert name) so that was a definite no, I wanted mine to be different. I then got rid of the chessy ones, so; ArtObsession, MRartStudio, PrintPallete, PaintingPrint, MarwaCreations.

Then I gave my mum the list, it's always good to have a second choice because names you like may not appeal to everyone else. She cringed at a few and we discussed others.

Overall, the names left were ...

P&Dprints

BohemianArt
BohemianStudios
BohemianPrints
PrintStudios

I liked the idea of the Bohemian stuff because I intended my work to be unique and different . I then researched shop names on Etsy with the word Bohemian in it, and there was only one, so I decided that was a good direction to go in. I then wanted to look at google searches, if someone typed out my shop name, would there be other similar companies, this cancelled out BohemianArt.

Overall I prefered BohemianStudios because it seemed professional, different and was definitely unique. I felt more comfortable with this name and thus my brand will now be called BohemianStudios.

See the next post for how I created a logo.

Etsy: Creating a Logo

After I created my shop name, after much deliberation (see: http://myart-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/etsy-creating-my-unique-shop-name.html) I decided that what every brand needs is a logo. A memorable logo to go with my new brand BohemianStudios.

I found creating the logo extremely difficult because I had no base to start with, and my brand name was very broad. I decided to just sketch a few ideas but nothing came. I then started researching "strange logos" but unfortunately it didn't help, I didn't feel like I had a connection with any of the designs or could  develop them in any way. Then I decided to have a think about my likes. I have a strange obsession with clocks so I tried a few different designs using an antique clock as the base item, all the time remembering my brand and what I wanted to portray. Remember this is just a sketch but here was a rough idea of what I wanted.

Kinda like a frog with clock and umbrella...kinda

Recently I had prom, and me being the person I was, wanted to go I a top hat, and since then I love my top hat with added feathers and bling, so I decided to draw this one too as a simpler logo.

Then I went to my younger sister for help, because kids often come up with strange, unique yet simple ideas. And she simply said an eye. I looked at her like errr....noo, and she said an eye with something in it. So I thought of drawing an eye with the world as the pupil. Here is a bad drawing of what I mean.

I quite liked the idea of silhouettes, so straight from imagination, I came up with the following ideas, again, imagine them drawn and coloured in much better to a high quality. It was the second last idea that I decided to choose, but I havn't put that up yet became I havn't placed in my Etsy Shop just yet so don't want anyone stealing the idea, But I'll show you later!! :)

Marwa

A Painting For My Teacher UPDATE

It is finally complete!!! 20 hours later, an overall covered in oil paints and the smell of white spirit lurking in my room, my chemistry teachers painting is finished.

See the link here for the previous update about this particular painting and tips on painting with oil paints.

Finished and signed, here is the final portrait requested by my teacher.

Ill update you guys later on how he receives his gift.

Birds without feathers

On my way to stratford, I decided to take the bus, a nice and long 45 minute journey. During the journey I made a copy of the drawings by Katrina van Grouw's "The Unfeathered Bird" which is a glorious set of drawings showing birds without their skin and feathers.

Here is one of those drawings and my copy

A Painting for My Teacher

When my chemistry teacher saw my self-portrait piece, he asked me if I could paint something for him and naturally I agreed. He offered to pay me a lot in return, but as its something I enjoy and as a thank you gift, I told him to just buy me the materials. He emailed me the picture he wanted and the colour scheme, and we discussed canvas size and paint mediums. In the end we decided to use oil paints as they were easier for me to paint with and get a realistic effect and they gave a softer finish. The composition is of a Sikh man with characteristic, symbolic objects. This particular composition I found hard to map out, not only was it side-view (which I haven't painted before and try to avoid when drawing), but the man is kneeling and his head is tilted which I found very difficult to achieve. Once I completed the drawing, I started painting  the base coat. This is just a wash with the basic mid tones of the colours I will use. This does three things; 1) Allows you to see if your composition works, because the wash is light, it is easy to work on top of to alter things 2) Allows you to see if the colours work, now that the colours are on the canvas, next to each other, do they work or do some areas need to be made lighter/darker. 3) it provides a base layer which you can carefully work on, preventing bits of white canvas showing up from underneath The drawing and base coat took me around three hours to complete, unfortunately due to technology, I lost the pictures showing the bas coat. Yesterday, I spent two hours painting the face, turbin and the hands and feet, trying to get the shading right and the angles correct. Here is an image, despite it being "complete", it still needs a lot of work which I will put in later.  This morning, I spent an hour and a half painting the top half of the outfit, I found it very enjoyable to paint in all the creases, I just wish I had a clearer, larger image to work from which would have made it easier.  Anyways, That's it so far, I'm just going to go and work on the bottom half of the outfit in a bit, once I blog a bit more ;) Marwa

My Sister's Wall

This is cheating a little because, this blog is meant to be starting from what I did yesterday and onwards. However, my younger sister has been nagging me to put this up.

Last month, it was her birthday, and as I am broke, I used what wall paints I found in my garage to create a fun painting on her wall. The inspiration behind the painting came from a similar idea I found on a website.

I started out by drawing out what I wanted onto the wall in pencil, and then mixed the paint to achieve the right colours, and then simply painted it on. It only required one layer of paint as the walls are magnolia. It's a nice change to have something fun and different, especially for a child's bedroom. Hope you guys like it as much as she did : )

This is the reference photo from liftupthyneighbor.com 

This is the painting I produced on my sisters wall