15 Illustrations: Walking at Two Rivers

Posted on June 5, 2016 by lksukany

This series is called 15 illustrations because that’s how many pages is in my awesome art pad gift – a Canson 11×14″ Illustration art pad 150lb. I am using a blend of inktense pencils and micron ink pens size .005, .01, .03, .05, .07, and .08. This series is inspired by my family and all of the fun and interesting things we do together.

Derwent-Inktense-Pencil-12-350

“Walking at Two Rivers” is pretty self explanatory. The Two Rivers Park Bridge is in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is a pedestrian and bike bridge connected to Two Rivers Park. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The bridge is 1,368 feet long. It opened to the public July 23, 2011. We moved to Little Rock November 2008, so when this park opened a couple of years later, we were pretty happy to have a great place like this to walk. My favorite part of this trail is going through a forest of large trees. I used a blend of inktense pencils leaf green and teal green for the forest.

My favorite parts of this drawing are the trees and leaves,

the baby in the stroller, striped pants, and M’s face.

Although the path is asphalt, I really wanted to make it a rock path.

My inspirations for this drawing!

15 Illustrations: Family Time in Bed

Posted on May 16, 2016 by lksukany

I received some art supplies at Christmas this year – a Canson 11×14″ Illustration art pad 150lb with 15 sheets – and a set of prismacolor ink pens size .005, .01, .03, .05, and .08. This series is inspired by my family and all of the fun and interesting things we do together.

“Family Time” portrays a family get together in a big bed (the family dog being beside and not on the bed) with an inktense pencil sun yellow patterned wall in the background. I thought it would be fun to add one color (monochrome element) to this series using a different color for each piece. The coolest thing about this series is that I can work as little as 15 minutes a day and see quite a bit of progress. I mostly work on these while E.K. sleeps.

Some details I like about this piece: the yellow patterned wall in the background and the patterned blanket

Striped socks and striped sweater

patterned shirt and baby onesie and the dog’s pig nose

UALR 6×6 Event

Posted on October 22, 2014 by lksukany

It all started when…

Emily Wood Facebook messaged me – “Interested in donating to the UALR 6×6 event?” – or something like that.

All pieces entered are 6×6 inches – hence the “6×6” title. I decided that prints would be the best way to go, so I tore some paper and mixed some ink (pewter, red, and white). I did test prints first to make sure the cropped images were strong compositions.

This was a happy accident from rolling out the red ink.

Once everything was printed, I stopped by Hobby Lobby on the way home from work the next day and got the pieces matted – which felt like a complete rip off at $5 per mat! They didn’t even let me keep the matboard scraps they cut from. Yikes was I mad about that.

“The Dancer”

“The Lady and the Musician”

“Dinner Guests” (which is its actual size)

I put the Paper Opera stamp on the back and signed the print.

M and I went to the UALR 6×6 event and had a nice time! It was a silent auction – where all of the pieces are placed on the tables and people walk around and bid on them.

I was happy because all of my pieces got bids.

At the end of the event, there were speeches and thank you’s and lots of clapping.

Romania Paintings for Livada

Posted on August 26, 2014 by lksukany

When I was on the missions trip with Grace Church serving the Livada Orphan Care ministry in Romania, the beauty of the country inspired me.

During one of my morning quiet times with God, I felt like He gave me the idea to paint scenes from Romania to raise money for orphan child sponsorship. It would serve a double purpose to paint the scenes. On one hand, someone would purchase the painting for the suggested donation price or fundraiser auction. On the back end, when the said person looks at the painting, they are encouraged to pray for Livada and the orphans in Romania.

I was originally going to purchase a large canvas roll and stretchers and stretch my own canvas. Though time consuming, stretching canvas is much cheaper than purchasing pre-stretched canvas…unless there is some sort of deal.

On a random day of the week as I was driving home from work, I had a God moment and turned into Michaels. They did indeed have one of these “deals.” There was buy 3 canvas for the price of 1, so I got 15 canvas for the price of 5, which was around $50.

I mixed gesso with acrylic paint and covered each of the canvas. I like to add a color to the white gesso to create a light or mid-tone, so that when I paint I can add lights and darks.

After the canvases dried, I sketched (from photographs) each of the images using willow charcoal. Because I am working with so many images and mostly landscapes I had to have a way of organizing them. I created a list numbering and naming each piece with the canvas size. I put the names on the back of the canvas on the stretcher bar and also on the photograph source.

I mixed my color palette based on all photographs.

Printmaking Workshop Part III

Posted on July 10, 2014 by lksukany

In the Printmaking Workshop Part II, we left everyone’s linoleum block carved, stored, and ready to print.

I covered the tables with paper and handed out (with my lovely assistant Barbara Jones) printing paper, envelopes, palette paper for ink, ink, brayers, wooden spoons, paper towels, stamps, and an ink pad.

Everyone put their aprons back on and I gave an inking and printing demonstration.

The printing process just took some getting used to, but everyone did a great job! They rolled the ink on the palette paper (which next time, I would just use cardboard strips instead of palette paper because the palette paper is pretty thin and shifts a lot when rolling out the ink). They rolled the inked brayer evenly onto their carved linoleum blocks, and transferred their image using a wooden spoon (rubbing the back of the paper on top of the block using the flat of the wooden spoon).