art by fari

I know, it’s been a while since my last weekly art challenge post. I promise I have been dedicating time to my art, trying to improve my skills. But between traveling, work, and other commitments, it’s been very hard to sit to write about my weekly reflections regarding my 2024 weekly art challenge.

recap: what was my 2024 weekly art challenge?

In the beginning of the year, I knew I had to take my art hobby and my passion for creating more seriously. Between trying to adjust to new country (and continent, for that matter) and putting my role in other areas of my life up front for the past couple of years, I knew that I had to come back to art. I needed to make sure that I was carving time out of my day for myself. So, I challenged myself to finish at least one piece of art each week. I set myself a very vague challenge for the particular reason that I needed to give myself leniency. In my mind, anything and everything that I intentionally created worked.

So, have I actually been able to keep up with my challenge?

Long story short, it depends on how you look at it. If we keep the definition of my art challenge really vague, then yes, I did. Each week, I did create and finish something intentionally. Am I counting a new recipe during week 17 as a successful week of the challenge? Yes, yes I am but only because I truly enjoyed the art of following a recipe from start to finish.

This week’s piece… sunflowers

It’s only Friday, so I haven’t actually finished this week’s piece of my sunflower drawing but I had time today so I decided to write my post today. Recently, I have been very inspired by florals and botanical art. Where I live, I don’t really come across flower shops or even bouquets at grocery stores. Using Pinterest has been my holy grail for finding good reference to use for my floral art prints. I especially love to use ink pens for my floral art pieces. They allow me to creat sharp, detailed images with strong contrasts. This technique is useful for highlighting intricate details and textures. I also really like using watercolor to showcase the delicate colors and textures of the florals. This technique allows me more freedom in color gradiation and fine details.

This week, as you can tell from my progess photo of my sunflower drawing, I will be using ink pens ( I love pigma micron 03 and 005) for my drawing. I intend to go back with a 005 for more finer details in each petal as well as the seeds of the sunflower.