Candle sticks and holidays: Everyday candle stick

It's a holiday season and one of the Holiday's attributes is a Candle with its stick. So today I will sketch a simple candlestick and its candle.
The thing I love the most about the usage of candles is that if you don't have a fancy candle stick you can use it with almost any object: you can put it in a glass, a coaster; a vase filled with water and flowers or just wrap it with an aluminium foil. You can decorate a wreath with it or a tree, put it on a table and a border of your bath - no rules there, actually.

I googgled "candle stick" and drew my way through the pages. Although most of them were classical ones but they all were different. So first I'd like to thank all those who created these images; you all supply a great learning material for those like me who are willing to learn indoors.

One of the things I've learned is that when drawing a candlestick you should always create a center line and mark the different levels/parts of it; it will make your life much easier. Remember to always start with light lines; you will create a thick outline when you're done.

So here are my sketches: I worked with simple geometrical candles, some of them were deformed and half burned.
One thing I did learn this time: There is never enough sheet for a candle itself :)
Hope you found this post useful.
Have a great holiday season.

Yours truly,
D.

Drawing a donut

Hanukkah, a cool and tasty holiday is near and since one of it's treats are donuts then it's time to learn a bit about of these oily greesy things.
It's obvious that different cultures have different name for the same thing:
There is an American donut, a Russian ponchink, an Israeli sufgania  and  a Morrocan sfinj - and these the four that I personally tasted and I'm sure there are more :).
They all mean the same: A piece of dough fried in deep oil, and after that filled with either jam or glased with colorful glasings, sometimes dipped in deluted honey or sugar.

Since Hannuka is coming in December I've been sketching lots and lots of these yammi and very fattening food. While watching closely I've come to realise that there is a very distinguished difference in its forms: Donut and sufgania make almost a perfect smooth edge while sfinj and ponchick have a pretty curvy shape.

So when trying to draw the first two try to make your lines pretty streight, almost perfect. When drawing the second two - do a soft curvy line to make it look natural.



Have a great and sweet day,
D.

Drawing clay jugs

Today is a Clay Jug day. I am learning to draw pottery items. I am looking for different perspectives trying to capture the basic form. I have no idea what it's going to be good for, but I guess it's a result of a brainstorming flow, getting ready for Hanukkah illustrations.

As usual – there are no shadows, no details. It's just a basic form.
While sketching I've realised that you don't really have to try hard to draw an item on its side - and I'm talking ONLY about the X&Y scale here - but you can draw it just as is and then rotate it right and left, as required for the specific project. No difference really. Or I might be wrong.

Of course it is better to make the effort and draw it again in the originally required position, but hey, one can do it a bit later.




These quick sketches are just a few hours of work. Each took between 10 to 15 minutes . The process is the most important. Of course, when there are some complete illustrations I will show them off.




Have a great and productive day.

Yours truly,
D.

Next stop: winter holidays!!!

Hello there!!!

Halloween is over and this means that we move on to the next three holidays: Hanukah, Christmas and New years. All celebrated in the end of the year, in a winter time.

Since the three of them are celebrated one so close to another I will have to work really intensively - and I hate the word "hard" - to create as many illustrations as possible. I guess it will be some kind of challenge for me this time. I would like to create at least 20 illustrations by the end of the year. It might seem a little, but not for me. Snowmen, snowflakes, donuts, presents, money bags, Christmas trees, Santas and dragons will be in place.
The idea, as usual, is to sketch a lot and then to create something original.

So the keyword notes are ready, the paper sheets are out and pencils are sharpened.
Ready! Set! Go!

Have a great holiday season!

Halloween illustrations

And now, as promised, although with a small delay, here are the two illustration that were created for this Halloween: Jack with Hat and Fire and another with Tree and Moon.

You can see the creation prosess in Jack o'Lantern: creating from skratch post.
Also a high quality images are avaliable for sale in my Shutterstock gallery and in the Graphiking gift shop.

I hope you had a great holiday this year!!!
See you soon :)

Creating geometrical patterns

I’ve been dealing a lot with patterns lately, and I started to look for some info online about creating them.
Basically, pattern is a repetition of the same thing.
So the first thing you should remember while working on a pattern is to create this basic “thing” or element that will repeat itself over and over again.
The big question is how exactly do we create these basic elements?

So the basic idea is when creating a geometric pattern is to take several basic figures and arrange them beautifully together.
You don't have to know what it's going to look like. All you should do is to start playing with these figures. Connect and disconnect them. Just like playing a Lego. Sketch. Move. Remove. Rotate the paper you're sketching on.

That sketch was the base to my illustration.

After having some decent base I started working in Illustrator.
I don't know exactly how long it took me to create the final result, but there it is:

A single element and a pattern.




I like it and I hope I was helpful.
Good luck in creating those gorgeous patterns.