Canvassing

According to the internet, you can use sharpies on canvases, and you can decoupage things to them.  As these are both skills vaguely within my reach, I was ready to do some art.

I think this tissue paper came from Michael's since the purplish shade was used for one of my Xmas reindeer.  Every other color is god damned terrible.  If paper could feel feelings, I would bully the hell out of this tissue paper.  That other color on the vase/luminary used to be green.  Now it mocks me.

While I vaguely understand that "gluing to things, then painting with more glue" is not tissue paper's primary raison d'etre, I am an artist now.  You can tell because I have canvases and paintbrushes in a variety of sizes.  As an artist, everything I do is a statement.  For example, buying a pack of cheap paintbrushes marketed to children is a statement of the childlike wonder I bring to painting things.

With the canvases, my original vision was decoupage tissue paper, draw Pikachu.  Part of my cunning plan was that the yellow tissue paper would free me from such burdensome concerns as "backgrounds" and "coloring things in."

My vision was updated to "add more tissue paper so it actually looks like a respectable shade of yellow."  

One thing I've learned from becoming an artist through buying supplies I don't really understand is that great art takes time.  Most of it is waiting for things to dry.  While waiting for things to dry, I decided to use my favorite medium to make Kristen an art.

I have no idea why Sharpie is my favorite drawing medium since I kind of suck at drawing and you can't erase Sharpie.  I suppose it appeals to my edgy outsiderness and hatred of revision.

For the background, I used what is possibly a sponge brush to apply stamp ink. 

This was included with the other housewarming items.  There's only one for Kristen because I don't know what animal Steven hates least.

Another part of being an artist is going to work to earn money for craft supplies.  While driving back from work stuff, I thought about my sad, impossible dream of submitting to Art-O-Mat (This is similar to my dream of having a Kickstarter fund and making a ludicrous amount of money for something I'd be willing to do anyway).  As I considered my artistic range and the possibility of maybe coming up with something that wasn't from Nintendo or comics, I realized that I could use my skill at cutting up paper.

The maneki neko appealed to me as an artist because it's in the public domain and I'm really awesome at drawing stylized cat faces.

How to draw a happy kitty:

Step 1: Draw a cat's head
Step 2: Draw two curved lines
Step 3: Draw a mouth
Step 4: Add whiskers (not pictured)

I got some even smaller canvases at Michael's and started working on my lucky cat template.  This is the first try on the Maneki Kitten body.  It is glorious.  I am so terrified of never being able to recreate this that I traced extra heads and bodies on an index card and put them in an envelope.

I'm really happy with how these turned out.  Cutting out the pieces is kind of tricky at this size, but the templates are working well.  Tracing the template on the back of the origami paper is easier than trying to hold the little piece of index card and cut at the same time.

I've drawn some more bells for the cat on the right (and for future cats).    I still need to draw the paws and then cover the rest of the canvas in Mod Podge.  It's probably not necessary, but I think it'll look better if the whole thing is glossy (instead of just the paper parts).

As for Pikachu, I think if I try anymore they should be on a painted background.  Because then I can just add more paint if I draw a crappy one.

I actually like how this crappy one turned out.  It looks like Pikachu as drawn by Jim Davis in 1978.

The other one went to a nice farm where it has lots of room to run around and look like shit.

I need to figure out what to do with the raggedy edges.  It probably involves finding someone who can be trusted with sharp crafting knives.