Mosslike | Gemma Hazen

Category: Featured

  • Ink sketches of Koa leaves for Inktober Day 1

    Ink sketches of Koa leaves for Inktober Day 1

    It’s Inktober again!

    That means it’s time for me to stress out over posting a drawing every day this month. I don’t mind drawing every day – I LOVE that! It’s the posting part that’s annoying.

    I’m currently using a prompt list provided by Laulima Hawaii. Usually I try to stick to one major prompt list for the month. For example, my Spooky favorite, Mab’s Drawlloween Club. I’ll definitely be posting there at some point. But I’m no longer going to freak out over sticking to any particular lists. I’m just going to try and post a drawing I make daily. I’m already behind today, but my mind has plans.

    This drawing, for the 1st of October, is of Koa. Acacia koa is a very important tree species here in Hawaiʻi. We had a Koaʻia (Acacia koaia) planted in my yard at one time. It was a thriving and beautiful tree! It offered amazing shade, dropped the coolest sickle-shaped leaves, and sounded beautiful in the rain. It’s roots began lifting the neighbor’s shed, so we had to remove it. I’m not kidding when I say that I can still cry when remembering this tree.

    I drew the left sketch on Charcoal paper, just to see how it would hold water and ink. I like the splotchy bleed effects I got from my water-soluble Kaweco Pearl Black ink. I also used Noodler’s Bulletproof Black for the lines I didn’t want moving.

    If you read this far, enjoy this video of my kiddo dancing in the shade of our old Koa tree.

  • Pastel Portrait Practice

    Pastel Portrait Practice

    It’s been a few days and I’m still playing with the oil pastels. Yes, they’re crayola. I’m doing these after taking the kiddo to school and before I have to start working.

    Today, I used a reference from Pinterest.

    The proportions are wrong – it’s a little long in the face. Still, it’s a good looking face.

    This background color worked nicely with the colors I chose, so I like that too!

    The morning light outside in the patio is so nice. It’s the perfect time to get outside and think about something as simple as colored lines.

    Listening to the early birds chirping around.

    One day, I’d like to draw some trees at the neighborhood park. Writing that down so I actually try to get to that…

    For now, it’s time to go to work.

  • Tiny Bright Portraits in Oil Pastel

    Tiny Bright Portraits in Oil Pastel

    As promised, I worked on some new portraits. These are done in oil pastel and are on small craft paper, 4″ x 6″. Oh, and I also used a black grease pencil. They took about 10 minutes each. There were others that I made but these were the nicest of them.

    It’s fun to mess with these faces so quickly! Oil pastels are super fun on bright paper.

    I still need to work on getting the “likeness” of my portraits correct though. I like the limited palette of the green portrait, but my favorite so far is the red. Even though the right side of her face slid outwards. They look nothing like the reference photos, but I do really like the shading.

    Thanks for looking!