another collaboration

Once in a while my husband Andy and I like to collaborate on a project together (see here and here). And as many of you know, we are creative opposites. He has a serious gift for drawing realism and portraits. I am an expressive and colorful artist who loves pattern and making a mess. Somehow our creative strengths work really well together and when we collaborate on a project all of our differences fall away and we make magic! Here is a peek into our latest work:

grab a ball point pen

My husband Andy is an EXPERT at drawing with a ball point pen so I asked him to help me put together

a swatch guide, with his favorite techniques for using a blue ball point pen in drawing and sketching.

1. Shade dark to light  2. Cross hatching 3. Scribbling  4. Make use of different types of lines and weight of lines 

5. Dark cross hatching or concentrated pigment 6. Hold pen as flat as possible when shading

6. Hold pen at 45 degree angle to shade 7. Use fine details and shading along with lines 

8. Use cross hatching along with lines  9. Shade in the direction of a shape or object 

Head on over to Andy's blog to see more of his ball point pen drawings!

more collaboration

Since our painting collaboration, my husband Andy and I have been hard at work combining our creativity! Once a week we sit down and plan out a drawing/painting and then each of us takes time to work on it. First Andy does what he does best- black and grey portraits in pencil and then I go in and "mess it up" with color and pattern. This process of working together on art has been quite simply....MAGIC (and something that seems to be improving our marriage- go figure). We have an entire series planned out that we are creating and soon, very soon we'll be offering prints of our work. I thought I would share a look at one of our recent collaborations. 

P.S. For the last 6 years I've been nagging gently encouraging Andy to create a blog of his own where he can document and share his art. Well, it finally happened! You can head over HERE or andrewgunthardt.blogspot.com if you would like to follow his journey as an artist.